Careful what you wish for

Training camp is done!
I would slide the last 6 days into the 'difficult' side of things. I had to carefully guage each day and make each workout just hard enough so that I could get through the week without blowing up. Well I didn't blow up, but today's long run was tough. So in the end I calculated well, got what I wished for and made it through the week.
Here's is the quick version of the last two days. Saturday, was a 3 hour spin session. I "rewarded" myself by spinning to a new dvd, Spinervals 13.0 Tough Love. Yikes, this was a leg frier. Lots of standing and hill work, this chewed up my quads rather nicely. (mental note - I want to do that dvd at least 6 times). Afterwards, I did a short 4.5k run and I just knew that Sunday's long run was going to be epic.
Fast forward to today. Damn, what a gorgeous day, perfect for a long run. I wonder how well the legs will hold up, they took a beating this week. Oh well, it's my last work out of training camp - let's get er done. My pace was slow, but I wasn't worried about that, today was about just slogging through some tough miles. I'll tell you a secret. I actually walked the tougher hills. I had scheduled 30k and wussed out at just over 27k. I was starting to hit that "grey area" of doing too much. So instead of tacking on the last little mini 3k loop back to the house, I just headed straight for home. Yay, now it's recovery time!

Side note about recovery. I was reading this brief science article about laughter. Basically, just thinking about laughing is good for you. We've all heard of the therapeutic value of laughter. What struck me in this article is that the participants had higher level of HGH (human growth hormone) when just thinking about laughing. So how does this relate to recovery? Well, HGH is a huge factor for athletes and greatly aids in recovery and is primarily released during sleep. Faster recovery = better quality workouts. So, by putting two and two togethor, I figure laughing may make me a better athlete. I'm sure someone, somewhere will find that funny.