Scheduling a focus week

Most of us Age Groupers do this triathlon thing while holding down a standard job and making time for a family of 2.2 kids and a dog and a mortgage. Time management and scheduling become very important to successful training. So, sometimes we need to simply do a focus week and get what we can out of that week's training.

For example, you might need to go out of town for a week or so for a business trip. You can't take your bike, and you can't work in a trip(s) to the local pool. What to do? Schedule a focus week for running.

The focus week is exactly what it sounds like. You focus on one specific area. This is nothing new. I'm pretty sure Joe Friel mentions it at some point in his books or on his blog. You can do this when you feel like one sport isn't at the same level as other sports or anytime you run into some scheduling problems like a week of pool closure, a week without a bike for whatever reason, travelling, or injury. It can mean that you simply do only one sport, or you do two or all three sports. The main concept is that at least the majority of your time will be spent on one sport.  Another twist on this is to take an entire winter training period as a focus period, which many people do in order to help their swim. I've spent this entire winter focusing on the bike.

In this instance, I take a few extra minutes to write down exactly what I'm hoping to accomplish  in very specific terms. It's really a mini-training plan for the week or however long your focus period is. Some things might not be exercise related, but maybe nutrition related.

Example of a weeklong run run focus when you're stuck in a hotel during a conference with no pool or bike:

1. I'll run twice daily Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday (Mon and Fri are travel days). One workout is short and hard, and the other workout will be an easy or very moderate effort for a longer period of time. (For me personally, this is a hard 4.5 miler with some warmup and an easy 7 miler).

2. I'll swim or bike Monday morning before going to the airport. I'll run before going to the airport on Friday.

3. I'll take resistance bands to use in my room.

4. I'll limit alcohol consumption and desserts; basically just watch watch what I eat and drink all week.

5. I'll stay well hydrated during the day.

6. I'll get eight hours of sleep each night. Turning off the tv will facilitate this.

I wish I was always successful at those things on my trips! Usually, I'm a miserable failure, especially about the desserts because I have a serious sweet tooth! 

Another example is what I'm dealing with right now. The pool I swim at is closed all next week. As luck had it, the forecast all this week was rain, and I hate running in the rain. Also, my swim volume needs to really pick up and get on par with the bike and swim at this point because I focused all winter on bike and run. So, this is the perfect week for a swim focus! I didn't figure this out until Monday morning on the bike trainer, but that was early enough to adapt my schedule to a swim focus. Here is the basic premise of my swim focus week.

1* Family has absolute priority this week.

1. I'll focus on the swim this week. Instead of running at lunch, I'll swim. I want to do 4x3000yd workouts for a total of 12,000 yards this week.  I need to listen to my body for injury and adapt accordingly, but simply being tired is not a reason to cut. (Note: I was averaging about 4,000 yds per week for the past four weeks, so this is a HUGE increase and could easily result in injury if I'm not careful).

2. Swim workouts will consist of longer, lower intensity sets (1500, 1000, 500) in order to build general endurance, allow sufficient recovery, reduce injury, and build my mind-set back up to swimming a 1500.

3. I will maintain my bike volume as much as possible (Another note: my wife had a baby last week, so we have a newborn in the house along with a 2 1/2 year old boy. Joy! but hard on sleep and work and PT schedules).

4. I will run at least 12 miles this week in one way or another, preferably in 2x10k runs.

5. This swim focus week will set a foundation for a bike/run focus next week in which I will bike/run in the morning and then run the standard 10k route at lunch.

So that's a real-world swim focus week. So far, I've done the swims and one of the two runs. My bike volume didn't keep up because I wasn't sleeping enough. And I've eaten way too much because good friend and neighbors are being really nice to us! Such is life. I'm making the most of this week that is AWESOME to have a healthy newborn baby boy and a healthy wife but difficult when considering just triathlon training.

Update: The extra swimming is really stressing my body. I have been cutting out a few workouts because I am feeling really fatigued. Wow! This just validates that swimming really does take alot out of you during the triathlon race, even if you don't feel that tired.