Column A and Column B

Mixed bag of training today.

As I wrote about last week, training last week went pretty well. I ended the week a bit tired, but satisfied where things were at and keen to get on with the second week of this block.

This morning thing's were much the same. The plan for today was a bit of a tempo paddle this morning and then a jog this afternoon. All good.

During the paddle I was a bit tired, but I hit all my goals and targets. Mission accomplished, tick that session off as a success. So far so good.

This afternoon though life started going a little sideways and the plan started going a bit skew. In the end I didn't get home form work until about 6:30pm and by that time it was a bit late to head out for a jog as my wife had to go out. Damn, so much for plans.

However, this situation is the reality for most people who work and train. The reality for most age group triathletes is that training is an exercise in flexibility. A bit of time Tetris if you will, fitting in the training while also managing day to day life. Fair to say it can be pretty frustrating.

However, in the face of a busy life we are given a couple of different choices. We can get frustrated by the limitations placed by events, get annoyed and eventually give up, or we can roll with the punches and do what we can.

In this case doing what I can means planing the jog for later in the week, which is something I can do without impacting the rest of my training week. The other thing I can do is to think about the session objectively which allowed me to realise that moving the session to later in the week gives me a better recovery day today (which I need) and also may actually be a better distribution of training over all. Moving the session later in the week will also allow me to do the session with a lot less time pressure. In fact, I suspect moving the jog to later in the week may work so well that I might make it permanent (shall see at the end of the week). Really this whole thing may work out to my advantage.

And that is really what this sort of situation boils down to. You can take this sort of situation, where things aren't going to plan, and get trodden down by them and defeated, or you can see the challenge as an opportunity, examine your options and choose the best way for you to move forward.

I can guarantee that athletes that achieve their goals and are generally successful do the later far more often that the former.