I took today off, due to a little soreness in my left shin.

After doing Bennie’s long walk this morning it felt like it was getting a little worse than it was earlier. Instead of being my usual Harold being Harold and just running through whatever is going on with my shin, for a change I did what I was supposed to do – not run.

No, it is not what I wanted to do, but it is what I need to do more often. When I have a small niggle, I need to rest in order to keep it a small inconvenience. I have too many experiences of where I have run through the small niggle and it has become a more significant injury and instead of loosing a few days of running, I loose a few weeks or more.

Sometimes I can learn, it just takes me longer than most.

However, this afternoon during our nap, I learned that when Bennie uses my leg for a pillow, he rests his head exactly where the discomfort is in my leg, that probably doesn’t help things too much either.

Knowing that, I decided to go ahead and play with the brush piles again this afternoon and didn’t have any issues with the left shin. Even though I was wading through mud and water up over my ankles while carrying/dragging 3-6 foot sections of dead tree trunks over to the brush pile.

It has taken me a long time to get that rest days when I have a niggle are not evil and are something that I need to do more often as I get older.