Back To The Morning

Towards the end of my run this morning, I finally succumbed to the fact that if I want to train, I have to wake up early. Almost daily. There is just no other way to do it.

Last night I tried the ol' "I'll just swim after work" trick, which inevitably led to me getting out of the pool early because I was exhausted from work and my swim was flat.

Today I ran early in the morning and got on the trainer in the evening after work. I was able to double my workload and felt 10x better just from getting started in the morning.

As we all well know, I have an intense dislike for waking up early. I used to beg my mom to wake me up quietly in the mornings, but for 18 years she used the loudest and brightest methods to un-gently wake me up. I won't go into detail, but I can recall vividly every sound she would make in the morning en route to getting me out of bed. Going off to college was awesome, and not just because I went to a campus where they served beer in the cafeteria or because I met my husband there, but because I was able to finally be free of my mom's awful morning routine.

But, I hate racing poorly more than I hate waking up in the mornings, so, I am back to waking up early to train. And in all fairness, my dogs make every morning great. Waking up to unconditional love and eternal happiness rocks. It just takes about an hour for me to wake up enough to appreciate the beauty of the early morning.

So, my tentative fall training plan looks a little something like this: work on run speed, work on swim skills, strength train.

My tentative race plan looks like this: let the races come to me. How about that for specificity! I don't have any goal races on the schedule for this fall/winter yet. It will get pretty cold around here, so if I want to race, it will have to be running focused. I do plan on doing several 5ks in the winter to help get my legs turning over, and I think I would like to do a half marathon.

I wish I had another ironman on my schedule, but I don't. Bummer. Eh, but I will work on speed and strength now and then move back to some longer stuff when the time is right. Having a long window of opportunity for improvement is one of the great things about triathlon. So, next year will build upon this year and so forth and so on. Although on most days I want it all NOW, I know that in reality I will progress yearly if I am injury free and stay committed. So, some speed and strength now, more endurance and higher workload later, etc, etc....There is a plan, and I have to stay the course. I just listened to a good podcast with Peter Reid, and he spoke on this very topic about doing his training in appropriate levels early on so he could build to bigger training in later years. I would like to see myself do such a thing.

As for this weekend, I am all in for Andreas Raelert.