Rest days are important too

So I completed run 2 of week 3 on Friday afternoon, and while I was able to complete the entire program again (yay!), my distance covered and average speed on RunKeeper were nowhere near as good as they were on Wednesday when I did run 1.

On Wednesday I covered 3.36km with an average pace of 08:47 minutes per kilometre.
On Friday I covered 2.92km with an average pace of 09:44 minutes per kilometre.

My average pace is brought down by the fact that I include my 5 minute warm up and cool down in my RunKeeper activity, but that is a constant so the increase of almost a minute per kilometre is either coming from my runs, or the walks I'm doing in between.

Friday was my third day in a row of excercise (Wednesday run, Thursday gym, Friday run) so I was feeling a little less energetic, and I had just been at a job interview that went for over an hour so I think that drained me a bit too.

I'm starting to think that rest days might be not just for 'elite' athletes, but important for us non-athletes too. So where does that leave me now? I still want to work out as many times a week as I am now, but I want each workout to be as valuable as possible, and not as disappointing as Friday's was. My schedule at the moment allows for 4 evenings of workouts per week, but unfortunately they are straight after each other (Tuesday to Friday usually).

What I think this means is a bit of a lifestyle change is needed. Mondays I usually catch up with one of my best friend's, M for dinner. We usually eat early, at around 6pm so I could potentially squeeze a run in at around 7:30 or 8:00pm during summer when it's still light, or a gym workout. OR, I could get up earlier in the morning (shock horror!) and do my workout before work.

I've never been one to excercise in the morning, except for on the weekends, so I'm not sure how this will affect my energy levels for the rest of the day. I guess there's only one way to find out.

This then means I'll be able to run Monday (the gym's usually really busy on Mondays, I think it's full of people who are feeling guilty for overindulging over the weekend), then gym Tuesday, rest Wednseday, run Thursday, gym Friday (when it's not so busy, everyone is off getting their weekend started), then rest over the weekend.

Stay tuned for a report on my first ever 'pre-work workout'. It's too late for this Monday, I might try a later evening run tonight instead, but hopefully by this time next week I'll have given it a go.