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Friday, October 28, 2016

For love of the game

Coach Liz is as much a master of the mental aspects of training and racing as she is the physical part. She re-posted this slide the other day. It's from a psychologist. Unfortunately, I didn't catch the doctor's name, and I don't make it a point to be on Twitter. If you want to get more of this, follow Liz on Twitter.

My normal process for training is:
1.) I log into TrainingPeaks and see what my weekly volume looks like. I do this, so I can plan my days. I know if I need to get up early to ride or run. I know if I have to work around appointments. But, I also know if I need to plan my nutrition differently for that day.

2.) I know this is old school, but I print off my workouts. I print them off to enter them into garmin connect. I've tried to go from screen to screen, and printing them is just plain easier.

Once I do that, I upload my workouts into my Garmin. I know my schedule. I don't log into TP again. (Once my workouts are done, they upload automatically to TP. I enter my notes at that point, but there's no reason for my to look at my workouts).

Imagine my surprise, when for absolutely no reason.....I log into TrainingPeaks and see that my workouts had all been deleted.


These were workouts that I had the printed the pages.  TrainingPeaks is set up where it's not easy to delete a workout. It's definitely not easy to accidentally delete a workout, let alone an entire week.

I stared at the screen. I was all packed up to go swim and do my strength workout. I emailed Liz.

Her response was "You're taking time off".

Ok. I didn't really feel like responding. Here's what I know about Liz (from working with her for almost 3 years), she knows things. I know it's a combination of looking at data and being perceptive about people.

So, I didn't bother asking her why. I've had a cold (still do). It's not a bad one, and not in my lungs. I can only assume that she decided my body has had enough and needs time off; enough stress, enough illness, enough.

She told me to get in touch with her on the 26th to talk about how I was feeling. I decided against it. She has training in my plan starting on the 31st. I thought, "I'll take the week off. Maybe I'll even take more time off. I'll see where I am on the 30th".

It's my birthday week. It wasn't super fun being sick, but out of nowhere my schedule completely opened up.

I'm going to keep being off and doing WHATever. I'll see you on Strava when I feel like training again.


Interesting facts about my birthday:

1.) I share my birthday with Jon Cleese. Since I'm a huge Monty Python fan, this is the coolest thing in the entire world. I genuinely get sad when people miss my Monty Python references.

2.) I'm a baseball fan. My favorite movies are usually baseball movies; in particular, this one. (Little known Tea fact, when I was younger, I collected baseball cards).  In 2004, I had left my job in April. I was currently unemployed (other than getting the business started). In my previous job, I traveled extensively. I had so many miles built up that me and the boys went on vacation for free. On October 27th, 2004, the Red Sox won the World Series. If you're not a baseball fan, that's no big deal. BUT, if you are, you probably remember where you were and what you were doing that day. Me and the boys were in our room, sitting on the bed, watching the game. I remember thinking, "Well done, Sox. Well done."