Say goodnight

I think I missed the point



I am slightly worried today. Well by today I mean this week. As normal I missed a good proportion of my training, this will come as no surprise to anyone who reads this but today is different. I am not worried that I missed all session from Tuesday to today (there is still some of Sunday to go and I might get out still), though this is bad, what worried me was that I wasn’t worried about it. This week I managed 2 out of 11 hours training and this time last week I was all focused and ready to go where as now as I write at 01:30 on a Sunday morning I am calm and relaxed that only 20% of my training load has been completed.

So what has made me worry about my lack of worrying? I think the biggest problem is that I am currently resigned to being on nights from now until the end of time and as such I have accepted that my training when I am on nights is going to be hit and miss at best and at worse none existent.  This acceptance is in itself a good thing I think, this is because there is nothing I can do about my rota, I have requested more days and been told that I’ll get what I get (politely). So this week I am thinking about how to best make use of not seeing daylight.

• Think about non-training training, by this I mean counting my 20 min ride to work each day as a session, it isn’t great but its something.
• Accept that on nights that I will not get a lot done during the week so fit what I can in on those days, even if it’s a specific rest day. Then look at the time between the nights either before and  after  if it’s the mid-week shifts or in the 3 days in the middle.
• Train smarter not harder when on nights.
• Most importantly, not to panic if I am not hitting the sessions I need to when on nights, I think that the positive mental attitude I had last week (it only lasted a little while fortunately) is of more benefit that a few half arsed sessions.

Having been all positive for a minute, I also have to realise that I am not signed up for a 10k plod round your local flat town (though the route does look pretty flat, 100m of climbing over 44km) I need to find that happy balance between calm acceptance of not getting all my training aims and goals met and blind panic that I won’t get race I want if I don’t train for it.

So again it comes back to goal settings. I think my goals for nights need to be about weight and diet rather than miles on the bike or in the pool, to this end I would be taking control of the situation rather than being reactive to events that I do not have control over. This feels like a more positive and proactive (possible other P words too) way to focus my training, and you never know I might get my Monday Friday 9-5 job soon.



See you next time.