I take recovery seriously. After all, your body gets stronger during periods of recovery (like sleep), not during a strength-building activity itself. Following the Healdsburg Half Marathon on Sunday, Jesse and I spent the rest of our weekend drinking beer, eating candy, and marveling in how nice it felt to walk slowly through quaint downtown Santa Rosa. After a half marathon or full marathon, I have a Wednesday rule: I can’t walk without pain or a limp until the magic turning point, Wednesday. Monday and Tuesday are mandatory rest days (save my four-ish mile round-trip walking commute to work) after a hard and long effort.

This week, Wednesday’s workout was a 20-minute stationary bike ride followed by a vinyasa yoga class at Crunch. The yoga was great for gently stretching my sore leg muscles. This morning, I swam 1300 meters at my pool. As Jesse recommended to me, swimming is a great recovery exercise because it gets your blood flowing with no impact to the body. This week’s workouts have felt great – no pressure to run x amount of miles in x minutes and the ability to choose whichever activity I’d enjoy rather than feeling obliged to follow a training plan are good for both my body and soul.

My projected workouts for the rest of the week include spin, upper body strength training, and maybe a short trail run. (Jesse tends to be more eager to get back into running, while I revel in taking a break from the pavement pounding. He casually ran five miles in 38 minutes yesterday like it was no big deal).

To cap off this week of recovery, Jesse and I will be attending this year’s Bridge School Benefit concert in Mountain View. We recently learned that Arcade Fire have joined the line-up and can’t wait to see them and the reunion of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. You can bet we’ll take recovery very seriously while sitting on our Adirondack chairs on the  lawn at Shoreline Amphitheatre, eating treats and enjoying a heavy beer or two.