Rest Doesn't Mean Retirement

We admit it. Summers are crazy. You take a week to go on vacation, but that doesn't stop the work - it just means you have to get it done before you leave! (And you still return to new stacks of papers on your desk!) Plus, there's that whole "what happens on vacation, stays on vacation" philosophy of eating whatever you want and as much as you want. "Hey, I'm on vacation." (You know you've said it at some point!) Plus, there are 4th of July parties, backyard barbeque's, ice cream runs on extra hot days...you get the picture. Family comes to visit while things are "slowing down," and it seems like there's a wedding (or wedding shower) every weekend. And did we mention the heat? It just seems to make us extra tired, so that motivation we need to go out there and run is zapped by three digit temperatures. And heaven forbid you and your training partner don't go on vacation during the same week. You have to hit the gym by yourself for a whole week? We get it. It's not easy being a runner in the summer.

Gsbrielle is right. Rest is important. But did you notice that she didn't say it was okay to rest every day? :) Many runners allow themselves to be overwhelmed by their busy schedules and the heat, and they stop their regular training routine. Coming back after vacation is just too hard. That first day back in the gym after a week off feels like you've never worked out in your life.

Here's the bottom line: When exercise ends, de-training begins. But will you let that discourage you, or will you let it motivate you to be stronger?

It's true. Runner's World magazine reports:
* After just seven days of not training, blood volume drops sharply, which affects your body's ability to be able to function aerobically.
* With just three to six weeks of inactivity, your fitness can drop to PRE-TRAINING levels. All of your hard work was wasted.

Here are three great ideas to back off on your training during the summer without sacrificing any of your athletic ability. (And hey, if you can keep up your normal routine, DO IT! You rock.)

1) Maintain at least 50% of your mileage.
If you normally get in 30 miles for week, don't leave the gym on Saturday night until you've gotten at least 15 miles logged for the week. Try to run at least 3 days per week, skipping days inbetween - that's just 5 miles on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Much more manageable!

2) Mix in some speedwork.
Since you're running less, pick up the pace a notch. This will work your VO2 max and challenge your body in a different way. Adding speed burns more calories. If you work hard enough, you might actually work off just as many calories as you would doing a longer run.

3) Schedule yourself for two races early in the Fall.
Racing season is right around the corner. Go ahead and hit up www.active.com to schedule your first two races. Having something on the calendar to work towards will serve as constant motivation...plus, you'll get the early bird discount!

Usually, I try and give an equivalent parallel of running and your spiritual walk. That's not the case today. Backing off in your relationship with Christ is not an option. You have to stay consistent in your walk with Christ. Just as you are in your best shape physically on race day after strict training and exercise, you are in your best shape spiritually when you are spending consistent time each day in God's Word and prayer.

Gabrielle mentioned in her last post how empowered she felt after completing a hard week of training without compromise in any area. That's similar to the "spiritual high" we experience after a mission trip or incredible Christian conference. Minus the hours we spend sleeping, these trips are all about the Lord - serving Him, worshipping Him, learning about Him, telling others about Him, etc. We spend all of our time with him, resulting in a closeness with God that is unmatchable to any other relationship.

But what happens when we return home? We fall back into our normal routines. Instead of God's agenda being the top priority of our day, he takes second, third, maybe even ninth or tenth place.

I am not asking you to quit your job, sell your house, and preach on the streets downtown fifteen hours a day. (It's God's job to ask people to do that.) But do you have consistent time with Christ? Are you contintually spending time with Him so you don't lose your passion?

1 John 2:6 says, "Whoever says he lives in Christ must walk as Jesus did." It doesn't add the phrases unless you are on vacation, unless you are tired, or whenever you feel like it. You must walk as Jesus did PERIOD. At all times. No matter what storms in life pops up, no matter how high the hill is to climb, no matter if you feel like you are the only one still walking.

Over the next few posts, Gab and I are going to share some of the ways that we find God...while running. :)

A time to run… and a time to rest.

I had a perfect training week. I not only met my training goals each day, I added in new cross training exercises. I feel so empowered right now….I want to go out and run fifteen miles. Don’t know how well that would turn out, but I want to do try. Living up to my goals one day motivates me to beat them the next. Having a great week of training is an invitation to do better. And right now, my body is dying to head out for a strenuous run. But the training schedule is blank for today. Blank! As in Nothing-To-Do. No goal to meet. REST.
Sometimes I love that word, like the morning after an endurance event when I can hardly drag my aching body out of bed. But most of the time rest seems like a bad word for runners. Today, I absolutely ABHOR the idea of rest. I don’t want to rest, I want to run! I feel superhuman and want to prove it by pushing my body to go just a little bit farther. But I am not superhuman. Neither are you. We are, in fact, very human. Runners are more aware of their humanity than most people in life. We feel the aches, pains, broken bones, stress, and power of the human body. We experience the phenomenal strength that God created in our physical bodies, but we also feel our own frailty. I am human and my body needs rest.

