Kenny Rogers sang in his hit “The Gambler” you gotta know when to hold em, know when to fold em, know when to walk away, know when to run.
I think of those lyrics quite often in my training for triathlon. Having been both a coached and a self-coached athlete in my 29 years in the sport, I am sometimes thinking of whether I am going too hard, too easy, too short, or too long, in my training sessions. Even with a plan in place, the mind can drift, the body can revolt the soul can wander and wonder.
There’s a lot of causes for this deviance. Sometimes it’s when I am training with people and I want to keep up or stay social. Sometimes it’s when I had shitty or inappropriate food in the couple of hours leading up to a session. Sometimes, it’s when I’ve been a bozo and not had anything to eat before a substantial workout. Sometimes it’s when I have more important stuff to do. Sometimes it’s on the verge of getting injured or sick.
So, what to do, what to do??? That’s where decades of experience and confidence can come into play. The universal training axiom of “consistency over time = success” is always the first thing to consider. It really can cut through the laziness and negative self-talk bullshit that we tell ourselves in those critical minutes, which I believe are the 10 minutes before and the first 10 minutes of a session. Those 20 minutes will usually determine if you do the workout, if you cut it short, or if you modify it on the fly. None of these three choices are evil things, unless of course they constitute more than about 10% of your training sessions. If it is more than that, then you’ll need to do some honest reflection regarding your current training program.
But how do you make that decision? If it is your body telling you NO, that’s a pretty easy decision to make. Unless it isn’t. And what I mean by that is, what if your mind is lying to your body? The best way to sort things out is to put on your favorite workout music, get into your workout wear, and go give it a try. (of course this won’t work if you are doing a swim session) I call it the 5 minute rule. If your body is still protesting, then pulling the plug is most likely the wisest choice. If, however, you are just feeling lazy or sluggish, it’s a good idea to persevere but just for another 5 minutes. After that 5 minutes, reassess how you and your body are feeling. Chances are your body will be ok with the session but your mind needs something to change. That’s when I like to honour that deviance but still do a workout, just not the one that was planned.
This happened to me on Thursday. Thursday is always trail intervals day. Some stupid foods choices two hours before, however were playing games in my tummy, and although I likely could have executed the workout as planned, I wouldn’t have been having any fun. At this point in my triathlon career, the fun factor is becoming more and more influential. Instead of doing the intervals, I changed the workout to be the same duration (about an hour) but I nixed the hard stuff, it just became an easy run where I could focus on my stride and my technique… at a super-low intensity. It was fun! And it gave me an opportunity to focus more intensely on stuff that I had been neglecting. I still got the session in. I still burned off some holiday calories. Furthermore, the easy session allowed me to totally crush my evening cycling session, something that usually suffered because of the residual fatigue from the noon hour intervals.
Gaining your experience through consistency over time is your ACE to play when you do triathlon training. It’ll give you the insight, patience, and wisdom to help you decide what to throw away and what to keep.
In that same song, Kenny also sang you never count your money, when you are sittin at the table, but that’s a lesson for another day.
