Goals focused on – the process.

There is always a lot of discussion this time of year about the coming year. The health focused people talk about resolutions, athletes generally like to talk about race and training schedules. I have seen quite a bit of talk around the blog world focused on this with triathletes and runners.

Take a little journey over to Zappoman’s blog and read some of his posts. He has talked a lot about how he is approaching his season, plus he has discussed a couple posts that we’ve made here at Mideast Multisport. Another blog post that I saw just now on this topic was posted at Bette L. Hall’s Running Journal.

One thing that I have noticed in most of the posts is that they relate to “x hours of running,” “periodization” or “x race”. Our posts here at Mideast Multisport have definitely had that kind of approach so far, but I want to share another thought that might be helpful:

Become dedicated to “the process” as much as you are dedicated to “the outcome!”

What do I mean by this? I mean that it is good have some goals built into your season that are process oriented and not outcome focused. I have found over the last 9 years of training for endurance events that when I have an outcome based goal I had a difficult time achieving that goal. (A recent example would be my 2006 Derby Marathon.) On the other hand, I have seen my best performances come when I have had one or two process goals built into my program.

Another Example:

In 1999 I had two goals: 1. finish a marathon 2. qualify for the Boston marathon. Of course I didn’t qualify for Boston in 1999 – not even close. When I had a really big break through in my running is when I joined the Todd’s Road Stumblers in 2002 (when I moved to Lexington) and had a goal in the fall to “not miss a Saturday run”.

That goal lead to a really important factor in my improvement – I ran more miles consistently than I had in the previous 4 years.

Last summer I mentioned in my personal blog a process goal that I would try and accomplish in 2007. I felt that it would help me improve my Ironman abilities. That goal was to complete a 20/20, or 20 consecutive weeks of 20+ hours of training. Looking at that goal right now it doesn’t really look possible for 2007. The 20 hour mark is pretty close to my “limit” at the moment, so doing that 20 weeks in a row would be pretty challenging. But you get the point of setting a process goal (maybe I’ll try a 30/15?).

When many people set goals and develop their training plans they like to look at the end result of the season. That is an important aspect to planning your season, but you won’t achieve your goals just by writing them on paper or publishing them in your blog. You will achieve your dreams by all the hard work you put in during the year.

Make sure you have some “all the hard work” goals or as I’ve been calling them “process goals.” If you would like, share some process goal ideas in the comments and we’ll all see at the end of 2007 if we were able to meet those challenges. — I’ll start.

Gary Ditsch

Keep your brain connected to your body..

One thing I have been practicing this past year is learning how to listen to my body.  Truly knowing the signs and signals of your body can be an incredible asset to any athlete.

As a personal trainer I am one-on-one with clients, always hands on, observing and communicating.  Most of the time I can recognize visual cues of when a skill or set is too easy or too difficult for a client and sometimes it may come verbally from the participant.  There are many things I do as a trainer and coach; I instruct, motivate, educate, demand and correct to name a few, but one thing I am not capeable of doing is knowing exactly how an exercise feels to another person.  For example, I can do a swim set of 10 x 100 on 1:20 and have an athlete do 10 x 100 on 1:20 but that doesn’t mean we experience the same thing.  Same yardage, same stroke, same interval, but I can almost guarantee that it did not feel exactly the same for both of us even if we were the same caliber athlete.

What is my point?

Try to keep your brain connected to your body during a workout.  Know what it feels like when you are pushing on a tempo run, and how different it feels when you are doing a longer endurance run.  Each different workout should have a distinctive feel and it is important to be aware of these diversities during training.  Most likely your mind will be racing with questions and analyzing your performance during a race so if you know your limitations, weaknesses, and strengths during training it may help calm the anxious mind while racing.

Using a heart rate monitor can also be a great way to keep your mind connected to your workout.   Knowing your target heart rate ranges and using heart rate based training is great for optimizing your workouts, and I also think it is good to know how your body feels at certain heart rates.

