What's worse than having a training plan and not following it? Not having a plan at all. As the saying goes, "Failing to plan is planning to fail," etc., etc., etc.
So the KDF Marathon came and went and with it the last major race on my calendar. It isn't that I don't want to run another full or half marathon, it is that I simply just haven't targeted any particular race. The NYC Marathon was a long-shot with the lotto system and Chicago has already filled up. Nothing else is really tweaking my interest at the moment. Which is perfectly fine. I have had thoughts of this "off" period being utilized for training to improve my speed for shorter distance races, maybe getting into some trail running, or really cutting back on the distance running all together and turning my focus back to serious weight training. In the week since the KDF I just really hadn't made a determination of what I wanted to do. I did go on a three mile run on Wednesday, that felt really good. There was some residual ache in my left hip after the run, but nothing lingering. Considering that was only four days after the marathon, I was pretty impressed with my recovery.
Which brought me to Saturday. I spent the night plagued by insomnia and musing over what my morning run should look like. Without having decided on a specific goal, the possibilities that flashed through my sleep-less mind were plentiful. Push for speed. Play with time. Just keep pushing distance. I had also read this blogger's post on training on a treadmill at a 15% grade! Sounds crazy, but I like crazy. I also wondered how far or how hard I should really push after the marathon only a week behind me. After all, I'm not getting any younger and my body will sometimes rebel just to drive that point home.
Thunderstorms covered the area the entire night and when the alarm clock finally went off I drug myself out of bed and headed off to the gym. I still didn't have a plan, but I figured that I'd just "wing it". I'm sometimes pretty good at that. Not so much today. I climbed on the treadmill and fired it up. I'll spare you the boring details, but I played with speed and elevation (even trying out the 15% grade). In a lot of ways I felt like I was just wasting time instead of achieving any specific objectives or providing myself with any benefits. The end result was that I made it just over two miles - two agonizingly slow miles - and I then I simply decided to call it a day.
While I could blame lack of sleep, horrible nutrition (which is a chronic problem), or my body still recovering from the marathon (as some of my friends have suggested), the real problem seemed to be a lack of focus. Without any specific goal in mind, and given that I was on a treadmill versus street running, the motivation just wasn't there for me. The missing motivation was a workout killer. Every since I began running I have always had a specific goal to my training; whether it was performing well on PT evaluations for work or preparing for the next race. Without a specific training plan or goal I felt like I was just flopping around like a fish out of water. Not that I was suffocating by any means, but that I found myself in an environment that I was just absolutely unfamiliar with - the No Goal environment.
The rest of this evening, then, will be spent analyzing and developing a plan to go forward. Even if is is just a plan for maintaining my base, so that should I pick a good race in the next few months, the training won't be that daunting of a task. Besides, I always perform much better when I have an objective to complete. And I feel better about myself when I can check off the training log for the day. It might be time to start eyeballing the race calendar as well.
It's important to have goals. Which invariably means you have to have a plan for achieving said goals. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy a healthy degree of spontaneity (some might say too much). I just know that when it comes to my workouts or my running, that I get a lot more out of them when they are mission specific. And when you line up at the start of any race (a metaphor for many things), haphazard training won't get you to the finish line. You have to have a plan. And as Hannibal Smith used to say, "I love it when a plan comes together."
No comments:
Post a Comment