Over the holidays we had my 23 year old cousin staying with us while on a break from playing professional water polo in France.  Other than generally being awesome (and able to eat a calzone the size of a seal in less than 5 minutes) she passed on some great wisdom about training.

Through her collegiate career in America and now being professional she’s always taken breaks. Every year her coach would say, “try to find a pool to keep your fitness up” and every year she would enjoy the holidays and do the things she couldn’t while training 12 times a week.  Her reasoning? The first week back at training will suck, but you suck it up and get through it and you’ll be fine for the rest of the season.

AMEN. She trusts her body, accepts the hard work, and gets on with it.

I’ve been resting more than running in the last 3 months and the Rome Marathon is now 13 weeks away. A wet & muddy 10 mile run with a friend on the weekend might not have been the best idea to jump back into training with as my calf/ankle have been niggly ever since. So instead of Week 1 of the colourful plan, I’m not running and hitting some major reset with rest and calf pumps. I’ll try to start again next week with my cousin’s attitude.