I could argue that’s been the case the whole past week, but today I feel it the most, and it’s clear that you can’t get much done physically when mentally speaking you’re just not in the zone.

A large part of why I’ve had to stop and back off exercise is the feeling that I wasn’t getting things quite right. I already have to re-do my strength training plan because I didn’t factor in enough taper times between big events (it would be foolish to have a major “leg day” scheduled the same day as a 10K or half-marathon, after all). It also occurred to me that some movements would benefit far more if I went from 6 weeks of training to 8, so I expanded that.

Most of my movement rotations will last about 8 weeks, some for 9 or 10 because before and after a big running event, I’ll cut the strength training to 3 days a week. Since my usual plan consists of 6 days, it won’t require too much tweaking, just re-dating some planned workouts and adding those into my online calendar so I don’t forget when my rest days should be.

So, that’s the strength training, which has shown me more improvement than my run game. I’m still mourning my little friend a bit and nightmares and bad sleep in general have left me completely drained. It also doesn’t help that every day this week, my schedule has changed and I thought I’d be off work today, only to find out that I’m back on the schedule tonight. I’m so drained and anemic I’m about to fall asleep, and will probably crash in a couple of hours before work. Nobody is left to take a shift, though, so I’m just gonna have to deal with it.

Yeah, my body isn’t helping my mind push me forward. I wanted so badly to do some miles but if I don’t have the energy, I’ll just make myself prone to injury. That’s what I’m trying to do right now while I’m not too tired: learning how to avoid injury when I get my engine going again and do those trainings. There were a lot of things I’ve missed over the weeks, and the past two weeks’ slow goings might be attributable to that.

As long as I can take the time to rest and learn, I suppose it’ll work out. I still have more than 180 days, and though I REALLY need to step up my game and get marathon-ready, pushing too hard will only ensure that I can’t finish at all.

I believe this is where the phrase “work smarter not harder” comes into play, and it’s still going to be lots of hard work. The tricky part is figuring out where you should and could go hard versus easy and when.

Well, that’s why I’m here with some tea (ran out of coffee beans, dammit, so that’s another reason I’m so sleepy) doing some tip searches and checking out vids on running technique. I know my technique will need work because I’ve been prone to shin splints in the past and thanks to some jobs I’ve had, I’ve twisted my knee a few times. Every little bit of real education helps.