Thinking about recovery and a plan...

Since I've been doing a lot of reading on training plans, the recovery phase is constantly preached and preached and preached. Today, I planned on going for a run and was looking forward to doing so, but I held myself back.

My body is not injured, but still feels real sore from the aggressive weight workouts I did in Florida. My calf muscles are still tender to the touch, especially my left one. It's not a bad sore, but a good muscle rebuilding sore. It is taking more time than I would like for them to rebuild better, faster, stronger. But if I overdo it, could I end up gaining no benefit or injuring myself?

I'm noticing that my 40's body does not recover as fast as it did in my 20's, which really shouldn't be a major revelation, but it is to me and my psyche. As an example, I had my tonsils out November 21 and just last week was the first time I didn't feel an irritation in my throat. That's just around 7 weeks to total recovery!

All this is forcing me to really look at the variables I can control, such as my training plan and diet. I've been recording my food intake for the past 10 days and the program I use breaks down the calories into fats, carbohydrates and proteins. I'm analyzing what I eat to make sure I have enough protein to repair muscles and enough carbohydrates to replace the fuel in my muscles. This is all new learning to me, even just figuring out the ratios is still a work in process.

I've really decided to focus on racing and performing well and not in just putting in volume without a plan. My goal is to have my 2008 training plan ready by next Monday. I'm finding it is much more complex than I originally thought. Best case is I'll do it myself, worst case is I'll sign up with "Mark Allen Online".

In essence, all I want to do is train, but I'm concerned that if I don't have a plan I may be putting in "garbage" miles. So until I get the plan in place I'm just going to do enough to keep up my current endurance.