"The key to long course triathlon is consistency"
If you've been in this game for any time, this is a concept that is not going to be news to you.
Sometimes, however, you are consistently prevented for being as consistent as you are trying to be.
External factors can be insistent, regardless of your intent and your training time misspent on content not relevant to your goal event leaving you some what petulant and reticent...
...sorry, I think I just had to vent
This week gone by I've missed several of my targeted training sessions, for a couple of different reasons. It kind of snuck up on me as well, I had been training pretty solidly throughout the preceding weeks and was getting into the groove, but when I look back at this week, I see the gaps. Let's take a journey down memory lane into the week that was.
Monday night is swimming night. Monday morning and The Boy is sick and the wife had to work her shift at DFO so it was decided that I should work from home. It was cool though because she would be home in time to allow me to get to the pool. We had a plan!
Swim session start time minus 2 hours: The Girl's homework assignment became known as being larger than previously expected. The short film she was to edit together for the following morning had been shot entirely on her iPhone. Cool.
All of the footage had been transferred to the computer previously; again, Cool.
Earlier in the day, I had tried to import the footage into Microsoft Movie Maker, only to discover Microsoft does not play nice with Apple files...so I converted them to a compatible format and started the import; phew!
When my work day was done, I prepared to hand over the keyboard to The Girl to finish the film, only to discover that the nicely converted files had never actually been accepted by Movie Maker. The program had just frozen and sat dormant for the past 4 hours.
It's OK, I still have time to fix this and get to the pool, I work in IT after all!
This is no problem, we'll just restart the program and import the files again. - cool
Good plan, but the reported "corrupted file types" warning Movie Maker displayed seemed to be rathor contradictory...
OK, I can work this out, almost ten years experience in IT testing, I just need to update Movie Maker, then import the files, then get to swimming, no problem. There still plenty of time!
New program version downloaded, computer restarted and the files are importing! Still an hour to go before I need to leave to get to swimming, plenty of time to give The Girl a crash course on movie making.
She's a quick study and picks it up fairly fast, fast enough to notice that some of the files she needs are missing...
It's cool, I still have some time, we just need to plug the iPhone back in, find the clips and move them across, it wasn't that difficult the first time. Umm - why is the iPhone not displaying as a hard drive on My Computer now?
I can sort this out, I do work in IT, although, I never had any formal training...no problem?
Ah HA, the phone needs to do a sync to iTunes first!
Seriously, how many apps can a teenage girl need!? Why is this taking so long!!?
Success! Missing files secured, converted and imported into the new version of Movie Maker, we are ready to do this and, if I leave right now, I can still get to swimming!
Honey, have you seen my swimmers...?
So, at around 11:30 Monday night I was putting the final credits and music to The Girl's homework and thinking, oh well, it's only one missed session this week
Tuesday - Open Night at The Boy's school, can't miss that, and you know, it's a wind trainer session that I'll be missing. I ride plenty and I can always do a solo session on the training later in the garage.
It's Wednesday and it's the second swim session of the week. I missed Monday's one so I'll make sure there are no obstacles tonight. There is no way I am not getting there tonight!
In fact, I got to the pool about 20 minutes early, it was a good ride from the city, I've got all my swimming gear and I'm ready to go. Just got to lock up my bike here and...CRAP!
So, as I begin my ride home to where I assume I've left a bike lock I think to myself, at least my swim gear will be clean an ready for Friday morning session...
Thursday nights are a run session at the Tan. Today, I have double checked, I know I have all of my training gear, I have a bike lock should I decide to ride there and I'm determined that I WILL train with the group tonight! Work's a little hectic today and we are under a bit of pressure to get some points on the board but I'm watching the clock, I know what time it'll take to get to the meeting point and I have a few options on how to get there.
Changed and ready to go (again, early today) I am just waiting for my Garmin to pick up a GPS fix so I can track all of the running I'll be doing. Not wanting to do any running without due GPS validation I start walking towards the Botanical Gardens and the week's first group training session.
