A Day Off. Sort Of.
With Cape Town having been enjoying an extended Indian Summer, Sunday dawned bright and beautiful. Mornings and evenings are still chilly though, by coastal SA standards at least.
For many of my fellow endurance athletes, Sundays often represent yet another opportunity to accumulate more time in the saddle or on the trails. I've always tended to lean towards a lazier approach to the seventh day, more often than not leaving my daily exercise to the late afternoon.
For me, Saturdays present no problem in getting up way before "sparrow's fart" to go and ride with friends. Yet getting up early to do the same thing on a Sunday is just unthinkable, in my eyes at least, hence the terminology of the "quasi rest day."
Quasi rest day?
Let us take a look at the definition of the word "quasi."
- According to the Merriam-Webster online dictionary, the word quasi relates to something that "has some resemblance usually by possession of certain a attribute."
- Wiktionary aptly describes the term as "similar to, but not exactly the same as; virtual(ly)."
Rest days are an often misunderstood and disputed phenomenon amongst athletes of all levels, with Mondays traditionally being reserved as a day of rest by many. The lifestyle that I kept during my twenties definitely required a day of total rest; in my case a Sunday was a perfect day to sleep late, eat, sleep again in the afternoon and generally blob around the place. But you can't do that sort of thing forever and as I got older, weekend days became more precious than weekend nights (and the recovery thereof!).
The term "quasi rest day" first appeared in an article I read years back somewhere. What this means is that after performing a training session in the morning of any particular day, the next session is scheduled for the afternoon or evening of the following day. This allows over 24 hours to pass in-between consecutive training jaunts without taking a full calendar day off.
For example, I rode a fair distance this past Saturday on a route that included some fairly challenging climbs, as well as a riding partner who only knows "race pace". We finished our ride around 9am after a brisk 5:30am start. My Sunday morning was reserved for a "lie-in", laundry, cooking lunch for Monday and Tuesday and eating/relaxing/enjoying the sunshine. Only at 3:30pm did I venture out for my daily run, which ended up being a hard fartlek session, totally unplanned and just because I felt like it. Although these two workouts were on consecutive days, there was an approximate 30 hour gap from the time we finished riding to the time I started running. Voila! A quasi rest day! Needless to say that I felt relaxed and energised on the Sunday run, far more so I suspect, than if I had tried to do the same workout earlier in the day.
Below is a photo essay of sorts documenting parts of my recent quasi rest day; got to love sunny Sundays!
Late morning called for preparing lunch for Monday and Tuesday. I generally place these meals in ice cream containers, put them in the fridge overnight and carry them to work. Once there, they go in the office kitchen fridge for safe-keeping until midday hunger strikes.
Lots of grated carrot forms part of these lunches. With the onset of winter, this helps me see better in the dark.
Multi-tasking, guy-style: the laundry dries outside whilst I cook inside.
The end result: Lunch for Monday and Tuesday packed into ice cream/tupperware containers. Ingredients include carrots, tomatoes, lettuce, butternut, lentils, potatoes, onions and boiled eggs.
Around mid-afternoon and it was time to get ready for a run in the sun whilst the riders in the Giro d'Italia slogged away in the rain. Watching the live coverage, the breakaway had already formed consisting of a cheeky Italian, a persistent Colombian and an iron fisted Russian - who would win? After a cat-and-mouse contest in the rain, Maxim Belkov called the bluff of his companions and launched a solo attack on the descent in the rain and cold to solo to a superb victory. What was even more amazing is that he did it all in shorts and a standard cycling jersey - no arm warmers, jackets or anything! Yster!
After bumming a lift to Cecilia Forest, I started walking up the steep hill into the plantation. This is actually a form of warmup before I start running. I start and finish all my running with around 5 minutes of walking; this enables a perfect warmup and cooldown as well as a natural form of stretching. This particular walk also enables me to avoid starting my run up a steep hill. Around 5 minutes of walking into this forest results in my being able to start running on a more level and forgiving terrain.
The sun was shining brightly through the trees. Middle of May and I'm able to run without a T-shirt - got get a tan for winter. Interestingly, Cecilia Forest is amongst the many areas of the Cape Peninsula where the harvesting of pine trees has resulted in an almost barren landscape. The exact reasons for this pine-culling have been given as the need for re-generation of indigenous fynbos throughout the greater Table Mountain National Park. Understandable but not at all popular, this policy has resulted in the gradual disappearance of the many beautiful pine forests that were prevalent throughout the greater Cape Peninsula.
My first walk break co-incided with this sharp uphill; most of my running these days includes the run/walk method endorsed and practiced by the legendary Bobby McGee. I speed-walked for about thirty seconds here, gathering myself for the sudden increase in pace just over the brow of this short climb, which I would try to maintain until my next walk-break about 10-15 minutes later.
The rest of the run was blur of hard effort mixed with beautiful sunshine following a true cross-country route through greenbelts, servitudes and back paths, ending up at the signpost that signifies the end point of most of my daily runs.
From the signpost, I crossed the busy Ladies Mile Road and walked home, which took about five minutes.
In this photo, I'm walking on tar, which signified my return to suburbia after starting way up in the forest. Whilst the actual running time was about 45-50 minutes, the total elapsed time would be closer to an hour, what with the bookending start and finish walks. A productive and thoroughly enjoyable hour indeed.