Very Merry

Great day today. A bit of everything sort of day, busy but very enjoyable. Today included:

• Some training
• Some program writing
• A children's Christmas party for my work
• A Christmas concert that my daughter played in

As you can imagine, the day was pretty crammed full. Sort of standard at this time of year. Tiring but also awesome.

Things are definitely starting to get that end of year feel to them. I had a Christmas party last week, one this week and another next week, not to mention a plethora of other Christmas related events. This time of year it can be easy to start wishing that the things would calm down and you could simply sit and home for a little while, but as usual, once you get yourself out and going, the Christmas events are always fun. 

As well as all the parties, everything is starting to relax a bit more. There is less coaching going on, work feels like it isn't far from slowing down, school has a week to go, generally people are starting to relax. Life isn't quite in holiday mode yet, but it isn't far off I think. 

Of course as the world switches to Christmas holiday mode, it can be hard to maintain the motivation to train. It is the ultimate irony of Christmas, often you aren't working and so have much more time to train, but you are also very busy, so it is not uncommon for people to find themselves training less. 

Of course unless you are training for a race, I usually think that taking some down time during Christmas is not a bad idea. As I often speak about, having some off time during the season can be healthy and Christmas can be a great time to switch off from training and focus on family and loved ones for a while.

If you are trying to train through Christmas though, well that can be a bit of a challenge. I have done it a few times I have generally I found the trick to be getting out early and getting the session out of the way before you get caught up in Christmas activities that have a habit of lasting all day. This method isn't foolproof, but it worked for me, I am sure everybody has their own tricks for getting themselves out the door for training when there is Christmas celebrating to be done. If you can figure out a way to balance Christmas and training, then it can really be a great time to get in some awesome dedicated training. Thing about it as a chance for a very merry training camp.