Change in Schedule

One of my big issues in the 2011 season was a reliance on brick training. Bricks in triathlon are generally a bike session followed by a run session. In the beginning, bricks SUCK. Over time, they suck less. Eventually, you don't even notice the pain. They still suck, but you have gotten so used to it that adaptive forces deep inside your soul have learned to ignore the unhappiness. But, they do teach your legs how to be comfortable off the bike for racing purposes. My legs are quite content during the run. I'm still not that fast but at least I've got no rubbery feeling.

A consequence of the brick reliance is the time factor. When I relied on brick workouts, I was short-changing one, or often both, of the disciplines. A 2-hour workout was roughly 1:15 on the bike followed by :45 on the run. Neither one of those really give enough time/ distance for high quality base training. I would have benefited more by biking for 2 hours straight and rescheduling the run to a different day/ time to run longer. Plus, it's hard to really attack the bike knowing that you're going out for a run. Something must change.

On my refrigerator, I have a white board mounted on my fridge which shows my schedule. Here was 2011 general workout guide:

As you can see, I did on the average of 3-4 bricks a week, depending on how dedicated to the schedule I was (translation: dedication varied widely from one week to the next). You can also see, I needed to buy milk.

Here's my new schedule for the 2012 season:

As you can see, I've got this Ironman training thing going on. I am teaching and coaching a sport. The Running Ladies that I train are getting back into the swing of things. I am taking an online graduate class. We're in the midst of buying a new house. On top of that, I've got my country's 500th wedding anniversary to plan, my wedding to arrange, my wife to murder, and Guilder to blame for it. I'm swamped.

Therefore, I have to spread out my workouts a little bit more. I have reduced the number of bricks by moving more running sessions to the mornings. This should allow me to do longer, higher quality runs (which was a 2011 weakness). I can bike longer in the evenings (again, weakness). Weekends have more time, and therefore, I have scheduled brick training for Saturday and maybe Sunday. I have eliminated the need to swim. Swimming will show up later in the season, probably around March. Swimming will replace the Monday morning run, Thursday morning blank, possibly the Friday morning blank, and maybe Saturday morning. The weight sessions are added in there because the Wife refuses to allow me to morph into an Ichabod Crane body-type.

And, as you can see, I still need to buy milk.