The Struggle is Real

This lady often finds herself on the struggle bus for a number of reasons, some admittedly are the result of my own poor decisions, some completely out of my control. That's a blog for another day.

Today I struggle with Mondays. I have spent my day trying to understand why I am so tired and feeling run down, and honestly like the northern Michigan winter has settled in my bones. For some context, I designed and built myself a beautiful training program, a program which meets my marathon training needs, my triathlon and strength needs and just to be super innovative includes a Monday bike/run bric element. So cool, front load the week right, energizing.

As of week 4, I'm thinking not so much. For years I took Mondays as my rest day. I thought it was because of my mandatory staff meeting during the prime training hours of 3:30-5:00pm, followed by other work obligations. I wanted to change this and adjust my training plan because having taken my rest day the first day of the week was kind of a bummer, low milage for days as I am obsessively adding up miles in my training log (and I admit, cyber stalking other athletes on Strava, only to see that I am not keeping up). I also theorized that taking my rest day on, say Thursday would be a nice little reward for myself, which I could look forward to as I geared up for the inevitable long ride and run combo on the weekend.

Designwise this was a perfect idea. On Training Peaks it looks great. In real life it feels like garbage, and it has taken me all day to figure it out. Today should have been the perfect Monday for my Bric. We had the day off school for a mid-winter break. I had a bike fitting this morning on my new beautiful ride (more on her later). I even had a beautiful lunch of huervos rancheros. But I just did not have a quality workout in me. I tried more caffeine, I set up the new bike on the trainer. I just couldn't muster the energy.

Then I did the obvious thing and considered last week's training and realized why Mondays really are the most logical rest day, and it has nothing to do with my work life and everything to do with my weekend training. Over the work week I average about 1 hour 20 minutes of training a day over 4 days, often in 2 disciplines along with some strength training, so less than an hour in any given discipline. On the weekends I will do my long bike, last week it was an hour and a half, and a long run, it was and hour 13 minutes, (this is pretty light right now). Eventually the long run will get up to 3 and half hours and the bike at peak training later this summer. . . 7 hours. I also shoveled heavy snow for an hour on Sunday (I'm counting that as strength training).

So, based on my limited math skills, it looks like, just last week I completed 41% of my training in just 2 days. Over the course of the next months leading up to Ironman Mont Tremblant, all my training will increase, but I expect that the percentage of training that happens on those priceless weekend days will only increase as well. Monday rest days are back. So friends, that doesn't really get me off the stuggle bus, and I did have to revise my beautiful training plan, but I do feel like with some reflection and by really taking the time to understand what I am feeling there is a solution, its just not quite a pretty as I hoped.

Train hard, and rest hard!

Speaking of poor decisions, this is a good way to let the northern Michigan winter settle in your bones, not recommended.