January 13, 2026 – Getting the easy right first

Hey Gang!

Don’t the holidays now feel like they were forever ago? Did we even get a break? Haha. Hopefully your motivation and energy levels remember though and they’re tracking a little higher. If not, give them time. Remember: mood follows action. Just start and I promise you’ll get into it.

Ok, so during the holidays I said I was embracing the gray zone – just doing everything at whatever pace or “zone” I felt like. And that totally worked for me with my vibes and energy over the holidays with very little differentiation between what was work (a little less stressful than usual) and what was rest (a little more stressful than usual if you know what I mean). So everything just kind of blended and that was fine. But now I’m back to structured workouts and things that I want to make count. But I think that the thing we forget about the Hard/Easy principle, is that both Hard and Easy have to have equal weight. You can only go hard (or at least benefit from it and do it consistently), if you really plan in and intentionally execute your easy days. I know that intellectually we know this (probably partly because I’ve written about it more than once – haha), but when we’re motivated and in “go” mode, it can be hard to really polarize ourselves optimally. It’s like turning a light switch on and off vs. leaving it on dim. It takes discipline to switch back and forth and actually embrace the “off” when we’re motivated and training hard, but that’s the best way to get the brightest light when it’s “on”.

I’ve been thinking about how this applies to life too. We live in a culture that glamourizes work and industry, and does not honour or really respect rest. But I truly believe that if you don’t claim and utilize rest blocks, your work pieces will become diminished. My schedule now entails traveling to track races on most weekends. That’s ok – I love it. But it means I have to plan in down time throughout the week or else I’ll risk getting burnt out. And down time doesn’t mean groceries, cooking, driving people places. It means reading, vegging, watching shows, … just being “unproductive” for a set amount of time. I can also get up at 5 am to do a workout a few days a week – and truly enjoy it. But only if I build in rest before and after. For every 5 am wake up, I plan a sleep in day the day before and the next day. When I think about many people in this group, I have a hard time picturing you all giving your rest equal value to your work. When we rest, we are not being lazy or unproductive – we are investing in ourselves to be able to shine and and lean into the work. I know it is hard to justify doing nothing when there is so much to be done, and if we power through one “productive” weekend or evening, we think we’ve found the formula and can just keep performing until a break is offered to us. But that is not how the hard/easy formula works. It’s a ratio. I’m not saying I know the exact ratio, or that it’s the same for everyone. With running it’s a little easier to predict because we have so much data and so many patterns. But I do know that if you can plan and lean into your “easy” you will be able to get much more out of your “hard”. The ideal scenario is that you actually look forward to the hard. I know most of us do – especially at the start. But if we don’t plan in enough easy, the hard can start to dribble into medium-hard, and then there is no differentiation – just the limbo that I was feeling at Christmas break – not hard, but not entirely restful. So as or even before you schedule and dive into all your hard work that will lead to all your accomplishments this year, make sure you also plan in and honour the rest days and moments that will allow you to shine your brightest.

On to tomorrow’s workout! Back to Lakeshore and Leslie. We will do another indoor track session or two this winter – let’s keep an eye on the weather and use them when we need/want to.

(oh, and for those who came last week, pls see this link to document and send payment of $12 – thank-you! https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1yDj8rcSzkd2j1Cmok-djQCazgN6v3bodgccOub_569k/edit?usp=sharing)

Let’s do baseline 800’s. 6-8 x 800 w 90 sec rest. We will do these again closer to race dates and see where we are! This is not a performance pressure workout – just an indicator of baseline fitness.

That is all – see you in the a.m.!

Seanna