For the love and hate of a training plan
How the training plan lifts us up, steadies us and drives us insane
You set the alarm clock for the painfully early crack-o-dawn on Sunday morning. You have to get your long run in…Again! You had to go long last week, you have to go long next week. It takes hours and you’re tired. No more sleeping in and reading the comics with your coffee and bagel – no you have committed to a race. The clock is ticking and each day brings more work, longer runs, harder effort…
You’re tired from not getting enough sleep. You are missing family time. You’re avoiding fun activities and events because you have to train. On top of all this you feel like crap. Everything hurts all the time and you are overwhelmed by a physical and mental exhaustion that you carry around like a lead albatross.
Then some jerk, like me, says, “When the going gets tough, stick with your plan.”
…
This time of year my many of you are in the later weeks of your marathon training plans for fall races. You are entering what I affectionately call the ‘dark place’. It is the dark place because the stress of training takes over your life and starts to crowd out everything else. You get tunnel vision.
When I say “Stick with your plan” I mean that when things get hard it’s good to simplify. Don’t think too much or you will drive yourself crazy. Just get up each day and do what’s on the plan. This takes the responsibility off of your big brain and puts it on the simple construct of a plan.
You don’t have to worry about results, your goals, your aspirations. You just do what the plan says to do today and everything else will take care of itself.
That’s how a good training plan can be a life preserver in the dark times.
It has always baffled me why people put so much stress and value on a training plan. In my mind I can whip up a good marathon training plan in 20 minutes. In my mind doing the training and executing and staying healthy and keeping my head in the game – those are the hard bits. The plan is just a piece of paper or spreadsheet.
What I’m missing is the fact that the humble training plan becomes a vehicle for many channels of self realization. A good training plan is also an inspirational vehicle, a planning tool and a sometimes a curse. It’s a key. It’s an anchor. It’s a silent coach. It’s a heckler of your worst nightmares.
Inspiration in planning.
The plan, when you first create it or embrace it, is an enabler of your goals and dreams. You wake up one day and say “I want to run a marathon.” You register. Now the question is “How?” The answer is the plan.
Without a plan you are like a boat drifting about aimlessly hoping to someday bump into your goals.
A good plan tells you how you are going to get to your goal and in doing so takes all the stress of the unknown out of the process. Maybe you thought you couldn’t do it before, but now, here in black and white, is the step-by-step proof that you can. Validation of your goal!
It works the other way as well. The planning process can tell you whether you are in a position to reach your goal. You may look at the plan and realize that there is no way for you to actually accomplish the steps given your starting point and therefore you should adjust your goal, or at least know it is at risk.
I typically, and gleefully, over-plan my campaigns. I’m like a hungry man at the all-you-can-eat buffet. I load up the miles and the workouts. In my mind’s eye I’m an athlete capable of doing all these miles and paces. The reality is that I usually discover I’m not, and I can’t. The plan has to be realistic or it will get tossed out in three weeks.
It may take a few failed attempts at over-planning before you come to understand the reality of constraints in your life. It’s easy to say you’re committed to a plan until you have to get out of bed at 5:00AM and run for 4 hours.
Once you have found a balanced and fair plan that doesn’t assume a ridiculous commitment of your resources it brings happiness and clarity. That’s why you are always asking me for my plan. I get it.
When the plan stalks you like a tyrannosaur…
The problem comes when you can’t keep up with the plan. Then it is out there mocking you, reminding of the schedule you are NOT keeping. This happens when you get injured or skip a workout or life gets in the way. The plan ceases to be a comfort then and instead becomes a harpy.
When this happens there are few things that can happen. You can throw the plan away. You can try to catch up. You can adjust the plan.
If you throw the plan away you now are lost in the middle of the ocean with no compass. This doesn’t typically end well.
A very logical, but worse decision is to try to catch up. You might think “I’ll run a double work out! I’ll run extra days! I’ll just go longer next time!” It doesn’t work that way. You can’t cram for a race. There is no validity in trying to catch up. Let those missed workouts go.
The right thing to do, as uninspiring as it may sound, is to adjust the plan. There are two valid ways to do this. First, if you have only missed a couple workouts you can just ignore those and keep going on the plan, do what you can. Second, if you’ve missed too much, or you really can’t keep up, scale the plan back.
Depending on how far you have made it through the plan you may have already attained 60 – 80% of the fitness. I will typically see this when an injury manifests with only a few weeks left in the plan. You can’t get that last long run in, or you miss a week late in the program. It’s ok. One workout or one week isn’t going to impact your fitness dramatically.
When this happens you shift your focus not to building fitness and speed, but to taking the fitness and speed you have already attained to the starting line. Your plan needs to be adjusted to “get to the starting line”.
This is where the maturity of experience comes in. The humble plan can point the way but you need to be in control when things go sideways and use the plan as a tool. Don’t let it use you.
People stress out over whether or not they have a ‘good’ plan or the ‘right’ plan. I think that most plans you will find are reasonable. A reasonable plan vigorously and well executed will beat a perfect plan any day.
And, that’s why you need a coach, but that’s a story for another day.
See you out there.
Chris,