In the aftermath of last week's race, I was going back and forth about how to prepare for the international distance triathlon (1300 meter/0.8 miles swim, 40km/24.85 mile bike, 10km/6.21 mile run) coming up in August.
I had a hard time shaking off the disappointment (mostly in my run performance) and get my stuff together to tackle the training for an event that is so much longer than what I have done this far.
My first instinct was that I have to train MORE. On a second thought, that really wasn't feasible, because I already peaked out at around 8 hours per week in training (tri sports hours) for the sprint tri and doing much more than that is just not doable, if I still want to have some sort of social life and a halfway clean house. Besides, I tried to push it more in the past and always ended up exhausted and sick.
With the new training plan (generic from Beginner Triathlete), I also decided to go for the quality instead of the quantity in workouts. I will still be making changes to the plan and take the freedom to delete a couple of workouts (I am not swimming three times a week!) and move others around to accommodate social life and other commitments!
In the past, I was only looking at the duration of the workout that I was supposed to do without paying attention to the specific instructions that came along with the workout. Basically, if the plan said run for 40 minutes, I ran for 40 minutes and did whatever I felt like.... This way I always stayed put in my comfort zone.
For the next couple of weeks, I want to make a conscious decision to train according to the plan for the duration AND the purpose for each workout. It won't always happen especially regarding the bike ride when I join groups, but that's okay.
In general I think I started off my first 1.5 weeks on the plan good.
Especially helpful for that was that I finally figured out how to set-up custom workouts in my Garmin Forerunner 305. I have this watch now for over a year, but as with so many other things, I hardly ever scratch on the surface of their functionality. After having spent most of last week fixing the Garmin (software updates, e-mail ping pong with the service center etc) I was already elbow deep in technology anyways so I thought I give it another shot and it worked.
After customizing my profile with age, weight, gender and heart rate zones for the run and the bike, I set-up Wednesday's run and Thursday's trainer ride. It was a tremendous help in order to make the workout a success and do what I was supposed to do. Of course, it takes some extra time to set-up the workouts in the Training Center Software, but right now I think it's worth it.
Let's see how everything shakes out!
So long! ;-)
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