A Day of Rest

It's been two weeks since I've had an entire day off from training but I'm not ready to take a break. With so much work to be done, and little progress made in my push starts how can I feel content easing off? Taking days of rest is one of the hardest things to get myself to do, especially in the Olympic Training Center environment where training facilities are a short walk away and someone is always training! The lesssons of 'less is more' and 'rest makes you stronger' are hard to confide in when there is so much progress to be made. To many athletes, rest makes us feel lazy and unless we're constantly working out we feel that we're not working 'hard'. 'Working hard' is a core value for every athlete, and NO athlete wants to be perceived as not doing it. But working hard often leads to overtraining which is counterproductive to any athlete's performance. I hate to accept it and acknowledge this truth but my current approach is not yielding results. Many teammates remind me that there is plenty of ways to get better outside of physical training (e.g. sled work, studying track notes, researching equipment, etc.). There are plenty of resources within the Olympic Training Center (OTC) to utilize. One thing is for certain in this sport, there is ALWAYS work to be done; that will never change. So that is what I will set out to do on my day off; become a better athlete in ways that don't involve physical training.