Is It Acceptable For You To Add Extra Workouts To Your Coach’s Training Plan? Rarely!

Hi folks,

Patrick at the pool counter at 5:30 am. He is almost always smiling and singing, which is a great welcome on a cold winter's morning.

I pay a coach to set my workouts based on his experience and my athletic background, combined with laboratory data such as lactate threshold and VO2 max. So why would I suggest that one might arbitrarily add a workout to his plan? The answer is that I consider it acceptable as long as it is not a physical workout, but a mental one. For instance, today I added a short early morning swim, but why?

I always sign up for triathlon training camps with a certain amount of trepidation, combined with excitement of course. At the age of 68, I tend to worry that I will not be able to keep up with the training load whilst surrounded by a bunch of very fit athletes, many of whom are less than half my age. I find that it helps if I prepare myself mentally by sticking firmly to my training program and addressing my weaknesses, one of which is the early morning swim.

Sometimes you have to share the pool with the local school swim teams, in this case The Chapel Hill High School

The AIMP Spring Triathlon Training Camp is held in Tucson each February by my coach, Chris Haute, and a number of excellent support staff. Each day at camp starts with a killer swim, with a prompt 6:00 am start, whilst sharing a lane with a bunch of crazy young athletes. My approach to preparation for this adventure is to fit in some extra early morning swims prior to the camp, as I did today. That said, after a small carboload at 4:30 am and pool entry at 5:30, I only swam a gentle half-mile. This extra workout did not raise my heart rate, but it did require that I muster the mental discipline to get out of my warm bed and jump in the cold water. I find that this kind of mental preparation makes the training camps more enjoyable, as I make one more component of the camp a normal part of my daily life.

Early morning swims are also great mental preparation for the Ironman race itself, when you are floating in a cold lake at the start line as the gun goes off at 7:00 am and you’ve been up getting ready since 4:00.

-k @FitOldDog

Today’s Workout:

WorkoutPLAN Coach: Chris Hauth

Bike

Duration: 01:30:00

Description: include 2×12′ at Z3