Should I consider taking up smoking and quit running?

I love the way it sounds: rest day. It sounds like a National holiday. It gives off a sense of comfort and ease. Like you should be laying poolside or on the beach with nothing but a towel, and a book that you’re completely engrossed in. Legs up and resting. Maybe even an exotic smoothie packed with all kinds of antioxidants and immune-boosting ingredients like turmeric, ginger, elderberry and echinacea. Your body is being pampered, rejuvenated just by the sheer fact that it’s resting. No runs, no cross-training, no things that require great physical effort or lots of sweat and some form of too-tight fitting clothing made of wicking material although I’m never quite sure how the sweat gets “wicked,” and where it gets “wicked” off to. But that’s an entirely different subject.

Today was my rest-day and instead of it looking anything remotely like what I had fantasized about on mile 17 of my last long run when I thought my legs would detach from my body, it left me feeling restless, anxious, eating bags of pretzels, drinking way too much coffee and engaging with my inner-critic, who apparently has not been brought up to speed on the necessity of rest days. This voice was berating me for not starting a strength routine (as I’ve been pledging to do for the past 5 years.) Asking why I couldn’t be more like those other runners on Instagram that do dead lifts and glute exercises and chin-ups and Bulgarian split squats? “You’re planning on running a 100-miles with those chicken legs? Really?” It asked. “Are you trying to get injured?” I would talk back, but in the end, all I would hear is the constant refrain of “you’re so lazy.”

When the internal-volume got too intense I tried to shut it out by dropping to the floor and eking out 10 pushups (all with less than stellar form,) but no sooner had I finished when the demon voices started up again.

Ten pushups? Wow! Aren’t you something special. Why don’t you use your rest day to get ahead on your deadlines, do your meet entries, clean the house, go food-shopping, or just put on some yak-tracks and hit the trail for a light hike? Why are you so lame.”

I was getting worn down and I wasn’t even running. The voices were coming fast and furious. I started to believe them. Why did I even take a rest day if I was going to waste it? Why couldn’t I be more motivated? What was the point? (more snacking and refills of coffee here.)

There was a mantra in my head that I had picked up from one of my many books on ultrarunning about recovery being a key part of any type of endurance training. An essential part. One of the most performance enhancing things one can do outside of the training itself. And while I believed that from a swim coaches point of view, from a practitioner’s point of view, my wily inner-demons began to whisper, “but you’re not an ultrarunner. You’re not even a real runner. You barely get to 50 miles a week. What do you have to rest from? Rest days are for those mountain goats that log in 100-200 miles a week, hell, some of them in one day! You think you deserve to rest from running a 6-mile loop on a smooth carriage road. (Lots of internal snickering and sneering here.)

As I walked around attempting to do laundry or dishes or return emails, finish a story on a local land conservation effort, these voices reached a crescendo and all of a sudden they were telling me that not only was I lazy but overweight as well. The jury of inner-trolls had decided that I was at least 10 pounds too heavy. As I folded the laundry, I looked painfully at the mirror and saw what they saw. A spare tire around my middle that should be trimmed down if I was going to be one of those ultrarunners that somewhere around mile 62 hit a “flow state,” where they were light and airborne and experiencing some transcendental moment. I would never get that moment with the muffin top. I thought about doing crunches, or planks or something to help the situation which apparently had gotten so far out of hand that it took a “rest day” for me to realize just how much I’d let myself go.

“You know what?” I thought to myself. “Maybe you should take up smoking ? Maybe that’s more your style. Why not? You’ll get thinner, (along with emphysema,) but it probably makes more sense to start a habit that you can really commit to rather than chasing this dream of being an ultrarunner. Plus, you’ve never liked crowds and since smoking is so far from cool anymore, it would give you a lot of alone time to spend in dark alleyways where you could meet people more like yourself.

I think I actually screamed “stop it,” in my head but it came out like someone trying to communicate when they’re intoxicated and here I was on my rest day feeling sad, dejected, and downright worthless.

What’s crazy is that this is not how I talk to friends, or athletes I coach and it’s not at all what I truly believe or think about anyone. It’s not even how I talk to myself, most of the time. But when everything becomes quiet and the movement slows, those voices can launch a surprise attack.

“Can’t hit a moving target,” my mom would always say. But I move, and I move a lot and rest days are supposed to be fun days and good days and not get down on the floor and wrestle with your demon days, but here I was.

I can see why there are people that do these running “streaks,” or other kind of physical streaks because then they never have to crawl the walls and turn on themselves and second guess their entire value as a human being. Well, maybe they do, but I wanted to at least imagine someone out there, who can escape these mental assaults just by committing to never having a day off.

For better or for worse, I’ve learned the hard way that I can’t be one of those people because my body is just not built that way. It needs rest or else bad things start to happen. Overuse injuries flare up, back gets wonky, legs protest and tired ankles start to roll if they even sense a loose rock up ahead.

So, here’s my challenge for future rest days. I’m going to try and be kinder. Put that inner-critic on mute. Turn up my playlist beyond the recommended volume level so that my three different versions of Elton John’s “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me,” will drown out any other thoughts other than ones that include me feeling good, relaxed and in the middle of a major rest-day groove while my body, which has carried me 100’s of 1000s of miles along with creating and birthing 3 little humans, rests, relaxes and regenerates some cells that allow it to continue to carry my less-than-perfect soul around.

I will repeat mantras about recovery being the “secret weapon” to performance (or really any area of life.) Stare out the window. Look in the mirror and tell myself I’m beautiful, even when I don’t feel it. Proudly eat stale pretzels and pizza crusts and sugared cereals and maybe even an entire row of Girl Scout Cookies that I ordered way too many boxes of. Rest days are great days to indulge in Girl Scout cookies because those girl scouts are just trying to earn a badge and so am I. A rest badge. A silky sloth patch. We all deserve one. I got mine today.

–Erin Quinn