Dealing With Structure...And Digestive Issues

Having a coach and definitive training plan has been an enlightening experience. It's also been a little bit hard to get used to over the past week or so because it's meant adhering to a schedule. When I met with Brian, he said that one of the most important parts of training is consistency. This means getting accustomed to a relatively regular training schedule. For example, understanding that Mondays are swim days. And Wednesdays are long run days.

Last week this was especially difficult because it was probably the busiest week of the year at work. We had the single biggest event in our calendar year (a DR test, for anyone who might be familiar). This made sticking to the schedule tougher than I anticipated. Since I worked all Saturday, I wasn't able to get an open water swim in and ended up running instead.

Yet another adjustment is the fact that each run session now has a specific goal. I'm used to just getting out there for mileage and throwing in a sprint day about once per week. Now, there are tempo runs, intervals, and a long run that's supposed to be done at a specific pace. Since performance now matters in these workouts, I need to start planning pre-run nutrition. Last week, I was hit with major digestive issues during two different runs because I was trying to maintain an 8:30min/mile pace on relatively long runs (11.6 miles and a 10k). If I had been simply running those distances to finish, I'm confident I wouldn't have had any issues whatsoever. But the fact is, I was demanding more from my body than usual. If I'm going to continue to do so (and I fully intend to), I'll need to put a lot more thought into the rest of my habits.


On tap for today

Edit on 6/5/2012: Guys, this is how dedicated I was to that swim. Well, dedicated to the swim and lazy with the math. Anyway, the pool I use is 16 yards long and I did 100 laps. Yesssss.