baselines

Yesterday was my first race since Marine Corps in October. Before that it was a sprint triathlon in early September. It was soooo nice to be racing again!

For me this race was two fold though. 1st it was to see where I am at in a almost all out effort race at this point in the year and in recovery from knee surgery and 2nd, to get the racing engine going and have some fun. I have only been able to get a couple of time trial tests in since I started running again this spring, so I needed to know where I fall right now.

Creating a baseline when you start training is important. I should say, it is important if you want to make sure that the plan you are using is helping you improve. Here is a fairly easy way to create baseline tests that are repeatable from month to month to track your progress:

Swim - (depending how far along you are in swimming) a 500meter or yard swim, or a 1000 meter/yard time trial for time

Bike - 10 mile time trials are good on the bike. Its enough to really tax you but is short enough to be repeatable without breaking you down too much at a all out effort and needing prolonged recovery time

Run - 20 minute time trial, see how much distance you cover and what pace you held during the TT.

(good warm up and cool downs should accompany the tests)

Ideally these tests (especially the bike and run) should be done in a repeatable spot so that terrain is the same each test. The goal is to monitor improvement or lack of improvement. Is what you are doing month to month in training helping you become better? worse? the same? And then you can adjust accordingly.

If you dont want to go for time and mileage, another easy way to track your progress is to pick a particular ride, or run course that you use frequently that you can do a all out effort when you want to test and retest yourself.

Testing is a important, and often overlooked piece of the puzzle in figuring out how to get from point A to B. Say you are aiming for a particular time goal this year, example, currently at 8:30 pace on the run, and your goal is to be at 7:30's by the end of the season. A good way to make sure you get there is to do a time trial every few weeks to make sure that you are improving enough with your current training plan to hit that goal come end of season.

For those focusing on one sport or the other, while trying to maintain in the other 1 or 2 disciplines, TT's can also be valuable in making sure that while focusing on say, the run, you are not losing speed on the bike or swim.

too much too soon?

Spring... the season to get out and about again for us here in Michigan. The season to see motivation come back from the long grey days and some slacking through winter. Also, the season to.....overtrain?

It is so easy to get really motivated to get out and run/bike/swim fast everyday once your motivation has returned (or like me, you are coming back from a injury). But how much is too much when returning?

Be aware of where your fitness level currently is when you head out for those group training sessions, or you meet up with a training partner, or even heading out on your own for a workout. If you arent quite up to their level yet, or you want to head out with the front of the pack when maybe you should be keeping with the middle of the pack right now, make smart decisions.

Every training plan has, or at least should have, specific workouts designed to be worked in at specific times. The biggest mistake many newer athletes, (and even veterans) make is going too hard on the days they shouldnt, and then not being able to successfully complete key workouts later on in the week. Key workouts are where changes are made. If you have a chaotic week, and you get no other workouts in during a week, you need to know what your key workouts out, and make sure those are the workouts you get in.

So remember the next time you go out for a casual group run or ride and find yourself huffing and puffing way more than you were supposed to that day, that no one will care what pace you were running in April. But they will remember what place you took in that race you run with them once race season arrives. And if you end up injured, or were forced to miss some key workouts due to being too sore, you might not get to see what your true race potential is this season!

Ouch

It sure is tough getting back in shape after time off. I had 4+ months off of running completely, and its been rough getting back into it. The surgery made my right leg weaker since I lost mobility for longer than we were expecting and it took a couple weeks or so to even get the quad to respond. It was quite a weird feeling.

I pushed through a half marathon with my dad last weekend to start pushing the time and endurance, then this weekend I hit the trails for 2 hours of trail running. It makes me sad to see how slow Ive become at longer distances compared to where I was last year, but at the same time, Im very thankful to be back to running.

Not rushing this has been interesting. Not rushing... how slow do you go, how many miles do you put in then? How quickly or slowly do you ramp back up? Its all a guessing game really. Each person is different so you just pick a point, start, and alter from there. This sure has taught me patience and tolerance. And, being really thankful to be out doing what many can only dream about for one reason or another.

This looks like a good week to talk about ramping up too fast in the spring. After long Michigan winters, its so easy to fall into the trap of too much too soon, or too fast, in the spring when we all finally come out of hibernation!

the beginning

I have toyed with starting a blog for a year or so now. First it was to document my journey through my first Ironman. I started it last year, and within about two posts it felt more like ramblings and posting numbers and figures that I already had in my workout logs anyways, so I stopped.

So, my intention with this blog is to post useful (I suppose thats relative to the audience) information regarding training and coaching, and also document my year and lessons learned along the way. Those can be very useful and some of the best blogs I have found out there post a lot of trial and error things that can give you something to think about.

LESSON 1 :) The blog title. The title is actually a reminder to me of the first lesson I was lucky enough to learn early on in life. I actually had a little help learning this, with a group of people that went through some classes with me and we were forced to PRACTICE it everyday, not just talk about it. I had a HUGE problem of only doing whatever I felt like, whenever I felt like it, work wise, personal wise, relationship wise, athletic wise, etc. I found all these areas that I was choosing feeling over commitment, and it was embarassing. Feelings ebb and flow, feelings cause you to lose sight of your ultimate goal, feelings cause you to make rash decisions that maybe you wouldnt if you took a second, feelings can absolutely RUN your life if you let them.

I started applying it to life, with some success. Oddly enough it didnt really register well with me until running/adventure racing/triathlon entered my life. I'd say this was the first time that I decided to really put commitment over feeling into practice EVERYDAY. Either I chose commitment everyday and achieved my goal of losing weight and racing, or I chose not to. Surprisingly, it worked well. Soon I found it spilled over into my personal life to, work life, college life, etc. Make no mistake, feelings are strong, feelings WILL get in the way of life sometimes. But its being able to notice that, fix it, and move on that is important. So, theres a little background on the title, and look for a blog a little later in the week on training plans and when your doing the wrong workouts. Its almost race season!!! WOO HOO!