Tuesday, December 2, 2025 – Taking breaks

Hey Gang!

I don’t think there were any races this weekend unless you ran Nationals Cross-Country. Pearce and I did. They were as expected: brutal conditions on a brutal course with ankle thick mud mixed with snow for every step. So fun! Last time I ran nationals cross country I threw out my spikes and quit that discipline for four years. Wonder how long it’ll take me to return this time… Anyway, regardless of whether I’ll ever do cross country again, I am taking a training break.

So of course, this is what I’ve been thinking about. Why it is so hard for some of us to take a break. I think there are multiple factors going on. One is that training has become so embedded in how we structure our schedules and how we feel, that we can feel a little untethered and potentially low when it’s not a predictable part of our days. What will become of us if we don’t have our planned runs and workouts? Will we devolve into blobs of motionless goo? Can we be trusted with our own sense of how much physical effort to exert where if we don’t have a plan telling us what to do? What if we can’t be and we stop moving forward altogether and all those positive attributes we’ve heard said about us (we’re go-getters, we’re disciplined, we do hard things, we set good examples) don’t hold true anymore and we become a completely different person and the rest of our lives follow suit and we completely unravel and we end up sad, destitute, and stuck on our couches for days on end, as completely out of shape blobs, and we’ll never be able to get into shape again? I’m obviously making the point of how ridiculous this sounds when actually spelled out, but it is how we can feel sometimes.

Another thing that keeps us from taking the breaks we need is our connection to our social networks. This one is a little more real. It’s true that the running friends we have are important parts of our lives and we can begin to take it for granted that we will see them for weekly catchups when we run and have a captive audience for our trials or stories when we need them. They don’t all have to be “bear your soul” moments – some people who we see weekly at group runs or at workouts just make us feel good and add a spark to our day. And we miss that connection when we take a break, and this can leave a little hole. But the positive here is that if we never took a break we could continue to take these relationships for granted. When we have a chance to miss them, it might prompt us to reach out in a non-running related manner, and extend our valued relationships beyond just running. We will come back and fall back into it when our break is over, but it’s a good reminder to also show up for our running friends who aren’t running for varied reasons in other ways as well.

And finally, one of my personal biggest barriers to taking extended breaks is the fomo. I love coming up with “fun” workouts and I love working hard with a group of like-minded people. When I see others training and doing challenging workouts, I find it very hard to stay on the sidelines. I want to participate and join in and challenge myself and see how it feels! I love that feeling and it’s so hard to watch others get to do it when I’m not. But I have to remember that the way cycles work, there will always be someone in the middle of a training build for something, while others are taking their much needed break. There is always someone going hard, but we can’t all be going hard all the time. The most confident people can accept this and not have to continually do what the hardest workers at the time are doing. That only leads to breakdown. And it’s really only fun to work hard when the hard work feels good. When you need a break, it stops being fun. And then you’ve lost the point.

So take your break! If you’re sick or injured and on a forced break, same mental hurdles and same rules apply. You will come back stronger, your friendships might go deeper, and you will not have missed out on anything you can’t get right back into. Try to enjoy it. I promise you won’t turn into an unrecognizable blob.

On to tomorrow’s workout!

Back to Lakeshore and Leslie: 6:05 Drills, 6:15 GO! I’ll come to cheer/jog/start you off.

4 x 1 mile tempo. Just nice n steady – go by feel. 2 minutes in between.
If racing Tannenbaum, 1 mile tempo (can start tempo and build to 10K race pace for the last 400m), 3 min rest, 4 x 300m @ 10K pace w 90 sec rest.

That is all – see you in the a.m.!

Seanna