How To Determine A Realistic Training Schedule

• 1 • Motivation, Running

Are you over-committing your future self? There’s this really annoying thing I do to myself all the time.  I schedule a babysitter, or sign Will & Andrew up for a few hours of camp, and then I start day-dreaming about how I will use that time.

I’ll meal plan!  Get ahead on the laundry! Do my running! Move a few boxes out of the basement and into the attic! Go to Whole Foods with no one screaming for a bagel!  Read a couple chapters of that new book with coffee!  Write a blog post!  Go to spin class!

It’ll be SO AMAZING.

Except I’ve now day-dreamed about 5 hours worth of things I’d like to do with only 2 hours of time.

What really ends up happening is I empty the dishwasher and clean up from breakfast for half an hour, throw laundry in the washer, waste ten minutes on twitter, and then realize I only have an hour left and have to choose ONE thing to do.

Well, the same thing can happen to us when we look at training plans and schedule our running.

Will you be able to run when you think you will?  When you’re looking at the plan online, it’s easy to think “I’ll get up early and run!  I’ll run with the jogging stroller!  I have the kids in preschool, so it’ll be easy to run then!”

When it actually comes time to do it, you realize that you’re exhausted and the last thing you want to do is get up at 5 a.m. and run, or your house is destroyed and you have no plans for lunch or dinner and you’ve got ten errands to run that’ll take you 1/16th of the time without kids, so no way are you running while they’re at preschool this morning.

This fall, I have Andrew in preschool for a few hours on Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings.  It’s tempting to look at the calendar and think “Great! I’ll do all my running then!” But what about all those other things I’d like to do without kids?  Am I going to spend all my free preschool time running?  Better to schedule some of it with the jogging stroller, some with a babysitter, some on the weekend when the boys can have Daddy time.

The trick to determining a realistic training schedule: Think about your training schedule as though it’s present tense.  Look at a week on the plan, and figure out how you would do it if it were THIS week.  Would you get up tomorrow at 5 a.m. and run?  No?  Then why do you think you’ll be willing to do that in October when you’re penciling it in?  Would you, if the kids were gone from 9-12, spend two hours of that running and half an hour stretching and showering?  If you would, great, if not, then figure out what you need to do to make it realistic.  Maybe you would spend that time running provided you didn’t have an empty fridge.  Can you grocery shop in the evening when the kids are sleeping?  In the early morning while your partner feeds them breakfast?

What can you do to shift your responsibilities around so that the time you’d idealistically spend running, you can REALISTICALLY spend running?

Keep track of the reasons you’re not running: It might help to come up with your plan for when you’re going to run, and then keep track of whether or not you actually when running, and if not, why.  Then you can trouble shoot the reasons you’re not running.  Were you too tired to get out of bed?  Too sore from running back to back days? Too overwhelmed by household obligations like meals and laundry?

Maybe long run day is also “slow cooker” day, or maybe you need to get up an hour earlier every day in order to be able to fall asleep early enough to run early mornings on the days you want to.  (Think of what you could accomplish in that hour on the days you don’t run!)

All right – you’re armed with a recipe for success.

I’ve got to run – my babysitter is only here for another two hours and I have to get 4 miles in, clean out our basement, fold two loads of laundry, clean out the refrigerator and send some e-mails.

20140820-111119.jpg
What my house looked like at the time of the writing of this blog post.
(I much prefer them to destroy the house than each other!)

Hope and Failure – Duel Motivators

• 5 • 13.1 Training, Motivation, Running

 

failure

 

I remember walking into the Runner’s World Heartbreak Half Expo and seeing race gear for sale with the race name emblazoned all over it.  How sad, I thought, that these are all for sale BEFORE I know whether this race day will be a happy memory worth having emblazoned across my newest running tank?

I bought nothing.  (Luckily for me, Runner’s World runs a great event and their race package t-shirt was a technical dry women’s small, not cotton or unisex, and therefore actually something I can wear.)

When I looked at all the gear for sale, I thought I would want to remember the race if it was a great one.  I figured if I had an exceptional running day, had magically improved by virtue of it being my third half marathon (despite my lackluster training for this one), that then I would be excited to remember it and wish I had a hat or a t-shirt or something with that race name on it that would remind me of how it felt running those 13.1 miles in the zone, confident in my own awesomeness.

What happened was a different story altogether.

I under prepared, started out too fast, and basically made every rookie mistake you can make.  I had an amazing first 6 miles, and then crashed.  THAT’S NOT EVEN HALFWAY.  I walked/jogged/walked the remaining SEVEN MILES.  With no music.  That’s a long time to think about how much it stinks that you’re walking right now.

The only thing that would have made me feel more like a failure would have been quitting when I saw my in-laws at mile 9 and riding home in disgrace squished in the back between the kids car seats.

I was traversing those 13.1 miles, getting my medal, and going home.  (damnit.)

Now I’m glad I failed.  It was a wake-up call, a needed reminder that 13.1 miles is NOT a gimme.  Just because I’d done it twice, didn’t mean I could do it again without adequate preparation.  You have to work to maintain your level of fitness, not just to improve it.

