After my knee started hurting on Thursday, I elected to take two recovery days. I'm lucky because that coincided with my travel schedule. I could not have run yesterday due to the crazy flight schedules from the winter storm that hit the US Southeast.
As I went to sleep last night, I was determined to put in at least 10 minutes of aerobic exercise today to help me get back into the running groove.
However, my day started with my wife waking me up to drive the kids to a school function. While we were on the way, she informed me that we had lots of errands to run while we were out. When we got back, I had a driveway to shovel, wood to split, and a horse shed to muck out.
Four hours later, I finished my chores and decided that they qualified as my workout for the day. I grant you that it wasn't as hard an aerobic exercise as I planned, however, much of it had me breathing quite hard and it involved continuous activity for four hours (great practice for marathon length runs). It also provided a good strength workout for my core and upper body. A final advantage of this was that it didn't stress my knee (which hasn't given me any issues in about 24 hours) and it allows me to postpone running on my knee until Monday (I honestly think that I won't have any problems, but better safe than sorry).
I might still put in some time on our elliptical but I don't feel compelled to do it.
My advice is that you should count hard exercise from daily chores as part of your overall fitness strategy, especially when the duration of that work is as long or longer than you planned for your normal running workout. Strength training and cross training do help you prepare for running too.
As I went to sleep last night, I was determined to put in at least 10 minutes of aerobic exercise today to help me get back into the running groove.
However, my day started with my wife waking me up to drive the kids to a school function. While we were on the way, she informed me that we had lots of errands to run while we were out. When we got back, I had a driveway to shovel, wood to split, and a horse shed to muck out.
Four hours later, I finished my chores and decided that they qualified as my workout for the day. I grant you that it wasn't as hard an aerobic exercise as I planned, however, much of it had me breathing quite hard and it involved continuous activity for four hours (great practice for marathon length runs). It also provided a good strength workout for my core and upper body. A final advantage of this was that it didn't stress my knee (which hasn't given me any issues in about 24 hours) and it allows me to postpone running on my knee until Monday (I honestly think that I won't have any problems, but better safe than sorry).
I might still put in some time on our elliptical but I don't feel compelled to do it.
My advice is that you should count hard exercise from daily chores as part of your overall fitness strategy, especially when the duration of that work is as long or longer than you planned for your normal running workout. Strength training and cross training do help you prepare for running too.
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