Scheduling and planning

Planning my training has always been something I enjoyed. I've never done it well, and it has been mostly cutting and pasting from books, but I've enjoyed it.

In the past, my planning has consisted of:

1. finding a training plan for x weeks
2. count out x weeks prior to the race I was looking to peak for
3. play around with scheduling and workouts a little bit
4. fill in my time while I was waiting to start the program with other training

This worked well to get me through my first few triathlons, but it never really got me anywhere. I wasn't looking at the big picture.

I had the pleasure of attending a coaching seminar with Philippe Bertrand last fall, and it really opened my eyes to what I should be doing versus what I was doing. He spoke a lot about looking at the full year ahead, not just the next race. Determine what you need to work on now to get you to that race, and what you should continue working on when it's done. Set out short, medium and long term goals and building a plan to meet those goals.

So the plan. I'm going to set my sights on running the half (maybe full) marathon at the Ottawa Race Weekend in 2012. That gives me 16 months to break into cycles and figure out what I need to focus on in each.

I'll start with my general plan, and update with more as I figure it out

Feb 2011 - May 2011

• take my swim training out of maintenance mode and work back up to a decent amount of weekly swimming
• Get on the bike and start building some bike fitness.
• continue running 40ish km per week
• continue weight training

May 2011 - Sept 2011

• full on triathlon training
• cut back on weight training slightly

Sept 2011 - Dec 2011

• start cutting back on swimming and biking
• focus on rest and recovery from the busy tri season

Dec 2011 - May 2012

• Running, running and more running
• damage control (ie. trying to stay injury free)