Get Honest

Everyone talks about how many miles they rode or how many hours they put in this week. Or how they toughed it through a session. No one likes to talk about when they HAD to rest. When they woke up and the felt like a bag of assholes and had the balls to say I cant put in my best effort today and it will do me more harm then good. I say HAD to rest because you never really HAVE to. Its a choice and as a more is better thinker most of the time you will push through and do a shitty workout rather then get honest and rest up. For the last few seasons I have always based my progression on how many miles I was putting in or how many hours I was logging per week. But what is the quality of those hours? This season I am focusing on being honest. Its one of the harder things I have done. Its harder for me not to do a workout out then it is to tough one out and write it down.  There is a time and a place for it. Sometime you have to push though to make the break through but sometimes pushing through will break you. It has the potential to wreck the rest of your week.

If we were all the highest level of elite we could wake up get a blood test, check our catecholamine levels and we would know exactly weather we were over trained or not.  But as an age grouper you have to base it on how you feel, and what else you need to get done in the day. For me the big thing is food. Nail the big workout and get to eat a couple extra calories. But when you just need to physcailly rest what do you do?

Stratagies:

• Catch up on LIFE!!! 
• Yes we all have them outside of training watch a movie with the misses, or stack some firewood just stay busy.

•  Do the stuff you usually ignore.
•  Foam roll, stretch, bulk meal prep, etc

• Write it down
• up date logs 
• reflect on your training 
• realize its all going to be ok

So the next time you wake up in to fog get honest with yourself maybe its a sign to rest up and catch up on the other things in life!

Write It Down

When completing any kind of training your looking for a result. Weather its to get faster, stronger, slimmer, smarter it can be anything really. How do you know if you have actually achieved any of your goals?

In sport there are competitions which act as a form of test. Are we winning more games? Swim times? Bike times? Run times? Thats great, but maybe race day your not feeling your best, or the weather is shits. You need to account for that. People will get down on themselves for a shitty performance and not look at the whole picture. Or the make excuses. Maybe you weren't as fit as you thought?

 Its also not uncommon to be nervous on race day. Why is that? Because you have doubts in your ability. If you were confident in your ability you would not be nervous.

So the question is how do you KNOW how fit you are? How to your create that confidence in your ability? You keep RECORDS!!! Test yourself regularly, and know exactly where your at. If your not where you want to be ask yourself why and how do I get there? Is it realistic? This way when the race comes your not guessing. You know you have done the work, you know where your at, you know what to expect and, NOW all you have to do is go get the best from your self.  The records can also be used as motivation later to see how far you have come. Or to quickly solve a re-occuring problem.

So quit just doing the work to do the work. Write it down, keep track,  be proud of what you have accomplished. So when the race doesn't go your way you can look and know weather or not you gave your full ability. Then from there you can learn and keep moving forward.

Until next time write it down and have FUN!! Happy Training

D