Rest days - my love/hate relationship

Seeing as the title of this blog is The Garmin Files, I think it is important to recognize those days when my Garmin watch is telling me to take a rest day.  I rarely, if ever, listen to my watch.  Although my Garmin might be telling me to enjoy a day away form the pool or bike, I manage to justify to myself why listening to my watch is a bad idea.  The guilt of taking a day off from training often outweighs the tiredness of getting another workout in.  And eventually if you ignore the notification from Garmin to take rest day, and do workout after workout, the notification goes away and Garmin starts populating suggested workouts again.

Today was one of those days.  Garmin was telling me to take a day of rest and my brain was telling me that Garmin did not know what it was talking about. A three or four hour bike ride would hurt no one, least of all me.  What did my Garmin know after all?  It is only a piece of tech that I wear 24/7 precisely for the purpose of judging my fitness level and giving me workout suggestions.  Well, surprisingly today I did listen to my Garmin and I did take the day off from a workout.  There were several reasons I opted to listen:

One, I was actually feeling tired.  Looking over my workout schedule, I had not had any time off from a workout since Tuesday.  I was feeling rundown.   The old saying of 'listen to your body' was running through my mind.  And in my case my body was saying 'rest'.  Two, the weather was looking kind of dicey.  The forecast was calling for rain and I did not want to get out 50km from home only to get caught up in some storm or rain shower.  Three, the metrics Garmin collected from my sleep, which was poo by the way, were telling that my recovery needs were high, my HRV status was unbalance and my training readiness was low.  And four, my motivation just was not there.  The energy to get my bike ready and get out of the house was lower than the energy to sit in the kitchen and enjoy a hot chocolate and blueberry scone.

So rest day today it was.  Maybe Garmin did know what it was talking about.  Go figure.

That said, the decision to take a day of rest did not sit well with me.  For pretty much the entire day I looked out the window, saw grey skies, thought about how winter is just around the bend and how the number of day remaining for me to get out on my bike before winter hits is rapidly dwindling.  For all those reasons, I could justify not taking a rest day but instead getting out for a ride.  Plus seeing a couple of friends out for a ride today when I was running errands did lots to make me question my decision for taking a rest day.

Fast forward to the completion of several house chores, the addressing of some nagging items that I had been putting off for I do not know how long, an afternoon beer, and my decision to take that rest day sits a little different.  Although I think given the choice between a rest day and a workout, for me the workout tends to win.  And speaking with friends about how many of them listen to their Garmin versus how many do not, I know I am not in the minority.  Will I take a rest day the next time Garmin tells me I need to take one?  I guess I will have to wait and see.