It's all about the recovery.

Years ago, probably 20 or 25, someone told me that you can gauge your fitness by how fast you recover from an activity. Now realize this was in the time before HRM and power taps and other such nonsense. The main way to judge if you were in the aerobic zone was to see if you could sing during the activity. I kid you not!! Luckily things have changed (read improved) over the years. But that statement always stuck with me, it's how fast you can recover, and it's the yardstick I still use to measure my concept of my fitness. One of my new watches even has a recover mode on it so you can time how fast you recover.

Yesterday when I went for my run I felt like I was breathing too hard but the running really felt good so I just kept going. Eventually the breathing eased up (which it always does) and I felt really awesome. I had to stop suddenly because of some little pocket dogs running in the road, and I was able to speak easily within a few seconds and once I started running again it took a minute or two to ramp up my HR. I thought at the time, see, I'm in good shape because I recover so quickly.

Today I was going to go for a bike ride but I woke up and it was windy and rainy and probably about 70 F; that's just too cold to ride ;) So I set up the trainer and popped in my Carmichael DVD. I did this DVD when I got the trainer last year and it totally kicked my ass, literally. So I figured I'd just do as much as I can today and that's all. Well, I did the entire hour and really felt great and within minutes I was totally recovered.

My point, and I really do have one, is that I was kind of worried about tomorrow's 8.25 miles because I didn't feel I had the training that I should have. After yesterday and today I feel confident I'll do fine. I'm sure I won't set any PR but I'm sure I can do it and have fun and that's really all that matters.

That's all I have to say. I have to get some rest, I have a race tomorrow :)