TandemHearts

Every weekend I write out a very ambitious training plan for the week with workouts both before and after work.  The plan has at least  two days of running, two days of biking, one day of swimming, 3 days of yoga and two days with my personal trainer.  That’s 10 workouts Monday through Friday.  Weekends I use for a longer ride with Thom and a longer run.  My training week runs Sunday to Saturday.  Monday and Tuesday I generally follow the plan.    Life tends to kick in by Wednesday and  Wednesday through Friday generally turn into just one workout a day or sometimes none.

Why do I write such ambitious plans?

Well… there are three disciplines to triathlon and I’m really good at only one of them.  Because I am a mediocre, at best, runner, it takes priority.   Between runs I always schedule in a yoga session.  I think the thirty minutes of stretching I get between runs helps to keep me injury free.   I haven’t gotten an injury yet, so that must be true. Now  I hope I haven’t jinxed myself.

I love/hate my personal trainer sessions.  The best part of working with a trainer is that we never do the same thing.  She changes it up every time.   That’s also the worst part; it’s never easy.  About twenty minutes of every session is spent on Core work – abs and lower back.   The rest of the time varies, lower body, upper body, agility… She is always thinking of new ways to torment me.    I don’t know how much it actually helps with my racing, but I enjoy it and I love having muscles.

You would think cycling would be what I’m best at;  but it’s not.  Last year at Barb’s Race, I came in third overall, about 4 minutes behind second.  My swim, second transition and run were all faster than the second place finisher.  She beat me on the bike and in the first transition.  I can say that placing isn’t all that important; but it is fun and I’m a competitive person.  The thing about biking is it’s easy for me to go out and just ride.  I can do it for a long time (remember the double centuries)  and not work very hard at it.  But that is not how you get faster at biking.   Intervals are what make you faster.  I don’t like to do intervals.  I especially don’t like to do intervals  outside.  Outside, I want to just ride.   That’s where Coach Troy and his magic Spinervals DVDs come in.   I try to do two of those a week – typically one I like and one I don’t.  The DVDs I don’t like usually involve shorter sets at a super high intensity – kind of like sprinting.  I am not a sprinter.  I prefer the videos where the sets are longer.   The intensity may get just as high, but I have longer to get there.

Then there’s the swimming.  In college I was not a super fast swimmer and I’m still not a super fast swimmer.   Realistically,  I could take three to five minutes off my swim time from last year’s race if I set aside the time to really train for swimming.  But that’s just not a big enough gain in overall race time for the effort I would need to put in to achieve it.  If I can actually run the entire 13 miles this year, I could take off FORTY minutes or more from my overall race time.  It doesn’t help that the pool chemicals bother my sinuses for a few days after each swim either.

So every weekend I write out  the ambitious plan.  If I can’t follow it, swimming is the first thing to go, followed by biking.   Everything else, I try very hard to stick to.  Without the plan it would be too easy for me to just do the bits I like and that are easy.

How did I do this week?

Three runs, 2 outside and one on the treadmill, 2 yoga sessions, 1 hour with the trainer – she was sick the day of my second session,  and 4 bike rides, but three were outside.  The weather was just too nice this week to want to ride the bike in the trainer.  I had one day when I did nothing.

I wonder what next week will bring.