Life with children, jobs and schedules that do not conform to a training schedule is probably the biggest challenge any amateur athletes faces. I am no different, and for me, there was a very hard lesson in that, dealing with a training plan while being flexible to an ever changing life schedule. There are times when sticking to the plan is a near impossibility, and worse, any deviation from ‘the plan’ just created more stress and friction, which made the problems cascade.<\/p>\n
Somewhere along the way, someone reminded me of the most important tidbit that I was letting slip; this is supposed to be fun too. It is hard, sometimes it hurts, but at the end of the day, I am doing it because I want to, not because I have to. Remembering that, I found a need to reengineer how I train and workout, and more specifically, how I build my training plans. Once I hit the end of the season last year, I started with a new philosophy, and I am finding that I am so much better mentally and physically.<\/p>\n
In the past, I set up rigid schedules.
\n* Monday was Swim\/Bike ( recovery pacing )
\n* Tuesday was Core\/Run ( tempo )
\n* Wednesday was Swim\/Lift\/Bike ( fast twitch )
\n* Thursday was Core\/Run ( fast twitch )
\n* Friday was Rest Day
\n* Saturday was Bike\/Run\/Cross ( endurance )
\n* Sunday was Swim\/Run\/Cross ( endurance )<\/p>\n
Missed workouts made me stressed about not hitting goals, and honestly, going into the later portions of the season, I was in grind mode. It wasn’t much fun.<\/p>\n
This season, I decided to change it, and build in some fun along with some adaptability. Instead of such a rigid schedule, I set up my workout plan and adjust as life dictates. A missed workout isn’t a crisis, and I am switching to a regimen that emphasizes volume in Z2-Z3 over more traditional Z4 high intensity workouts. The intent is that I should spend 85% of my training time in low Z3 or lower, but I will probably accumulate more miles and hours than I did in the past.<\/p>\n
What does this look like in practice though?<\/p>\n
Let’s look at last week for example. Last week was a baseline week, so it was about measurements.<\/p>\n
There are not rigid days for getting these done, so last week, 1,2 & 3 all got done on Monday. Tuesday was just 4. Wednesday got 5,6 & 7 done. Thursday saw 8 & 9. Friday, got 11 done, and Saturday saw 10 get done, and due to some schedule conflicts, a 60 minute bike was subbed in for 12. Sunday? it was a treated as a Rest Day with cleaning house as the Life-Style exercise. Trust me, that’s a workout, we have kids in the house.<\/p>\n
The key is to look at the body of work, and be fine with missing a workout here or there, and being willing to adapt. Missing a swim isn’t going to break a race, but getting bent out of shape because it got missed, or because Saturday is overbooked and getting angry (or missing out on important life events) because of a workout might ruin a race. In addition, each week I flag 5 workouts as key workouts that are the ‘important’ ones, and if something has to be cut, these are the last to go.<\/p>\n
In full disclosure, my weight is up about 10 lbs from my race weight of 185 lbs. I do not consider this a crisis, as it will come off over the coming months. My LTR is right where it was at the end of last season. I was hoping it would have come down a little, and since I did the test indoors on a treadmill, it may well have. I do not cool as well indoors. The bike FTP number is actually a little higher than I expected. For the test this session, I used the numbers from the TACX Bushido trainer instead of off the crank based 4iiii Precision power meter. The Bushido has been consistently about 8% lower than the Precision, and it was again for this test, but the output number is 1 watt greater than my end of season FTP test using the Precision..<\/p>\n
So what does this first build week look like?<\/p>\n
When the week forces adjustments, they’ll be made, and I know going into each week exactly what can be adjusted. I also know that if Friday’s schedule sets up to make those workouts exceptionally difficult to fit in, then I can adjust my ‘rest’ to Friday, or pick it up somewhere in the middle if needed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Life with children, jobs and schedules that do not conform to a training schedule is probably the biggest challenge any amateur athletes faces. I am no different, and for me, there was a very hard lesson in that, dealing with a training plan while being flexible to an ever changing life schedule. There are times […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[45,21],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/weareogre.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/weareogre.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/weareogre.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/weareogre.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/weareogre.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=613"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/weareogre.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":615,"href":"http:\/\/weareogre.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613\/revisions\/615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/weareogre.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/weareogre.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/weareogre.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}