Recovering from Racing and Jillian Michael's 30 Day Shred

Personally, I think the hardest thing about racing is proper recovery. It’s hard. We just went out there and pushed our body to the limit. We trained for months, put everything we had into less than an hour of work, kicked some serious ass, and want to keep the momentum going. We want to go sweat more. We want to race. We want to run….FAST.

Despite all these feelings, we’ve been told to do no such thing. While the exact number of days you should rest vary from article to article, and depend on factors such as running experience, length of the race, age, etc., it’s a common consensus that you need to take it easy for a while.

Here is a chart from Running Times (http://www.runningtimes.com/Article.aspx?ArticleID=24063) that breaks it down for you.
This means that I can’t do anything with high intensity for 9 days….

I’m sure this sounds crazy to non-runners, but NOT running is more difficult (mentally and physically) than forcing ourselves to go run.

To keep myself from jamming a pencil threw my eye and going stir crazy I’ve decided to continue to workout, just not intensely and nothing involving running. For this reason, I borrowed a copy of Jillian Michael's 30 Day Shred from a coworker.


                                       
 

I started on Level 2 for the sole reason I’m a cocky SOB and wanted to make sure I felt something. Let me tell you what. I did. The workout is pretty awesome, especially for only 20 minutes! Really now, who doesn’t have 20 minutes extra a day?? Jillian follows interval training to get you sweating . You do 3 minutes of strength training (weights, push-ups, etc.), followed by 2 minutes of cardio, followed by 1 minute of abs. You do 3 different circuits.

I am most definitely going to go and buy a copy of this workout DVD (and probably a few more of her DVDs as well). I plan to do one workout in the AM and one in the PM for the next week. This is perfect for a day you can’t get to the gym, or get outside to run, or are just crunched for time. Because, as we’ve all heard, ANYTHING IS BETTER THAN NOTHING.

While I won’t be doing the entire 30 day shred consecutively (because marathon training is starting on Monday!! YAY!!) I will be incorporating this into my fitness regime and using it as fillers for days I don’t have time to do weights after my long run at work.

Any workout videos you’d recommend? What are your favorites?