A few weeks ago at the gym I spoke with a trainer about how I felt like I was maybe flirting with overtraining and feared the fatigue and other nasty things that come along with it. He suggested that if I felt like I was seriously getting to that point I needed to take some time off – maybe as much as a week. I was fine, though, really – I mean, I wasn’t missing any workouts and was able to get my miles in, though my runs were steadily getting worse. I noticed my power hour workouts at Title Boxing Club were draining me, leaving me exhausted and struggling whereas they used to energize me. I’m probably just not fueling properly, right? I mean, I had been eating some junk lately so I’m sure that was it – I didn’t need to take any time off!

Last Monday’s power hour basically left me feeling broken. It wasn’t a particularly difficult workout but my body felt like it just couldn’t take any more. Tuesday morning’s run was supposed to be 3 miles and I was only able to (barely) eek 2 miles out and I felt the same afterward. Being just less than three weeks away from my 10k, it was not a great time for my body to say “Hey, man – I need a break” but it did just that and so, despite my hard head telling me not to, I did it.

I didn’t box and I didn’t run for five consecutive days and I spent the entirety of them wishing I could get a workout in. We’d drive down the road and I’d watch runners pounding the pavement and I’d be in my car writhing with jealousy. I had laid my clothes out for Wednesday’s boxing class that I didn’t go to and I spent the rest of the week looking at them and gritting my teeth trying to not put them on and get a quick session in. In a nutshell: I hated not exercising.

In the meantime Erin and I went to the mountains for a few days – a baby of a town called Bryson City in North Carolina, a town boasting a population of 1,411, is home to Nantahala Brewing Company, the Great Smokey Mountain Railroad, and is the birthplace of University of Tennessee quarterback extraordinaire-turned NFL “Least Valuable Quarterback of 1997” award winner, Heath Shuler. Yeah, there’s not a lot going on in Bryson City but that was the whole point – to get away to the peace and quiet – somewhere away from the responsibilities of home where Erin could read and paint and I could read, write, and cook until I couldn’t stand it anymore.

And we did just that. I intended to take a lot of photos but all I really came back with were these two snaps of my boy the #Beest and our dinner for Friday night: Grilled jerk chicken with fried plantains and garlic toast. Dig ’em:

I was also able to pound out a rough draft of my first story for the Pulp magazine project Strange Lands I’m getting to be a part of. I won’t give up the plot but the working title right now is Just Ride though that’s certain to change as I make edits to the draft. I’ll be honest, it’s been difficult getting my writer’s mind back and once I finished I felt a lot like the dog in that meme, oh which one is it….?

Yeah – that’s it.

Anyway, five days of mostly rest later and it was back in action this morning with another Title Boxing Club Power Hour and I didn’t have to cross my fingers too hard because I pumped out an intense workout and felt awesome afterward! The magic 5 day rest really apparently did the trick to allow my body to recover completely. We’ll certainly see if that really is the case tomorrow when I get out for a runrise morning short run. 12 days ’til 10K!

With that, it pains me to say that there’s really no way I’m reaching my runnerversary goal of 340 miles. I have three runs this week and I don’t intend for either of them to exceed 3 or 4 miles in length. The important thing is that I reached my first year goal of 300 miles and every mile past that has just been thick, nasty, country sausage gravy. NOM.

Time Period	Total Distance
Couch-to-5k (8/14-10/14)	64.59 Miles
Runtastic Runs (10/14-4/15)	115.04 Miles
5k-to-10k (4/15-6/21)	87.52 Miles
Runtastic Runs (6/23-present)	53.04 Miles
Total Miles Ran To-Date: 320.19 Miles
Miles Left Until Stretch Goal, 340 Miles: 19.81
Number of Miles Per Run to Reach Yearly Goal*: 6.6 Miles
This is assuming I run three days per week every week until the week of 8/14/2015
2015 Miles	196.97 Miles
Miles Left Until 2015 Goal (350 Miles): 155.03
Race Times
Race	Time
Knoxville Hot to Trot 5k 2014	35:08
Calhoun’s New Year’s Day 5k 2015	No official time
Zen Evo Chocolate Lover’s Valentine’s 5K 2015	33:10
Barley’s St. Patrick’s Day 5k 2015	34:34
Covenant Health 5k 2015	33:39
Pilot Fireball Moonlite Classic 5k	33:05

I guess Sunday concludes the year in running. I’ll be changing the table up a bit to be a bit more relevant then. It’s definitely not going away.