Lazy or Smart?

The latest issue of Canadian Running had a nice little article on local running legend Bill Roblee, who is the race director for one of my favourite local races – the Lunenburg 5k (known affectionately as the muffin run because the post-race spread features hundreds of homemade muffins... mmm). What the article was talking about was how, last November, Bill celebrated a 25-year running streak. Can you imagine that? 25 years of never missing a single day of running. It’s staggering – and his stats are practically cosmic in scale: 121,331km; 125 pairs of shoes; over 400 races; 102 marathons.

No matter what, Roblee gets ‘er done. It’s amazing.

Actually, reading the article made me feel a little guilty. I was reading it on Tuesday, right after I’d decided to dump my run. Here Bill was going out for a mile even when he had a fractured foot, and I couldn’t get my ass out the door because I was tired and unmotivated and because it was rainy and windy. One of Bill’s comments in the article cut like a knife: “I’ll run today because I might not be able to run tomorrow.” It reminded me of a little bio I saw on Alex Bilodeau during the Olympics, who said that when he’s feeling unmotivated and the weather sucks and he doesn’t want to train, he thinks of the challenges his brother faces daily and reminds himself what a privilege it is even to be able to train. And that gets his ass out the door.

It didn’t work for me.

But the whole thing raises a question: is taking a day off just lazy, or is it smart to let your body rest when it seems to ask for it?

I’ve heard somewhere that a lazy runner is a smart runner – to a point. Your hard workouts won’t transform your body if you don’t have enough rest – and you risk injury if you push beyond fatigue, listening to the numbers and streaks instead of your body. Maybe I’m just fooling myself, but I feel like I’m able to tell the difference between when I’m simply being lazy and when my body is trying to communicate its need for rest.

So once in awhile, I’ll just dump a scheduled run. Sometimes I’ll even take two days off in a week. I like to think it’s because I’m working so hard in my Wednesday and Saturday speed/vo2 max/threshold workouts and on my Sunday long run that my body needs the rest more than the junk miles. But it’s not like streak runners like Bill Roblee don’t work as hard – I bet most work as hard or harder – I guess it’s just that they’re compelled to formulate different priorities.

I think, though, there is no shame in being a bit lazy. In fact, I’ve found that a little lazy helps me to perform better in races, which is more of a priority for me. Even so, I can’t help but feel a little wimpy in the face of Bill’s incredible streak.

It’s inspiring – but not inspiring enough to get me out the door every day.