This week, I will officially start my training program for a big race in mid-July. During this upcoming training cycle I will attempt to focus on improving cardiovascular fitness and tailor my training specifically to the race I’ll be running rather than just cranking out miles as I have done in the past. More than ever, I understand the importance of being disciplined with my training, yet this has produced an interesting side effect – I am terrified.
It has now been almost 2 full years since I have followed a dedicated training program and actually showed up week-in and week-out for several months in a row. In that time, our family has grown – our 6 month old baby has morphed into a 2.5-year-old fully in the throes of the terrible twos (so much so that my wife and I joke that he is overcompensating for his older two siblings’ milder terrible twos) and we have added another child to the mix – a now-seven-month-old boy who until recently seemed incapable of sleeping for more than 30 minutes at a time. I thought that home life was crazy before, but these days things are on a completely different level.
All of this has left me very worried about the viability of committing to a training program. It also doesn’t help that last week all the registrants received an email from the race director informing us that we had until March 10th to drop out of the race for a full refund. Hmm…
On one hand, it would be very easy to throw my hands up and say “well, life is too crazy to commit to this right now” but on the other hand I know that that has never really been my style. I’ve always been about making what is important a priority and finding a way to make it work. No doubt it will be difficult, but I think that’s ok, because at the end of the day it’s supposed to be difficult, and that is the appeal for me.
Yet, in spite of this, I can’t help but feel worried. I have seen training plans go out the window when you miss one run and then another and it snowballs and the next thing you know you haven’t run for 2 months. As I write this I have only run 4 times in the previous month, which is already starting me on this training cycle in less than ideal fashion…
I think the necessary approach here, which I have given out as advice before, will be to approach this training one week at a time, rather than look at it as a 20 week block. So with that in mind I am looking at 5 runs in this first week – 2 workouts, 1 recovery run and 2 endurance runs. Already, this feels much better and more doable than thinking about the whole training cycle.
Here’s to week 1. Let’s get it.
Are you working toward any larger goal – be it a physical training, studying for a big test, or anything like that? How do you approach the mountain ahead of you? What mental tricks do you use to get yourself going?
Baba Outside 