threefer,

I am well familiar with the phenomenon you report. My own rehab and then continuing recovery have meant putting myself into that situation over and over and over, in so many different ways I can't even list them. What I have learned (and what any mature athlete will tell you) is that once your muscles speak to you in this way ("I'm here, that was too much, I had fun!"), you MUST respond to them or, in a few years, you will seize up completely and become chairbound. Not kidding.

How to respond, in cae you do not know already, is:

Do some very gentle, very slow stretches TODAY of what hurts. Move around a bit instead of huddling brokenly in a resting mode. "Active recovery," as athletes call it, will allow you to build the strength that pain is asking you to meet with WORK. Yup, you gotta git back to working it. Stretch today, tomorrow, then start gingerly planning how to get back to your workouts. And not as fast a progression as you used to enjoy, younger. Start ridiculously slowly. Small increments of time, reps, load. TINY. But track them and remember not to add recovery from injury to the need to recondition.

It doesn't matter how often you STOP working out. What matters is, do you re-start?

~Susan, re-starting at the usual time of year