Jeez, it is taking quite a while to get a solid GPS connection tonight...been walking for a while...I'll just give it a little longer.
C'mon, this is ridiculous, I'm at Federation Square now and still nothing!
Just as the green man lights to let us cross Flinders Street the connection is locked on and I'm cleared to begin running. I arrived at the night's start line with a couple minutes to spare. It was on baby.
Turned in a solid run with the Long Course group, putting into practice my run technique training and was able to hold a good pace throughout. (Yay me) Cool down run back to the office and a slow ride home as I fought off the cramping in my calves - note to self, drink more fluids during the day. However, in my defence, and based upon the week to date, who would have guessed I'd actually have trained that day?
Friday is an early morning swim session, the alarm went of at 4am - I turned it off and snuggled back in the covers, I'm not proud.
Saturday was another work day for the wife so no morning ride but I did get myself to my Tony Benson run technique session.On the cards for today were more running drills followed by a 4x500m set.
Running has never my strong point but it seems to be clicking better(?) now. Again, I was able to do a solid run block and maintain a strong pace. On the second 500 I passed Tony and he gave the following critique on my form;
"It's all looking good, just got to watch your hands".
This is in relation to my habit of relaxing my wrists too much. They should be cocked so the hands can move freely in the same direction as the swing of the arms (think of the snapping action of a drummer), mine were twisting as well.
Sunday I plan to get another run session in to finish off a week that was meant to be so much more and perhaps even stop in at the Bike Lab for coffee - I think I've earned it...
Oh, and in case you're wondering about that solo windtrainer session I mentioned earlier, I did work it in on that Tuesday night. I didn't have the night's scheduled program so I just threw together a warm up, 20km time trial and a cool down, whilst watching "Ocean's Twelve" on DVD.
After finishing my set I discovered that an inattentive but security minded relative had locked me out of the house, with no key or mobile phone. It was as I was trying to stealthily clamber through a window I'd been able to prise open and remove the fly screen from that I thought to myself, I hope this isn't going to be consistent...
If you've been in this game for any time, this is a concept that is not going to be news to you.
Sometimes, however, you are consistently prevented for being as consistent as you are trying to be.
External factors can be insistent, regardless of your intent and your training time misspent on content not relevant to your goal event leaving you some what petulant and reticent...
...sorry, I think I just had to vent
This week gone by I've missed several of my targeted training sessions, for a couple of different reasons. It kind of snuck up on me as well, I had been training pretty solidly throughout the preceding weeks and was getting into the groove, but when I look back at this week, I see the gaps. Let's take a journey down memory lane into the week that was.
Monday night is swimming night. Monday morning and The Boy is sick and the wife had to work her shift at DFO so it was decided that I should work from home. It was cool though because she would be home in time to allow me to get to the pool. We had a plan!
Swim session start time minus 2 hours: The Girl's homework assignment became known as being larger than previously expected. The short film she was to edit together for the following morning had been shot entirely on her iPhone. Cool.
All of the footage had been transferred to the computer previously; again, Cool.
Earlier in the day, I had tried to import the footage into Microsoft Movie Maker, only to discover Microsoft does not play nice with Apple files...so I converted them to a compatible format and started the import; phew!
When my work day was done, I prepared to hand over the keyboard to The Girl to finish the film, only to discover that the nicely converted files had never actually been accepted by Movie Maker. The program had just frozen and sat dormant for the past 4 hours.
It's OK, I still have time to fix this and get to the pool, I work in IT after all!
This is no problem, we'll just restart the program and import the files again. - cool
Good plan, but the reported "corrupted file types" warning Movie Maker displayed seemed to be rathor contradictory...
OK, I can work this out, almost ten years experience in IT testing, I just need to update Movie Maker, then import the files, then get to swimming, no problem. There still plenty of time!
New program version downloaded, computer restarted and the files are importing! Still an hour to go before I need to leave to get to swimming, plenty of time to give The Girl a crash course on movie making.
She's a quick study and picks it up fairly fast, fast enough to notice that some of the files she needs are missing...
