Options

Wow the weather in Perth at the moment is really going for it. Squally showers and 40km/h winds around my place at the moment. Outside is not a very nice place to be right now.

I have to admit that this morning I took the soft option and went back to bed. For one thing I was just super tired, but the other big factor was the weather.

Since I have stopped training so obsessively I have taken this option more than I used to. Not hard because I used to never take the 'go back to bed' option. Now days there are some days when getting out the door seems just a bit more unpleasant than I have motivation for.

What do you do though if you really don't have much of a choice? What if you are training for Kona, or some other big race and so you really do have to get that session in?

Well, over the years I developed a few different strategies.

Strategy 1 is the obvious one. Suck it up and go anyway. Winter in Perth is not that bad and so typically the worst that is going to happen is that you are going to get wet and perhaps a little bit miserable. If you dress accordingly you can even limit the miserable bit to a certain extent. In my view bad weather should never be a reason to skip a run or a swim, weather can make those activities less pleasant, but never impossible (unless there is lightning and you are swimming). With riding I think the only reason you wouldn't necessarily dress appropriately and head out the door is because you may have better options. Which are....

Train indoors. These days indoor trainers are just so darn good that you often don't actually need to venture into the horrible weather. If the weather is miserable and a little bit dangerous, jump on the trainer and do the session there, if you do it honestly then the benefit will be the same and you stay warm and dry. I was never a big user of treadmills but for people who live in the parts of the world who get snow, running indoors is just a normal reality, so it is certainly possible to do that too if you want. In recent years this option has become so viable that if you have an indoor trainer then I think this is a no-brainer. Don't head back to bed, chuck the bike on the Kickr and get on with it.

Re-arrange the plan. Like I mentioned above, in my view poor weather should never be an excuse to not swim (unless lightning) or run. If you have a session that you don't want to do in bad weather, but also have one that you don't mind doing, then re-arrange the sessions and get on with it. A good example of this would be swapping a ride for a swim at an indoor pool, or swapping a run for an indoor ride. Pretty much if you have two options, one of which you are going to do and one of which you wont, then swap them around, do the preferred session today and leave the other for a nicer day. Easy.

Pretty much when it boils down to it, if you are serious about the training and your goals, then there is really no excuses. There are so many options for getting the session done, that turning around and crawling back into bed shouldn't be one of them.