I think one of the most important things I have learned from my body’s signals recently has been about injury.  After running the Columbus Marathon I spent a lot of time thinking about what went wrong.  One thing I kept coming back to was that I was too stubborn to listen to my body and give it what it needed.  Unfortunately I think this is a very common occurance among athletes.  How many times have you felt a twinge somewhere, ignored it, and a few weeks later been sidelined by injury?  Did you find yourself thinking, what if I had paid more attention to this earlier?  I know I have.  Assess yourself head to toe.  What do your muscles, and joints feel like?  If there is something that doesn’t feel right do something about it right away.  Prevention is the best medicine.  Hamstrings will not stretch out on their own.  Weak shoulders will not magically strengthen overnight.  Know when to back off, or rest more when you are exhausted.

Coaches can do many things, but one thing we cannot do is get inside your mind.  Open communication with your coach is also key.  He or she will tell you how you should feel during a certain workout but you are the only one who actually knows how it does feel.

A word of warning:  I do think it is entirely possible to be too analytical when trying to listen to the body.  There are definitely times to listen and times to relax and enjoy.  Part of what I love about endurance sport is the escape I get while training.  If I were constantly analyzing and questioning I don’t think I would enjoy it as much.  My advice?  Try to find a happy medium between the blissful unawareness and the obsessive mind body actualization.

Nikki Ditsch

How Do I Fit All Three Disciplines Into My Training Week?

Swim, Bike, Run, Weight Train, Sleep, Family, oh and Work…..

How do we fit it all into our training weeks?

I wanted to write about this topic today because I have recently been fighting with myself about how to fit the proper number of workouts into one training week. And after reading Gary’s blog from last week, I wanted to comment that having some type of plan in place will help you decide what your focus should be that week, and what type of workouts you should be completing.  For most people, now is the time when we are transitioning into our aerobic base phase, if not already.  Most people have taken some time off from their strict schedules and have enjoyed being human again.  Now is the time to focus on the upcoming season, deciding what races you will competing in, and what your primary goals will be for the season.  I think one thing that all triathletes struggle with is how to fit all of the workouts into one week, without overtraining or without feeling like you have not done enough.  For now, I wanted to focus on just the base training period and wanted discuss some ideas or suggestions when trying to decide if you swim, bike, run, weight train, etc.

Some people will use a seven or eight day training period, followed by one day of rest.  Others will follow a 10 day to 14 day training period, which will give you nine days of training or 13 days of training and one day of rest.  That is up to you to decide based on what your goals are, but no matter what you decide to do, you will still have to focus on designing a program that will help you achieve the goals of the base period.   What most people already know is that in order to get better at something, you have to do more of that something. So if you are a weak swimmer, in order to get better, you have to go to the pool and put in the time.  For most of us, we do not enjoy training for the discipline that we are weak in, so it makes it even more difficult to train for it. 

During your base training period, you need to focus on your weak discipline and put some extra time in. For example, if swimming is not your thing, and you have been going to the pool about twice a week, you may need to step it up to three to four times a week, and put some extra yards in during your training.  It does not all have to be hard (and should not all be hard). One day could be 30 minutes of straight swimming, and other days can be repeat 200’s or longer.  But this is also the time to work on your stroke and definitely put stroke drills into all of your workouts.  Most weak swimmers are weak because their form is not optimal.  Working on your stroke will lead to greater efficiency in the water.

If biking has been your weak point, you just need to get on the bike more often.  Remember, this is base training time, so your focus is not to go out and hammer every bike ride.  If you are currently riding 30-50 miles a week, try to slowly increase your mileage each week.  If you are only getting out 2 times a week, try to step it up to 3 or 4 times a week, even if that means one of those days is a commute to work or school.  Finally, if you have always struggled on the run, you may look back at your training and find that you just did not run as much as you should have because you were too tired after everything else that you had been doing.  Schedule your runs around your bike so that you do not find yourself (at least during this period) doing a longer bike next to or on the same day as your long run.  Your legs are going to be more tired after a bike than they are after a swim, so one suggestion would be to do some running on the days that you swim. 

Although there are many ways to set up a training week, I wanted to give you an example of a training week for a intermediate age group athlete with the weak discipline of running.

