Since Thanksgiving, work has been brutal; late nights every night, weekend work every weekend and a 24 hour trip to New York thrown into the mix. With those work hours, sticking to a daily training schedule has been close to impossible. So I've had to draw on my own lessons from this blog and make up some new ones. Or rather write down some lessons that I have used but not previously articulated.
Do what you can do
The old lesson of "just don't do nothing" has been in my mind except I've had to adapt it to a weekly outlook instead of a daily outlook. I've committed to get up at 4:55 on Tuesdays and Thursdays to meet Josh for the SwimMAC masters swim class. Even that modest goal ran into obstacles when I had to pull some really late nights at the office and an all-nighter of 32 hours straight.. Some Tuesday night conference calls aside, I've been able to get to the track for some (but not all) of Fillnow Coaching's weekly run classes. Otherwise, no other training has gotten done on weekdays. On weekends, I've kept up my long runs and other weekend workouts until this past weekend, when my wife took my daughter to Atlanta to see a comedy show and I was working from home the whole weekend while watching my 9-year old son.
Simon gradually realizes that he's over-qualified to diagnose this problem.
I planned a trainer ride on Saturday but my new electric shifting wasn't working, requiring a house call from Simon at The Bike Depot in Waxhaw, who was super nice to come try diagnose the problem. After some head scratching, he concluded it must be a dead battery, which was weird since the system was practically brand new. So I recharged the derailleur batteries Saturday night and discovered that I had a dead or faulty coin cell battery in the right shifter. After fixing that low tech problem Sunday morning, I got in 45 minutes of riding Watopia on Zwift. One lucky discovery was that in setting up Zwift on AppleTV Saturday night, I never ended the ride because I never started the ride. So on Sunday afternoon, there I was, all alone in Watopia on a London day. So I had the whole island to myself.
Solo ride in an abandoned, post-apocalyptic Watopia.
So far so good for my weekend trainer ride but I couldn't go on a 1:45:00 long run until my wife got home and she didn't get back until 7:30 pm. I had to work from home quite a bit on Sunday and the last thing I felt like doing was going for a run in the dark between 7:40 and 9:25 pm.
So that brought up two unpleasant options: get up at 6 am Monday and run in the cold and dark before work, or skip my long run. This was a problem since I really didn't want to do a 6:30-8:15 am long run to start the busiest work week of the year and I also felt very nervous about the prospect of skipping what I regard as by far my most important workout of every week. Option 2 was really tempting. It is so nice to stay in bed and so unpleasant to get up in the cold and dark to go for an almost two hour run starting in the cold and dark. But I didn't skip it. I laid out my run clothes on Sunday night, packed my work clothes and went to bed at 9:30 pm so I would feel decent getting up at 6 am Monday. What convinced me to forego my comfort and get that run done?
Use goals to impose a cost to missing workouts
This is where my Winter Race Ladder really came in handy. The weekend after New Year's I have a 10k, then a month after that I have a 15k, then the month after that I have a half marathon. That's a lot of running races between now and March and Kelly is building up my distance gradually and incrementally to get me ready for each of these races, as well as a half ironman exactly six months from this Christmas Eve blog post.
I have had to accept that I cannot fulfill all of my scheduled workouts during December due to extreme work demands, but I have a bull's eye on the calendar for every week's long run. I got really nervous over the thought of letting two whole weeks go by between long runs. In the end, my unwillingness to do an early Monday morning long run lost out to my own plan to run a race a month from December through March. I knew that the winter race ladder would be motivating but I did not foresee that one day it would be the difference between staying in bed and getting it done. I felt the cost of missing that run would be too high.
Establish clear priorities from your goals
Having set my race goals for the winter, the priority became pretty clear. I'm an endurance athlete, and a really slow one at that. My most important workout of the week right now is my long run so that I can build the endurance necessary for the half marathon in March and then another half marathon at the end of a half ironman in June. Knowing that priority and its importance created a lot of clarity and focus.
Respect your limits and your priorities
The sun came up quickly and the early morning light made for a great run.
the flip side of honoring your priorities is to also respect your limits. With the hours I've been working this month, I did not feel it would be healthy or even possible to fit in all my workouts. So rather than pick at random, I committed to do my Tuesday /Thursday masters swim classes, Tuesday night run class, my Saturday workout and my Sunday long run. I wasn't even able to hit all of these every week. But when push came to shove, I drew a line in the sand at my long runs.
Talk the talk. Then walk the walk
I have found it to be really important to maintain positive thinking and to take concrete steps to ensure that I stay positive and fight against the constant tide of negative thoughts that confront us, especially when we are tired and busy. Maintaining this blog helps me a lot as it makes me think about my workouts and my bigger plan. Having a coach also helps to keep me accountable. And making an effort to be a positive and supportive force for my friends when they are struggling to get active keeps me exercising to keep me honest: it was a Monday night motivational email to a friend who was struggling with getting started with a fitness plan that got me out of bed at 4:45 Tuesday morning for my first masters swim class! After sending that long and encouraging email to my friend on Monday night, I couldn't face the hypocrisy of sleeping in on Tuesday morning!!
Update on incrementalism
As painful as it was to start out that long run last Monday morning, it ended up feeling really good and being a critical building block on the road to all of my running plans for 2018.
Kelly is sticking with the run /walk plan. This long run was structured as a 8 min run/2 min walk, 9 min run/1 min walk, 10 min run/1 min walk, repeat to 1:45:00. I got in 8.19 miles at about a 12 minute average pace during the run intervals. My next long run is another 1:45:00 run, all at 9 min run /1 min walk intervals, preferably on trails (i.e. with hills).
The week after that is the Joe Davis Memorial 10k in Fort Mill, South Carolina and after that the distances keep ramping up. So missing my weekly long run is the one line in the sand I won't cross!
Pick your priorities and follow your path.