It's been quite a while since I posted. And primarily it's been because I haven't had much to post about. The truth of the matter is that I haven't been training consistently since last summer for a variety of reasons. Nevertheless I got picked up again by Triathlon Canada to represent our country at the ITU World Triathlon Grand Final (Olympic distance) being held in Edmonton, AB, Canada (not a glamorous venue, but it does mean a ton of my family can come). I'm also again getting fantastic support from Sugoi Performance Apparel (www.sugoi.com)
So why am I not training like my usual self? The truth is that it's been a lot tougher than I thought trying to balance family, work, and Triathlon when you have a young family. It takes a toll on your motivation to train when you constantly miss workouts for a variety of legit reasons.
Training effectively requires a very structured approach. When the rest of your life is unstructured right now, it's hard to follow a structured training regime. My workouts right now tend to need to fit into whatever time magically appears in my schedule and wherever (geographically) I happen to be at that time. For example, let's say I have a bike and swim workout scheduled on a particular day but the only time that opens up is during the lunch hour and I'm no where near my bike or a pool. Well, pretty much that day is a write-off if I'm following a structured training approach. So I finish the day a bit disheartened and without the endorphin kick I get from training. Multiply that by x number of days over y number of weeks and you can understand why someone who is extremely structured by habit can find themselves frustrated and demotivated. Especially when you have hired a coach.
So clearly a normal child-free, stable work commitments, regular schedule kind of approach won't work for me anymore. What now? I'm looking for suggestions on what to try, but here's my current plan.
- Make sure I always have the right gear in my car in case an opportunity for a workout presents itself
- Start running and biking more with Eli in the Chariot
- Sunday morning swims with Eli will be treated as kick sets where I push him around on the foam rafts (which he loves)
- Treat the regimented day by day schedule as a list for the week rather than for the day. Move around workouts as required but following good training principles (e.g. don't do two hard breakthrough workouts consecutively)
- Be more proud of the training I can do and less frustrated by what I cannot.
--IronDad
