Now that it’s the off-season I’m really having a difficult time staying focused. My life has slowed down, I’m almost done with all my school requirements, and I really want to enjoy my free time. This has made getting out the door that much more difficult. I know, I know, how can to much free time make it harder to get out the door? Well simply put, instead of feeling like 8am is the only time I have to go run I talk my self out of it saying, “it’d be nice to sleep in and you can just go run after lunch.” Lunch time comes and the same thoughts pop into my head. Without knowing it I’m laying in bed going to sleep wondering where my day has gone.
I’m taking a break from my EC coach and my best friend has taken over writing my workouts for the off-season. I’m a firm believer in never writing your own workouts regardless of how much you know. If you write your own workouts you will always write the workouts you want to do instead of the workouts you need to do. It kind of runs along the same lines as self diagnosing, you will see what is most important to you and not necessarily what is most important. After talking with Trey and hashing out the details we decided to give it a 12 week trial. Trey being Trey he set the goal of getting me marathon ready by March. I like having goals and after this last week of training Trey really proved to me that I need to have a goal even to get through my day to day training.
My training started out great and then ended not so great. Since my number one goal is consistency Trey set up the first few weeks to work on this almost exclusively. In fact he wanted to work on this so much so that I had a couple 15 minute bike rides planned. Now I’m not one to complain about short workouts but even I felt like this was a short one. We talked about it and he had some valid points and if consistency is really what I want to work on I can’t be concerned with distance, right? It’s like I tell so many patients; work on one area at a time. If you try to completely change your life around you are going to become overwhelmed and have a much harder time reaching your goals. So with this all in mind I set out with the goal of just completing all my workouts. I ended up missing all of my 15 minute bike rides, go figure, and I didn’t do any of my workouts this weekend. As always I started to think about what I did wrong and about half way into the list I realized that maybe I’m approaching this all wrong. Maybe instead of looking at what I did wrong maybe I should look at what I do right when I do finish my workouts. On mornings when I can get out of the door I make a conscious effort the night before. I set out all my running gear, I pack my lunch, and I hide my alarm clock on the other side of the room. So I think from now on instead of looking at what I did wrong I’m going to focus on what I have done right and how I can use that to help me stay focused. It might not work every time, but I think it will really help me to understand how I can turn around my training.
I’m taking a break from my EC coach and my best friend has taken over writing my workouts for the off-season. I’m a firm believer in never writing your own workouts regardless of how much you know. If you write your own workouts you will always write the workouts you want to do instead of the workouts you need to do. It kind of runs along the same lines as self diagnosing, you will see what is most important to you and not necessarily what is most important. After talking with Trey and hashing out the details we decided to give it a 12 week trial. Trey being Trey he set the goal of getting me marathon ready by March. I like having goals and after this last week of training Trey really proved to me that I need to have a goal even to get through my day to day training.
My training started out great and then ended not so great. Since my number one goal is consistency Trey set up the first few weeks to work on this almost exclusively. In fact he wanted to work on this so much so that I had a couple 15 minute bike rides planned. Now I’m not one to complain about short workouts but even I felt like this was a short one. We talked about it and he had some valid points and if consistency is really what I want to work on I can’t be concerned with distance, right? It’s like I tell so many patients; work on one area at a time. If you try to completely change your life around you are going to become overwhelmed and have a much harder time reaching your goals. So with this all in mind I set out with the goal of just completing all my workouts. I ended up missing all of my 15 minute bike rides, go figure, and I didn’t do any of my workouts this weekend. As always I started to think about what I did wrong and about half way into the list I realized that maybe I’m approaching this all wrong. Maybe instead of looking at what I did wrong maybe I should look at what I do right when I do finish my workouts. On mornings when I can get out of the door I make a conscious effort the night before. I set out all my running gear, I pack my lunch, and I hide my alarm clock on the other side of the room. So I think from now on instead of looking at what I did wrong I’m going to focus on what I have done right and how I can use that to help me stay focused. It might not work every time, but I think it will really help me to understand how I can turn around my training.