Sometimes when I’m training I picture myself walking, exhausted, frustrated during that race.  It drives me forward, to finish the interval, to log the last mile in a tempo run, to squeeze in a few miles on the treadmill rather than missing a workout completely.

It makes me grin maniacally and pedal faster in the middle of a spin workout, relishing the feel and view of the sweat snaking its way down my arm. Not again, not again, not again… I will not fail like that again.

Every second, every moment that I’m working hard, breathing hard, pushing through, those are to prevent the last 7 miles of the Heartbreak Hill Half Marathon from happening to me in October.  Seeing that race medal or wearing that t-shirt doesn’t make me feel proud, but it does make me work harder.

On the opposite side is hope.  Hope is something I’m familiar with, it’s been a friend of mine since I very first started running with the Couch to 5k program in July of 2012.

In that vision, I’m not walking up heartbreak hill in the heat, demoralized and apathetic about the time on the clock because I’ve spent miles walk/jogging my way forward in resignation.

Instead, I’m at the Maine Half Marathon in October.  It’s cool out.  It’s a medium sized race, so the course feels open but not anticlimactic.  I know I’m running hard, but it doesn’t FEEL hard, it feels steady.  I’m in the zone.  I’m breathing, I’m moving, I’m flying.  The leaves have changed color.  Every breath of air is crisp, refreshing.  The sky is blue.  I don’t need to stop.  I don’t WANT to stop.  I could run like this forever.  My family is waiting at the finish, it’s the first half marathon I’ve run in my home state.  They’ve invested time in watching my children so I could run, they’ve encouraged me, they’ve even read my running blog.  I won’t let them down.  Those hours they helped, they counted… I built on them, I used them, they were a springboard to this moment.  This bliss, this in-the-zone running bliss, where I’m going and I don’t need to stop and life is amazing and I AM AMAZING.

One interval at a time.  One long run at a time.  I will do whatever it takes to get to that moment.

Perhaps hope is the biggest motivator after all.

I stink! No wait, I’m awesome!

• 3 • Motivation

I went for a run yesterday, ramping back up into my half marathon training plan after a few unscheduled interruptions (stomach bug, some over-use soreness in my right ankle from ramping up so quickly).

I was feeling discouraged, because it was frustrating to start back out there on the road after a few missed workouts.  I’d been so zealous about my training while I was up in Maine.  My family came and watched the boys, I did my runs, I met my interval times, I put in the required miles, I was DOING it.

Now it felt like I was most definitely NOT doing it.

Worse yet, I was running in a hand-me-down (to Greg and then to me) hat that was race gear from one of his brother’s triathlons.  Greg’s brother is a professional triathlete.  As his cast-off race gear boasting “70.3” miles kept my part from getting sunburned, I threw down a half mile interval just barely under 9 minute pace.  Then I thought to myself about how his MARATHON pace is in the 5s, and I can’t do half a mile (there was a slight uphill, I swear) in the 8s without pulling over afterwards, lungs burning, chest heaving, deer flies catching up to me.

I was embarrassed.  I was thinking about how ridiculous I must look, and what a horrible runner I am, and good heavens what would my brother-in-law the professional triathlete think.

And then I realized… shoot, he’d think it was awesome.  OF COURSE he understands what it feels like to push harder than you’re used to, and run when your lungs and legs feel like they’re on fire.  How the hell did he get to where he is?  He did this, over and over and over again FOR YEARS.  And of course he wouldn’t expect me, who started running casually two years ago and probably logs a tenth of the miles in a week that he does, to run even close to as fast as someone who went from high school to college track star and on to become a professional triathlete.  Duh.  This is science and common sense.

I could jog comfortably along at 10:30 pace and feel satisfied because I was running, but when I push, even if I have to stop, ESPECIALLY when I have to stop, that’s when I’m making progress.  Every time I fail, it’s because I finally tried to do something too hard and push the boundaries and the limits of what I can do comfortably.

So yes, I just wrote a blog post about a fleeting moment when I shared something in common with professional athlete Mike Caiazzo. (Besides his last name.)

I plan to fail again at running next week… and the week after that, and the week after that.  It’s just that this year’s failures are a lot more impressive than last years.  This year, I fail running intervals.  Last year, I failed to run intervals at all.  This year, my 10 mile run came in slower than expected in the heat.  Last year, I was still at 9 miles for my longest run EVER.

Fail on, friends.  Fail on.

My New Running Bucket List

• 3 • Motivation

I recently crossed off every item on my original “running bucket list” and decided it was time for a new one! They’ve been an enjoyable way to change up my running by adding non-traditional goals that I achieve when opportunity presents. I have some traditional goals, too 🙂

So… here’s my new Running Bucket list!

Run to a race, run the race, run home. (Local 5k… here I come!)

Run a half marathon in under two hours

Go on a long run (6- 10 miles) with a friend

Get an age category award (Any 5k that usually has less than 7o participants… I have my eye on you!)

Drop my 5k time to under 27 minutes

Run a race in minimalist running sandals and my vegan running shirt looking like a total hippie

Run a race in another country (Je cours!)

Run a race where you get free beer afterwards

—————————————————————-

I think this list is pretty awesome and I’m going to have some fun checking it off.

What’s on yours?  What used to be that you’ve totally nailed?