Oops

I'm the ugly one on the left, with friends Kristen and Scott at our Sunday run at Elk Meadows near Bergen/Evergreen.

You get faster and stronger from recovery, not from exercise.
If you don't exercise, you can't recover.
If you don't rest, you won't recover.
You don't have to fully recover unless injured, or leading to a race that you want to perform well in, or your body feels "wrong". Your body will normally recover even as you stress it. Overstressing to the point of injury is crazy.
People who are in shape have to push themselves beyond a certain threshold in order to improve. Exercising under that threshold allows you to slowly recover.
Exhausting yourself for weeks at a time sends signals to your body that it needs to recover quicker. After a few weeks of intense and careful exhaustion, you have to slack off for a week.
To do this carefully, you have to really pay attention because you're right below the over-training threshold that can lead to injury. So if you're only two weeks through a three-week exhaustion, and your body says something isn't right, you have to take your slacker week early.

I thought about running/walking the 24 hours of Frisco this weekend, since I've felt like Superman, lately. But I asked some friends with experience and they shot back that I was thinking loco. "Rest!" Indeed I was loco...

Yesterday, I started feeling really tired. I went on a measly 5-mile run and felt bad for four miles. It's time for some slack time. I have this weekend off. I want to hang out at the 24 Hours of Frisco and cheer on my friends. My schedule is aggressive enough. If I don't stick to the plan, I might get injured.

Thank god for friends.