Training Log

One of the benifits of having a anal-retentive training log is that when you have the worst coach in the world, ie, yourself, you can look back and try to see what you did good and what you did poorly to help with writing your own training calendar. Of course, a professional coach would be able to see in a second the "rights" and the "wrongs" of anything silly the M-Dot Bigun is up to, but with the economy and what-not, who can afford a coach these days?

I find myself, this morning, absolutely whacked out bushed - slept waaaay in, and had no desire to hit my scheduled 2-hr bike ride. So I got to thinking (yea, Tri-Sherpa Di had to ask what that burning smell was...) - what did I do last year differently? So I looked!

Lo and behold, I more often than not trained at a 2 week "on", 1 week "recover" cycle. I just automatically dove into a 3 on - 1 off cycle this time around, and it's no wonder, after 2 cycles, why I'm dragging ass! Now don't get me wrong, I can see the merits of 3-1, the main one being that over time, there's a whole lot more training and a bit less recovery. Which begs the question, is there enough recovery? Well for a guy like me - and perhaps the average MOP age grouper, there might need to be some middle ground.

So I think going forward I'll try and adjust the schedule to go 3-1 and then 2-1. I'm the kind of person that would really like to try for the harder schedule and only go to 2-1 if I need to, but it becomes really hard to schedule races and optimum recovery before races if you just play it by ear. Or, I could keep it the way I have it, and not feel bad if I miss a workout or two in that last week of the second 3-week block... oh the humanity!