Monday: Swim (morning), Run (afternoon)

Tuesday: Bike (morning), Weight Training (afternoon)

Wednesday: Swim (morning), Run (longer Run of the week – afternoon)

Thursday: Bike (morning), Weight Training (afternoon)

Friday: Swim (morning), Run (afternoon)

Saturday: Bike (longer Bike of the week)

Sunday: Swim (morning – optional), Run (afternoon)

Monday: Rest and Recovery

Remember, this is just a suggestion on how to develop a week of training if you need to find time to get more running in and still feel like you kept up on your biking and running.  If you wanted to add one more day of running, you could add a recovery run in on Tuesday or Thursday, which would give you five days of running instead of four.

One final suggestion is to have a specific focus for each week of training. For example, one week you might focus on biking, and maybe the next would be swimming. This will allow you to still work on the other disciplines, but really spend some time on your form and skills for the one particular discipline.

I hope this has given you some insight into designing a training week.  I am sure that I will have more to say about this next week! 

Beth Atnip

The value of planning your triathlon season: all paths lead to somewhere!

Beth and Eric have been working hard this week on laying out a fellow triathlete’s 2007 season.  After getting the initial phases and periods laid out, Beth shared it with Jeff, Nikki and I.  This lead to Beth and I spending some additional time thinking through the plan, the races and the various physiological adaptations that should be addressed through the training.  That conversation lead Beth to a place where she put in the finishing touches and fine print.  Oh yeah, this all took place after this athlete went through an individual consultation with Beth and Eric.

The entire process took quite a bit of time, some serious thought and a lot of communication.  It also got me thinking about the value of creating a plan for your entire season and is it worth it?

Is there a draw back to using a plan?

The one draw back to creating a training plan for your season that I have heard is that it takes away the “fun” in training.  “Why,” I usually ask?  “Because then training becomes a chore or more like a job.  If I feel like running, I want to run.  If I feel like going for a ride, I’d like to go ride.  What if I want to go for a ride and the plan says that I should be swimming?”

 While that is a perfectly legitamite criticism to having a plan, I often wonder if these athletes get to race day feeling confident about their fitness and encouraged by their race strategy.  What if they don’t “feel” like racing on race day?

Planning can propel you to your goals.

Many triathletes have some sort of goal when they sign up for a race.  It may be finishing the race and feeling strong enough to still celebrate the accomplishment, it may be setting a personal best on a specific course, no matter what the goal, I suggest that the value in creating a plan for the season is that it will make reaching yours goals possible.  Training “as the wind blows” usually ends up in “as the wind blows” results.

 One other thing to consider is how your “career” in age-group athletics will develop.  I have been able to get back to this type of programming for my own planning at the beginning of the 2006 season.  Knowing I was going to have some stability in my life (relationships, jobs, financial, etc) I laid out another 3 year program to develop my Ironman racing abilities. 

 In 2006, I laid out a season that started by reaching towards a goal I had left over from the past (sub 3 hour marathon) and then focused on obtaining the fitness needed to cover the 140.6 distance.  2007 will be focused on increasing my overall endurance and spending more time dedicated to the bike.  2008 will be used to improve my abilities to actually “race” the 140.6 distance.

Is a training plan written in stone?

NO!  The training plan, whether it is for a 4 week period, a season or a 3 year period is a guideline.  It is generally better to stick to the plan as well as you can because it promotes consistency and specific overloads and progressions – but, we all know that sometimes life isn’t “neat” and “orderly”. 

That is where the value of a coach may come in or even a mentor that will help you out, but fluctuations happen all the time.  The plan gives you a “path” to get back to.

All paths lead to somewhere, while picking the random path can be fun at times, it often leaves you lost in the woods.  Grab a map, pick-up a compus and stick the gps unit in your backpack; use the tools you have to create a plan for your 2007 season.  It will allow you to have fun and will get you “out of the woods” too.

 Addional links to read:

1.  Focused Training Plan - article that looks at focused training cycles.

2.  Direction’s: Do a basic week – repeat… - personal blog that include my basic week and 2007 training schedules.

3.  The plan, reality, emotion and adaptability - a personal blog post that talks about creating a plan yet remaining adaptable to the situation, along with creating balance between the plan and everyday life.  Includes a YouTube interview with Chris McCormack.

 gary ditsch

Does “slow down” mean walk for me?

