Breathing

Taking the extra rest day seems to have been a good move. I immediately felt better as soon as I "officially" decided to do it. I was still tired last night, but my stress level had dropped.

After putting my daughter to bed last night, I spent a little time working on my bikes, and then I went to bed (about 8:30pm). Even though I had to get up early for a 7am meeting today, I still woke up feeling refreshed. A few more days of this, and I'm sure I'll be ready to go at it again!

I touched on it a little bit yesterday, but I think a key thing for me this year is to make sure I'm doing high-quality training sessions. That means putting forth my very best effort at every session and making sure I'm mentally and physically prepared. That's one of the reasons I've liked doing the breathing sessions at night before I work out.

I've considered switching my weekday workouts to the morning instead of the evening. I notice a definite difference with my strength workouts if I do them on a weekend morning as opposed to a weekday evening. I've just accumulated more fatigue on the weekday and the quality of my training session is reduced.

I'm also considering doing some of my weekday riding at lunch time, mainly for time management purposes, but also since I'd be a little more fresh than I would be at night. It would be a long lunch break, but I don't think anyone would have a problem with it, especially since it would only be 1-2 days per week. We have showers at work, so that wouldn't be a problem. The other advantage is that we have some big hills around the office, and hills are always good!