This week was all about the dreaded “R” word — rest.

When someone tells me I should take it easy, I usually glare at them, lie and say I’ll think about it, and then go back to whatever I was doing. (Stubborn, much?) But then, when my body tells me it needs rest…I can’t fight back. Mid-week, I caught a bad cold — nothing serious — but I felt so incredibly exhausted I fell asleep at 7pm every night. (I’m going to be such a good old person.)

So here’s the short training recap:

Monday: Rest

Tuesday: 4 miles, core work

Wednesday: 45min lift, 4 miles, start feeling like death

Thursday Friday Saturday: REST (and grumble a lot, sleep a shit ton, miss running and get all melodramatic in my bed while drinking way too much cough medicine and probably not enough water).

Sunday: 15 miles, 8:30 pace. I woke up at 6:30 this morning (this is what happens when you fall asleep at 6:30pm…) and literally could not spend another moment in bed. I made coffee and told myself I’d “evaluate” how I was feeling, and if I felt OK, would go out and run slowly and comfortably until I didn’t feel good anymore. No pace, no set milage…just a fun run as a “reward” for being “good” and not running for the past three days.

I ended up going for 15, glorious, happy and loving miles. It’s funny how just a few days off can make you miss the sport so much, and appreciate how good it feels to start up again. I did not feel awesome by any means, and there were points where I contemplated stopping. But once I got to Central Park, I turned off my music and ran/cheered alongside the pack of runners doing the NYCRUNS half/full marathon. I listened to the birds (SPRING!) and didn’t deal with snow or ice or cold wind or anything that reminds me of evil winter. I finished by doing a loop of the reservoir — at that point I could tell my body felt a bit weak/off — and stopped.

With that,  I think I’m slowly beginning to realize the marathon plan I’m following is very challenging for me. If I didn’t have any other obligations — career, social life, “me” time, cleaning my apartment (?!) — then I would be able to stick to it to a T. I’ve never been a stick-to-a-plan type person, so when I began following this I felt I needed to do everything or else my goal for Eugene was out of reach. Now, I know this is stupid, and even Jason told me the plan is flexible. So I’m learning what workouts and types of mileage and amounts of strength training I should be doing, but I’m also learning what works for me. And most importantly, how I can combine these two things.

Basically, I think I need to run a little less, and do yoga and lift a little more. A better balance of all these things makes me happy, and when I’m happy, I run better. That’s all it really comes down to.

In other news, I suck at “tracking” but joined both MyFitnessPal (because I’m bad at knowing how much I need to eat when training) and dailymile (because I want to join another awesome running community). So LET’S BE FRIENDS! I love friends. And lastly, thank you all so so much for your amazing response to my post on comparison & perfection. I had no idea it would receive the response it has, and am glad so many people could relate.

All of the love, and hey — here’s some pictures of a cute dog since I just wrote way too much. (And follow her on Instagram, she has more followers than me…)