Notice:  Just to be clear, this post is targeted towards those that have an Ironman as their “A” race in 2007 and are in their off-season.  If your “A” race is an olympic distance race, cycling road race, etc., this may not (or may) apply.

Does “slow down” mean “walk” for me?

 I have been emotionally struggling with the idea lately that I need to start walking during my runs.  It is a strange thing when my ego gets in the way of training “optimally”, but it seems to happen a lot.  Admitting that I need to start walking doesn’t feel right, even though the data is telling me that it just might make me faster later in my race year.

 Where did this idea of walking come from?

At the ”Long Course Training Clinic” I attended in November, Bobby McGee spent some time discussing his ideas about implementing a run / walk practice in workout sessions and during a race. The thing that really caught my attention was when he said that he had an athlete go under 2:30 for a marathon, using a run/walk approach.

I am not a fast marathoner (nowhere close to elite) but even thinking about walking and still being able to go around 3 hours has never crossed my mind.  I have always assumed that I would have to run the enire distance to break 3 hours.  Add into that concept the idea of walking during a 45 minute run and it seems even more difficult to do, because I normally don’t fatigue a great deal during an easy run of 45 minutes.

What are the benefits of walk/run during a run?

1.  One of the biggest benefits that this type of program can have, especially during this time of year, is that it helps keep the run below the aerobic threshold (or at the bottom of Friel’s zone 2).  I will often find myself trying to run in December the same type of workouts that I ran in late spring or summer (my peak run time).  This can lead to running all my workouts at a “tempo” pace.  This is not an ideal situation when I’m trying to solidify my base fitness.

 2.  Another benefit to this type of workout is that it allows you to practice what you will be doing in your race.  I do not know of many athletes that compete in Ironman that never walk during the marathon leg  (actually I’m having trouble thinking of anyone).  One of the points that Bobby made during his session was that you need to practice this methodology in training in order to use it on race day.  I agree.  When you see athletes walking during a marathon, it rarily is the type of walking that McGee suggests.  It is better to walk earlier and walk quick, then to walk late and hardly crawl.

 Additional links and sources:

 1.  Here’s a link to a thread on slowtwich.com that an interview with McGee was posted:  Bobby McGee interview.  You will see throughout the thread various opinions about the efficacy of this type of training.  But sometimes it is reassuring to my ego to see athletes way better than me that don’t have a problem with walking, such as Barb Linquist.

2. In his write up of a “Bobby McGee session“, Gordo Byrn wrote:  “With his novice runners, they are not allowed to run until they are able to run at (or under AeT).”  Another humbling thought!  (Use the link and read the article for more ideas).

Walking in workouts:  My first week experience.

After a Tuesday morning run from John’s Run / Walk shop, I decided that implementing this was probably ideal for me right now – if not necessary.  I finished that run at the back of the group (common) but I found my workouts the next two days sub par because I had to work too hard on that run.

My first attempt, I used the 10min run / 1min walk method.  I found that my heart rate climbed to my heart rate “ceiling” pretty quick and a 1 minute walk allowed it to recover, but a few seconds after I started running again I was at or above that ceiling.  Therefore, I started using a 5min run / 30 second walk pattern.  It has helped out, probably due to the fact that I start my walks earlier without letting the heart rate climb too high too early.

I have noticed that as I get further into a run, the recovery during the walks is less and less.  For example, yesterday on a 50 minute treadmill run I would see my heart rate drop 20-25 beats in 30 seconds early in the run.  Later in the run, it was only dropping 5-8 beats.  The goal has been met though as I have been able to complete my runs, maintaining a heart rate below my aerobic threshold.

Just some ideas to consider on your next run.  I’ll let you know how my fitness tests come out as I move through the winter months and use this methodology.

garyd

Inspiration. & Triathlon.

I know most people that have been involved with triathlon know about Team Hoyt, but the message they send never gets old.  I started working on a post about run training during the off-season and base training, but someone pointed me to this video of the Hoyt’s on Youtube.  Sharing it today seems more appropriate, I’ll finish the other post next week.  -  later garyd

[edit:  seems that embedding the video isn't working well, here's the url if the video isn't showing up below for you:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUzq-tG12ig]