Thoughts on Adapting Plan

Mary Russo

Hi Everyone,
Looking for some tips/wisdom.
I am training for a 70.3 in March. I am not sure if it is the fact that I have to do so much of the training in the pain cave, the mid-winter Blues, or if I am just trying to force too much of the training, but I am exhausted. I find this to be the case after the weekend bikes especially. How do you usually adjust your plan for a little more recovery? I think I have read that some folks take two days, but do you fold in the Monday and Friday swims into the other days of the week? Is there some type of recovery that reduces the fatigue?
Any help is greatly appreciated

Juan Vergara

Mary, if you are exhausted do take some extra time to recover and use that time to evaluate how is your sleep and nutrition??? Those two are absolutely essential!!!!

Mark Maurer

Hi Mary, if you look at the plans the workouts have a priority designation of high, medium, or low. As I'm planning my week, including work and family obligations, I schedule in the high priority workouts first, medium second and low last. If I'm tired or otherwise too busy or stressed I don't do the low priority workouts. lf I still feel tired I drop the medium or just take a day off completely.

Make sure you have enough recovery time between the high priority workouts since they're the toughest but also have the highest ROI. Also, remember that other life stressors can affect your workouts and sometimes you have to acknowledge that and let a workout go or cut back on the intensity. I don't know about you but I don't get paid to do triathlon and I do this to relieve stress and because I like it. I don't need this to add extra stress to my life. As such I try to find a balance between my desire to crush a workout or race and life.

I hope that helps a little.

Marian Desimone

Don't forget to watch your nutrition when you are working hard.. use a recovery drink, take vitamins that support healing ( B-vitamins). Protein shakes in the evenings after tough workouts. I am big fan of lots of green veggies, very low sugar intake...

and of course the best thing of all ... good sleep

Stephanie Hartmann

At 50 almost 51, I find sleep to be the key ingredient. And as has been mentioned already NO sugar. Veggies, fat, and plenty of protein.(I aIso eat no wheat and it's helped everything). I need more recovery too so if I'm going to have a really hard workout on a particular morning, I wait until the following evening to do the next hard one. That way I get more than 24 hours to recover. It just works better these days. Swimming makes me feel better but it also makes me really sleepy! I have my first Half in May. GOOD LUCK!

Mary Russo

Thanks everyone,
These are good suggestions. I will definitely pay more attention to priority and nutrition.

Gordon Cherwoniak

Mary,

Great suggestions already.  Beyond that do you have any outside life stresses this can be contributed to?  If you are feeling exhausted it might be time to reset and take 2-3 days completely off then work back in to the priority workout for the week.  Hit up Coach P in the Micro forum for his thoughts.

Also the trainer can get mentally draining and part of the reason for shorter OS workouts.  You've signed up for a March 70.3 so this can't be helped now, but perhaps getting some music or watching tv/movies can provide some relief to the pain cave existence. 

I always try to track my resting HR in the morning. Once this is elevated 4-5 beats per minute I know I need more sleep and try to get 24 hours between the hard workouts or perhaps lower the intensity of the ride/run.  My second indicator is when I start to wake up in the middle of the night and have a very restless sleep, then I know I'm overreaching and if I don't address it soon I'll need some time off (more than a session or a day).

 

Paul Hough

Exhaustion hits me every week. On weekends I can nap so no big deal. Weekdays are the issue. Once, sometimes even twice a week, my alarm goes off in the morning and I absolutely cannot get him...zero willpower. I then make the decision that 3 hours additional sleep is more important to me than another work-out. So what gives? Depending on the week's focus, I will readjust based on priorities. Last week was swim focus and I lost Thursday morning. No swim involved, but I dropped a bike workout to put in a run that night. This week is bike focus so the first to drop will be a swim because I hit that last week. Next week is run focus and I want to hit the targeted volume and intensities. And on it goes.