I’m gonna modify my normal training summary post this week because quite honestly I’m frustrated and don’t want to type out the details. Suffice it to say I was in the midst of a good week, having logged 62 miles in four days and on pace for 103 for the week, when things blew up on me at work and I had to skip running altogether on Friday. I then got aggravated because of losing what I’d worked so hard to attain, and I kind of threw in the towel on the rest of the week.
Normally missing a day wouldn’t be a big deal, but in this training scheme I’ve been attempting, each week builds on and is dependent upon the previous, and if something gets missed, it throws the whole thing off. Two of my three “up” weeks now have been interrupted by one thing or the other, which tells me I may need to reevaluate what I’m doing.
What stinks is I’m seeing results. I came into this week having had two of my best workouts of the year the week before, and like I said, I was having a really good week this past week until circumstances out of my control took it away from me. However, I’ve got a major, nine-month long project coming up at work, and I have to acknowledge that it’s only going to get harder to do what I’ve been trying to do. If I had nothing to do but train, this scheme might be perfect, but the reality is I have a lot going on in life outside of running, and when it comes right down to it training has to take a back seat to those other things.
So, as much as I hate to bail out on this approach after basically seven weeks of trying it, I think it might be better for me to go back to a more traditional plan where I have a couple workouts and a long run each week and run consistent, moderate mileage. Otherwise I’m going to wind up frustrated, and quite honestly, probably broken.
The good news is this experiment showed me that I’m still capable of running more than I thought I was and I can see the benefits of doing so. Whereas I might not be able to hit those 100-105 mile weeks, I think I can hit 85-90 with some quality built in and quite possibly thrive off that. In fact, that would be really similar to the training I did when I did some of my best racing years ago. I’ll still need a down week every 3-4 weeks, which will work nicely as I get back into racing.
Anyway, that’s what I’m thinking at the moment. I know it might look like I’m giving up a little too easy on something I was excited about and that seemed to be working, but the one advantage of being older is I’m also wiser and I’ve learned to tell pretty quickly when something just isn’t going to pan out long term. I’ve got what I feel is a good, workable plan for moving forward, though, so that’s exactly what I’m going to do. Onward!
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