Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Making other plans

I'm up to my hips in triathlon training plans. Aside from the iPod app, which I can't be bothered to even look up the name of let alone link to right now, I've got at least three magazines (plus two with bicycling training plans), two books with about a half dozen to a dozen each. Other people's plans are useful. They've actually got experience. But I found trying to follow someone else's training plan, especially as I'm essentially a fitness beginner, unsatisfactory. Sure, it gave me a certain structure and demanded a certain amount of discipline, but bristled at that after about six weeks. It didn't adapt well to my circumstances.

But it's a good body of research to draw from, in terms of specific techniques -- interval training, for example -- to develop my own plan. And that's what I plan to do now. Every Sunday, I'll develop a plan for the following week. It'll take into account how I feel, what I want to (and realistically think I can) accomplish, other demands on my time (damn work), etc.

What I want to do at this point, since there's no pressing deadline, is develop general strength and fitness, using sport-specific training where possible.

As I see it, there are five disciplines I need to work on: swimming, cycling and running, of course, but also upper and lower body strength. I should probably work some flexibility training in, too; at the moment, it's a matter of stretching after workouts and with the foam roller at home.

Another mistake I made, I now realize, was thinking I could squeeze most of my training into lunch hours. It just doesn't work. At best, you get 45 minutes, five times a week (though it probably turns out to be four), plus whatever you do at the weekend. So I'm building my weekly training plans around two sessions a day -- 45 minutes at lunch, and an open-ended one after work -- figuring it'll realistically turn out to be seven sessions a week.

Each discipline gets one session in the lunch slot, and one in the afternoon slot. (The exception is cycling, since spin classes start at 6:30 at my Y, and that just gets me home too late.) For example, this week's schedule:

Monday: Swim at lunch; upper body/core strength in the evening.
Tuesday: Spinning; run
Wednesday: Lower body/core; swim
Thursday: Run; upper body/core
Friday: Spin; Lower body/core

If I miss something during the week, I juggle and try to make it up. For example, I missed my run this afternoon, so Thursday, I'll swap it from the morning to the evening so I can have a longer session. Or I can try to fit it in one day on the weekend, but it's no big deal if I can't, as long as I don't habitually miss one discipline. Logging is very important, not just to track progress and what I've missed, but also to make sure I ease off every fourth week. And that's another area where weekly planning comes in handy. If, like at the end of this month, I'm away a couple days on business and can't get to a gym/pool/run, I can make that a recovery week.

Must say, there was something relaxing and motivating about sitting down Sunday evening with the puzzle of how to fit disciplines and sessions together. It made me look forward to the week. Eventually, I'll have to work on cycles where I focus on specific disciplines, but that depends on my progress. Swimming will probably be first. And possibly second. Definitely last before I launch into a training schedule based on event dates.

2 comments:

  1. "Tuesday: Spinning; run"

    Try to do these on separate days as your legs will be fried after spinning and running will feel like trudging.

    It's ok to do this brick when you're training for a race, but no need for the torture right now.
    Enjoy!
    Snickers

    ReplyDelete
  2. Snickers:

    As it turned out, I dumped the run that day (one of two workouts I missed, so one better than I thought.) And I revamped it for this week (that's the fun part -- rescheduling the workouts.) But the fact is, with six lower body workouts and four upper body workouts in five days, there is going to be some back-to-back lower body stuff.

    As it turned out, I backed up the spin session with a swim on the schedule this week (twice), and that seems to work.

    ReplyDelete