I got a great question from one of my coached athletes today.  After reading my blog from yesterday, where I discussed being tired, she asked … “Why didn’t you take a day off from training?”.

It was a great question and it got me thinking.  When I see that my athletes are getting tired and it is impacting their workouts, I will give them an unscheduled ‘day off’.  Yesterday, I was clearly very tired and it was clearly impacting my motivation to work out, so why didn’t I give myself a day off.

The reason was that my tiredness was not actually impacting the quality of the work that I was doing in my workouts.  Over the past few days, once I was able to start a workout, the workout usually went very well. I was just having an issue getting myself to actually start a workout.  So, once I fixed my tiredness with an afternoon nap, I was good to go again.

I also know that I made the right decision, after finishing my run workout this morning.  It was a tough workout, with a couple of two mile intervals and open half marathon effort.  Even though it was hot outside, I had a fantastic run.  The results of the workout were good, and once finished, I was very happy.  I had one of those runner’s highs.

The decision to take a day off from training is not black and white.  Only the athlete knows how they feel, and so they are in the best position to make the decision.  Just pushing through is not always wise, but yesterday, I knew that once I started my workout, I would be fine.  It turned out that I was right.