It's cool, I still have some time, we just need to plug the iPhone back in, find the clips and move them across, it wasn't that difficult the first time. Umm - why is the iPhone not displaying as a hard drive on My Computer now?
I can sort this out, I do work in IT, although, I never had any formal training...no problem?
Ah HA, the phone needs to do a sync to iTunes first!
Seriously, how many apps can a teenage girl need!? Why is this taking so long!!?
Success! Missing files secured, converted and imported into the new version of Movie Maker, we are ready to do this and, if I leave right now, I can still get to swimming!
Honey, have you seen my swimmers...?
So, at around 11:30 Monday night I was putting the final credits and music to The Girl's homework and thinking, oh well, it's only one missed session this week
Tuesday - Open Night at The Boy's school, can't miss that, and you know, it's a wind trainer session that I'll be missing. I ride plenty and I can always do a solo session on the training later in the garage.
It's Wednesday and it's the second swim session of the week. I missed Monday's one so I'll make sure there are no obstacles tonight. There is no way I am not getting there tonight!
In fact, I got to the pool about 20 minutes early, it was a good ride from the city, I've got all my swimming gear and I'm ready to go. Just got to lock up my bike here and...CRAP!
So, as I begin my ride home to where I assume I've left a bike lock I think to myself, at least my swim gear will be clean an ready for Friday morning session...
Thursday nights are a run session at the Tan. Today, I have double checked, I know I have all of my training gear, I have a bike lock should I decide to ride there and I'm determined that I WILL train with the group tonight! Work's a little hectic today and we are under a bit of pressure to get some points on the board but I'm watching the clock, I know what time it'll take to get to the meeting point and I have a few options on how to get there.
Changed and ready to go (again, early today) I am just waiting for my Garmin to pick up a GPS fix so I can track all of the running I'll be doing. Not wanting to do any running without due GPS validation I start walking towards the Botanical Gardens and the week's first group training session.
Jeez, it is taking quite a while to get a solid GPS connection tonight...been walking for a while...I'll just give it a little longer.
C'mon, this is ridiculous, I'm at Federation Square now and still nothing!
Just as the green man lights to let us cross Flinders Street the connection is locked on and I'm cleared to begin running. I arrived at the night's start line with a couple minutes to spare. It was on baby.
Turned in a solid run with the Long Course group, putting into practice my run technique training and was able to hold a good pace throughout. (Yay me) Cool down run back to the office and a slow ride home as I fought off the cramping in my calves - note to self, drink more fluids during the day. However, in my defence, and based upon the week to date, who would have guessed I'd actually have trained that day?
Friday is an early morning swim session, the alarm went of at 4am - I turned it off and snuggled back in the covers, I'm not proud.
Saturday was another work day for the wife so no morning ride but I did get myself to my Tony Benson run technique session.On the cards for today were more running drills followed by a 4x500m set.
Running has never my strong point but it seems to be clicking better(?) now. Again, I was able to do a solid run block and maintain a strong pace. On the second 500 I passed Tony and he gave the following critique on my form;
"It's all looking good, just got to watch your hands".
This is in relation to my habit of relaxing my wrists too much. They should be cocked so the hands can move freely in the same direction as the swing of the arms (think of the snapping action of a drummer), mine were twisting as well.
Sunday I plan to get another run session in to finish off a week that was meant to be so much more and perhaps even stop in at the Bike Lab for coffee - I think I've earned it...
Oh, and in case you're wondering about that solo windtrainer session I mentioned earlier, I did work it in on that Tuesday night. I didn't have the night's scheduled program so I just threw together a warm up, 20km time trial and a cool down, whilst watching "Ocean's Twelve" on DVD.
After finishing my set I discovered that an inattentive but security minded relative had locked me out of the house, with no key or mobile phone. It was as I was trying to stealthily clamber through a window I'd been able to prise open and remove the fly screen from that I thought to myself, I hope this isn't going to be consistent...
Haha! Sounds pretty consistent to me!
ReplyDelete