A Week Of Rest

Saturday marked the beginning of my "vacation" from roller derby.  It's not actually a vacation but it is a week for me to take a bit of a break.  The last time I skated less than 10 hours during the week was January which was way too long ago.
Back when I was marathoning, every fourth week was a rest week.  We dropped down the mileage and took an extra day off.  The theory behind it is that you would spend three weeks building and then one week recuperating so that when you came back you could start at a slightly higher intensity than you started the last round.  The word for this is periodization.
Traditionally I'm very bad at taking the rest week.  I plan on doing far more during the build up than I actually get around to doing and then I only take as much rest as I had planned.  The end result is that my 'rest' week isn't much less than the other weeks.  It leads to overuse injuries and burnout.  I rock at both of those.  The trainer at Everett PT recommends that you do about 60% of your usual workout during the rest week.  This week that puts me at roughly 7.5 hours of skating and less than an hour of cross training for the week.  I've been keeping a log of how much I actually do so that when I calculate for the rest week I'm basing it off of real numbers, not my overambitious planned workouts.
It is nice to get in some extra sleep...
<posted on 3.19.12)