The Art of Being Consistent

There's this woman on my road. Retired. Friendly. Happy. GILF. Amazing human being.  In excellent shape. I'm pretty sure that when her age I get, look as good I will not. I see her just about every day. Our separate routines go something like this.

Monday
Me- sitting on my lazy boy drinking a frothy, caffeinated, chocolatey beverage.
Her- outside walking down the road.

Tuesday

Note: This is not her. I'm not that kind of a creep.

Me- sitting on my lazy boy drinking a frothy, caffeinated, chocolatey beverage.
Her- outside walking down the road.

Wednesday
Me- got my lazy bum out for a morning run.
Her- outside walking down the road.

Thursday
Me- sitting on my lazy boy drinking a frothy, caffeinated, chocolatey beverage, still recovering from Wednesday's run
Her- outside walking down the road.

Friday
Me- Feeling guilty about not running on Thursday. Went for a run.
Her- outside walking down the road.

Saturday
Me- sitting on my lazy boy drinking a frothy, caffeinated, chocolatey beverage. Will likely run later. (Maybe)
Her- outside walking down the road.

Sunday
Me- getting ready to take the Wife to the Y. She'll do a class, I'll go run around the Y- neighborhood, feeling excited that I'm getting in my 4th run of the week and taking the day off tomorrow!
Her- outside walking down the road.

Since I'm a sweaty, smelly male, I need ample time to cool down before I'm allowed back in the house. Therefore, I'll take a nice recovery walk. Every once in a while, I'll be on my desweatification jaunt right around the same time that she's going for a walk down the road. Much to her dismay (I'm assuming) I'll join her for the walk.

One time, I made it all the way to her turn around point. Understandably, it's right at the end of the drive. The drive ends at a road. Which has a line separating the shoulder from the main drag. She diligently walked right up to the road, looked both ways, waited until it was safe, and touched the white line with her foot. She said that the walk 'didn't count' until she touched the line. I asked her how many days out of the year she missed her walk. "About half a dozen, maybe." There's a lot to be learned in an amazing specimen like herself.

Lessons for Me (and You)
Consistency is the key to long term success in training. Having one good workout is just that- good. Having a bunch on mediocre workouts, day in and day out, is the stuff that champions are made of. I have not been a good case study in consistency.

Here's most of my December training

A scrupulous eye would see that there seemed to be an emphasis on running (blue posts), which makes sense for a slow, sloth-like creature like myself. You'd be hard pressed to call it 'consistent'. And, exactly zero people would call 7 rides (featured in red) in a month "high quality levels of training"no matter how excellent those rides were. If I had any intentions of getting in shape and setting myself up for a good season, this is a good lesson in what not to do. Something had to change.

A short blurb on how my year ended- badly. On Dec 30th, I came down with one of those flu thingies. It hit me hard for the next week or so. Even for a loser like myself, this was pretty bad.

It was during this downtime when a lazy boy sitting, mocha drinking, slow-running boy like myself took to ogling noticing the habits of my neighbor and used it as inspiration to take the lazy out of the boy. I became healthy from being sick and sick of being slow. Here's how January ended.

Hell yeah! Just in case you are too lazy to count, that's 6 runs and 5 rides a week. Already I feel a little faster. Already I feel a little more powerful on the bike. I've lost 3 pounds of belly fat over this period (this is waaaaaaaaay overdue). If I had any intentions of getting in shape and setting myself up for a good season, this is a good lesson in exactly what I need to do. (Assuming you don't focus on the swimming piece, shown in yellow.)

Here's the thing: this is just one month of Banter-quality excellence (which should not be confused with actual excellence). But, triathlon is a long-con. You have to start sowing the seeds of consistency early on and keep them going again and again. Yes, there's going to be hiccups along the way. Eventually, one of those demons kids I teach will pass on a plague-like disease (see first week of January). At some point, the Wife will ask for something labor intensive like washing the dishes or going on a wine tour. There's a chance that I could step on a fantom rock and develop a freak-like injury. Putting those out-of-my-control factors aside, the more consistent I am, the better I'll be.

Winter will, hopefully, be over soon. I'll be getting outdoors more often and for longer. I hope that I get a chance to see more of my hottie neighbor out on the road instead of from the seat of my lazy boy (truth be told, both circumstances are pretty awesome!). And, I hope that the next time we meet, I'll be in decent enough shape that she won't wrinkle her nose at me. Although, I doubt that there's any kind of consistency that will get rid of that smell...