Three reasons and more why Short workouts ARE worth it!

Until last year, I had a bad habit of ditching a workout if I figured only had 30 minutes or so. This was especially true on the cold mornings when I wanted to sleep in and kept resetting my alarm!

But there are good reasons to do a 30 minute workout, many of them outlined in the Triathlete.com article "Twenty Minute Workouts" at http://triathlon.competitor.com/2012/04/training/20-minute-workouts_24024

I think the most meaningful reason to do a 20-30 minute workout, especially if it's the only thing your going to do for the day. Specifically...

1. CONSISTENCY factor plays a role.

2. Maybe you need to have an active recovery day.

3. Maybe you are just having scheduling problems but want to do something.

In any case, it is indeed worth it to put your gear on and do a 20 - 30 minute workout.

A few additional types of workouts are included in the Triathlete.com article I mentioned.

But what kind of workouts can you do in 20-30 minutes? Here's what  Triathlete.com has to say...

The Filler – Simply swim, ride, or run at an easy tempo for 20 minutes. This is a great workout to do when you want to avoid the guilt of doing nothing but you’re not mentally or physically ready for anything challenging.
Tabata Intervals – Swim, ride, or run at an easy tempo for 16 minutes, then complete 8 x 20-second all-out sprints with 10-second passive recoveries between sprints.
Fartlek Intervals – Sprinkle 5 to 10 fast 30-second efforts throughout an otherwise moderate, steady-pace workout.
Threshold Session – Warm up for five minutes at a comfortable tempo, then go for 15 minutes at anaerobic threshold intensity (the fastest pace you could hold for one hour in a race).
Progression Workout – Swim, ride, or run for 15 minutes at a steady, moderate pace, then blast the last five minutes.
Time Trial – Swimming: Warm up, then swim 800 meters (875 yards) as fast as you can. Cool down as long as necessary to make the total workout 20 minutes. Cycling: Warm up, then ride 5 km as fast as you can. Cool down as long as necessary to make the total workout 20 minutes. Running: Warm up, then run 1 mile as fast as you can. Cool down as long as necessary to make the total workout 20 minutes.

They left out a basic weight-lifting session, which should normally NOT be done on a single-time-only basis, so I can see why it didn't make their list. One 20-minute routine I use the weight-lifting routine the 20-60-40 Weight Training Routine for Olympic and Sprint Triathlon. Full disclosure that I wrote that book. But I really do use that routine for a 20-minute workout at lunch. It is fast and easy and provides consistency during the winter, no matter what the southeast Idaho mountain weather will bring.

Another option is to take a look at some of the Yellowstone Time Trials videos that are about 25 minutes long. I made these specifically for those cold mornings that I didn't want to get up and get on the trainer. I have an additional advantage that I get to relive the awesome warm, sunny days that I did the video capture, but I think anyone will appreciate the beautiful weather I had on at least one day (the other day was quite smoky from fires).

Excitement of a new training season

I'm quite excited about the start of this new training season. I think I'm actually starting it this time, instead of a few failed starts in the past few weeks, all thwarted by scheduling problems.

What's so great about a new season?

1. Another chance to put together another project, almost from scratch. I rarely get something right on the first try (70.3 race!), but I make big improvements in the second try. I really think I can hit a 5:30 on whatever 70.3 I do this summer.

2. After a while off, it feels good to break a big sweat again. On the bike this morning, I kept the fan off but did a few minutes of high intensity intervals (the pyramids in "Local Hero" Sufferfest to be exact). I broke a big sweat, and it felt great!

3. The chance to get into new, GOOD HABITS. And break the old, bad habits. I really want to get into good pedaling habits this winter. No more mashing.

4. I get to see how God made our bodies to react to inputs. Watching fat melt off and muscles tighten up is very interesting to me.

5. The soreness when you're not used to a workout. I'm a bit sore this morning after my first weights workout yesterday (first time since March or so!). It feels great to be just a bit sore and remember where all those muscles are.

6. The rush of being back in the pool and feeling the water all around me. I miss being in the water!

What are some of the things you look forward to when starting a new season or getting back into a training program?

The kinks are almost out....moving into a full-on training schedule

I've been stuck in a rut of definitely not enough training since August or so, each month declining further and further into the abyss. I gained 20 pounds. I lost the ability to run six miles every day for five days in  a row. I doubt I could swim 1,000 yards straight through right now. And I can't be on the bike trainer for more than hour, compared to high-intensity two hour rides last winter.

