A Little Too Ambitious
My marathon began in February and was going unbelievably well all the way through March. Once April approached I was planning on making a few changes. Not to the training plan itself but I was hoping to add some more activities to my schedule in addition to the training.
First of all, I joined an open-water swim club that will start meeting twice a week this summer. Unfortunately, my swimming has taken a back seat to the marathon training so I figured that April would be a good time to get back into a regular swim routine again.
On top of that, I also decided to make the “30 Days Of Biking” pledge again this year. This is a pledge that you will bike every day in the month of April. The idea behind this is to get people biking on a regular basis as early in the season as possible in hopes that they will continue riding the rest of the year. The distance can be anything but when I did this in 2013, I gave myself a personal minimum of ten miles per day. I managed to complete it but I was also training for a century ride at the time so I would have been riding a lot anyway.
So I decided that it would be a good idea to add three swims per week and a daily bike ride of at least ten miles to my schedule. All of this was in addition to my marathon training which is also steadily increasing by a few miles each week. Great idea! Needless to say, if your training is going well, it is probably not a good idea to mess with it. Especially for me since I have history of starting training plans and quickly getting sick of them and making up my own.
By the end of the first half-week in April, things were going ‘okay’. By the second day, it was obvious that 10 miles a day was not going to happen so I created what I called the ‘Flex-Plan’. Instead of ten miles per day, I could ride five one day and make up for it by riding fifteen another day. I was also not able to make it to the pool once in that time. Unforeseen things such as my daughter’s orchestra concert, driving my daughters to and from swim practice, etc. were also adding to the stress. I decided to drop the swim requirement.
By the end of the first full week, I was maintaining the bike rides and mileage but decided to decrease the ten mile minimum down to one. This became a pretty manageable routine. I could sneak in a ten minute ride and not even work up a sweat. Even after a 20 mile run, I was able to easily fit in my ride. Unfortunately, I woke up this morning (the 21st) and realized that I forgot to ride yesterday. The pledge has been broken! My first reaction was ‘good riddance’.
The shackles have been broken and I am once again free to concentrate entirely on running!
