Planning

With just over 20 weeks to go until I attempt my half ironman, it’s time to get serious about planning.  As an organised librarian type person, I love planning things almost more than doing them.  I identified the training schedule that Iwanted to use a little while ago:  I wanted to find something that was very simple and didn’t involve too much on training zones etc.  It was also important for me that the long run and bike workouts were specified in distance rather than time; I know I am going to be slow around the course, but I want to get around, so it is important that I have trained over the distances.  However, looking at it now, I will be modifying it as follows.

The basic shape of the week will differ slightly for me.  I will continue to prioritise swimming, trying to fit in 5 swims a week, because I have swimming races coming up, and because that is part of my daily life.  Secondly, I will take my rest day on a Friday, because I am always shattered at the end of the busy work week.  I may schedule slightly easier work outs on a Monday to recover from weekend training.  Thirdly, running is the one where I’m most concerned about getting injured: as my priorities for the race are to complete it, to get a good swim time, and to get around the bike before the cut-off, I think that running training is the lowest priority for me.  So, I will just be doing 2 runs a week, a short one and a longer one, and replacing the third run with a pilates class.  I may also not run the full distances specified towards the end of the plan, as I’m really not sure I need to be running 14 miles twice before the event as I think that will take me too long to recover from, compromising further training.  Fourthly, in the early stages of the plan, I’m likely to do longer Sunday rides, I’ll ride with the club where I can, I’m already up to comfortable 40 milesish so I might as well stick with that!  I need all of the bike practice that I can.

So this is the plan:

Monday: Swim am, run pm.

Tuesday: Swim am, bike (ideally outside) pm

Wednesday: Swim am, pilates pm

Thursday: Swim am, turbo am [I work 12-7 on a Thursday]

Friday: off

Saturday: Long run, swim

Sunday: Long bike (with occasional transition run)

Over the next few weeks I’m going to start adding a few sessions into the schedule where I can so that I start to get used to this pattern.  At the moment it’s a bit tricky, because I am still attending counselling appointments, visiting the GP fairly regularly, and am still very wiped out by my depression, so I will just have to do what I can.  There will also be changes as I have events in the calendar like tri’s and swim races (well, only a few) which may necessitate changes on a weekly basis.  I’m going to start trying to post my workout plans on a Sunday again to get me into a routine.