After running 3:34 in the 2000 Chicago Marathon, Mike Crooks set his sights on qualifying for Boston. Crooks needed to take 19 minutes off his time. He ramped up his training by adding speedwork, hill repeats, long runs at a faster clip, and sometimes skipping rest days. Yet each year his marathon pace got slower. After running a disappointing 4:01 in Chicago, Crooks hired a personal trainer, hoping he would unlock the secret behind his sputtering performances. The diagnosis? Inadequate recovery.
– Runner’s World Magazine, 2003.

Recovery is a vital, but often overlooked- part of training for a runner.

Runners are a little bit psycho. They have to be; with all the getting up early and running mile after mile in 95degree heat or sub-zero weather. Utterly crazy. And totally fabulous. But, even though I get it, I even do it – I must admit that runners are a little out of their minds. It is a sport for the overly intense, disgustingly disciplined, self-driven, mileage freaks. The thing about a runner’s adrenaline-induced insanity is that it overrides feelings of pain, physical limits, and most rational thought. That insanity is what enables a 2:04:26 marathon time (by Haile Gebrselassie of Ethiopia, 2007). Personally, I am proud to be counted among the adrenaline-induced insane. But that doesn’t give me super-human strength.

To be honest, I view rest as weakness. If I need a full day of lazing around to recover from a half-marathon then I must not have trained well enough. If I am too sore to walk after an intense hill workout, then I need to do it again and again until it gets easy….or I at least get un-sore. Rest is for the lazy, the weak, those who aren’t driven, focused, or strong enough to push through the exhaustion.

But that is a lie.
We push beyond limits, but then we must let our body catch up.
It is in rest that we gain strength.

Adrenaline-induced insane runners strongly resemble over-worked, faithful-to-a-fault Christians. Church goers come in all varieties, but the ones who are involved are INVOLVED, if you know what I mean. Statistics show that 20% of church members provide 80% of church tithes. That same 20% staffs the church nursery, teaches the Sunday school classes, attends visitation, leads VBS, and makes up Sunday and Wednesday night services. The point: those who are committed to church are all-in, no-day-off-limits for service, willing to pray, teach, or feed the hungry at a moments notice. They are the runners of the church. They are wholly committed to serving their Lord.

Most runners run 6 days/week. Yeah, and most runners are overtrained and chronically injured.

Most committed Christians are at the church every time the doors are open, and yes – most Christians are exhausted from church.

God invented rest for a reason.
Genesis 2:1-3 “Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.”

Exodus 20: 9-11 “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.”

Hebrews 4:9-12 “So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has entered God's rest has also rested from his works as God did from his. Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience. For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”

Rest is injury prevention, both physically and spiritually.

-"It's when you're not running that the muscle rebuilds itself and becomes stronger," says Bryan Heiderscheit, Ph.D., P.T., who heads the University of Wisconsin Medical School's Runner's Clinic. Running tears down the muscle, while rest allows it to rebuild bigger. Going, doing, ministering, is vital to the Christian, but without rest in the Lord it doesn’t build a relationship, it just builds a busy schedule.

-"When we aren't running, we're doing everything we can to recover," says Bob Kennedy, a two-time Olympian. When you aren’t busy pouring out, allow Jesus to fill you up so that you do not run dry.

-“If you don't eat within 15 to 30 minutes after every run, you risk delaying your recovery for up to 24 hours, which leads to diminished performance,” says Leslie J. Bonci, R.D., of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. Never be to busy serving to feed on the Word of God.

-"Don't wait for aches or pains to take a recovery day," Heiderscheit says. "That's a sign of overtraining." Don’t wait until you are so busy you can’t remember the last time you heard God’s voice, stop now and rest in him.

-"If recovery is insufficient, you'll break down more than you build up." – Runner’s World, injury prevention. If you don’t obey God’s command to rest, you will have a greater witness as a nervous wreck than as a follower of Christ.

When you stress your body, you let it heal and come back stronger. I think of performance as a function of two components: (1) Training and (2) Recovery. Training stresses your body in order to stimulate the adaptations that will enable you to perform longer and faster; however, it's the recovery time (i.e. sleep and rest) that enables the adaptation to take place. If you take away the "healing" part (ie. rest), you just keep stressing your body and just get more and more tired. You may get fit, but you won't be healthy.

It is in rest that we gain strength.

One day in seven my only goal is to rest. Just be with Jesus. Without all of the trappings of Christianity, the responsibilities of church, and the pressures of living in a sin-filled world. Just get alone with Jesus and BE with Him.

Sunday’s are my rest day, both physically and spiritually. Sunday won’t work for everyone, particularly if you are in the ministry. All my church duties are mid-week, so Sunday is perfect for me and Jesus. I “rest” from church duties, I rest from my normal routine quiet time, I rest by soaking in the preaching of God’s word, meditating on it throughout the day, and just spending time with my Jesus. Whether it is a walk outside to praise God for the creativity of His creation or an hour of journaling about all He has done that week. I take a break from normal business and reflect on my Lord, my relationship with Him, and how He has worked in my life this past week. There are times I feel guilty for resting, but I have learned that it is in those quite times of rest that I build the strength to serve and give and go to all the nations.

It is in rest that we gain strength.