Planning plan blah, blah, blah....

Ah yes remember all that stuff I said about planning? Well this week was a perfect illustration of what happens when life gets in the way. One good reason to make a training plan is the simple fact that life will do everything it can to throw your plan out of whack. Knowing what days you have open will allow you to reschedule your training when your plan is overcome by events, as mine was this week. Family members visiting and a deadline at work made short work of my training "plan" for the week. I was forced to skip a few days and try to make up some workouts on the weekend.

This brings up a good question, "What should I do when I can't make a workout I have planned?" My first advice, don't panic. One or two workouts will neither make nor break your training plan. If you can make it up on a rest day then go ahead, but if it's going to cause you more stress than skipping it just skip it. The only suggestion I would make in this regard is, if you must miss a workout, try to miss one in your strongest sport. In my case, since I'm a strong cyclist, if I need to miss one workout I am more likely to sacrifice a bike session than a run or a swim. I always try to make sure I get my weaknesses covered since it helps my confidence on race day. I race better knowing my weakness was sufficiently covered in training.

One other thing I should have noted last post. Know what your going to do for any given workout is just as important as knowing when the workout is. Alot of people just "wander" through a workout instead of focusing on a specific training need. For instance, while I consider cycling my strong sport, I know I need to work on my aero positioning since most of my cycling background was racing on the road where you aren't in the areo position nearly as long. So I need to do work on getting comfortable in that position in preparation for the hour and fifteen minutes or so I need to be in that position. Your need may be power or endurance or just saddle time to get comfortable on your machine, but whatever it is you should have that worked out ahead of time.

Next week I'm going to start chronicling my actual training regimen to give you some idea of what I'm going through and hopefully get some feedback from my readers. Until then, safe swimming, riding, and running....

Peace

Rob