But now I have a couple of weeks under my belt of training. I finally cut down the wine drinking to about two glasses per week. I am watching what I eat again, although not necessarily stopping anything but more aware of what I'm doing.  My body clock is nearly completely changed to early morning wake-ups.  I've worked out all the kinks in my new gear and my routines early in the morning.  

I'm ready to start hitting it hard!

Here are a few quick tips for the first phase of training and those first 2-3 weeks of training when you're just starting out or getting back into it.

1. Consistency is the key! Consider cutting your workout in half for volume and intensity before you think you just can't even start a workout.

2. If you are really tired, start the workout with an absolute minimum effort in mind. You'll find after a few minutes that you get into a groove and pick it up a bit. Before you know, you have a good workout completed.

3. Don't start a new "diet" the same time you start a new training schedule. You'll probably find that you are absolutely starving many times during the day in the first couple of weeks. That's because your body is adapting to the new demands and needs energy. Feed the beast! The massive hunger "moments" should subside by week four or five back into something more natural for you.

4. Adjust your alcohol, tobacco, and soda intake right now (yes..in direct conflict with #3!). I'm not talking about drastic cuts or stopping cold-turkey. Adjust to 50% or so to keep the empty calories to a minimum, which will help you see initial results more quickly, which feeds the motivation monster just when you're starting to wonder if it's worth it.

5. Don't get discouraged when you have a hard time getting a workout started. This three weeks is about getting your body, schedule/routine, and gear ready for easy start-ups down the road. This is an investment period when you put things into place to make everything easy to maintain consistency and simply get workouts started in the next phase.

6. Write down some data points every three or four days. Include your weight, time for a standard run or bike route, and a 500 yard swim. Don't worry about improving your times right now. You are getting data points now to compare three or four months from now. It's incredibly motivating to see how much weight you lose and how much faster you get!

God and triathlon

A perfect relation between God and triathlon...

"When Dick ran, he pushed Rick along in a wheelchair. Rick was dependent on his dad in order to finish the race. He couldn’t do it without him.
We see a parallel between their story and our own Christian life. Just as Rick was dependent on his dad, we are dependent on Christ to complete our Christian race."  


Read more at.Our Daily Bread.

If you don't know the story of Dick Hoyt, you really need to google up his story... or just read this. I had him as a desktop when my first boy was born....very inspirational.

How to get back into routine after being gone?

I'm back home after almost three weeks gone for annual Marine Corps Reserve training. I was having problems getting back into a routine in July, and that continued in August.  While I was gone, I had one good week of consistent running. I couldn't bike or swim, and I'm lucky to have run at all. The daily schedule was hard to break away from. If I don't get back into good, consistent training, I'm going to start going backwards instead of just not improving.

So, how does one go about getting back into it 100%? Right now, I can't imagine a 350 point week like I had in March or so. I can barely imagine getting in 25 miles of running and nothing else. I'd like to get back on the bike, but I think other things have priority right now.

And that's it all boils down to....priority! Once you sit down and agree with yourself and your family that a priority will be placed on triathlon time, it happens fairly easily. I haven't done that in the past couple of months since a big effort at the Pacific Crest Triathlon in June. Honestly, I have put other things at the top of the priority list, too, and I'm comfortable with it. I just wish there was more time in the day!

Along those lines of determining priority, my hopes of doing the Utah Xterra race in late September were dashed when my Marine Corps Reserve drill date got changed to that weekend. I'm kind of bummed because  I wanted to do that race and had already told myself that it was just going to be a recon race, one that I do to get the feel of it and plan a big effort for that race next year. I'm in no shape to expect good results, so the recon effort was the perfect answer. In any case, I have prioritized my drills above triathlon, so that makes that an easy change and one more thing to towards next year.

So, what do you do to break the no-training cycle and get back into it?

The Good Side Lost A True Warrior over the weekend

Sunday morning brought tragic news to me. A friend, fellow Marine, San Diego Policeman and a great warrior for the good side was killed Saturday while on duty with the San Diego Police. Jeremy Henwood was a great man and will be missed.

Therefore, running has been the therapy of choice. I went through the five stages of grief every two miles or so and finished three full grief "cycles" on a six mile run yesterday.

Hometown race on Saturday, BUT....

But I haven't been prepping at all. I have maybe three workouts in the last four weeks since my last race.

I've heard of post-race blues, but this my first experience with them. Like I said three weeks ago, I just can't find the motivation. I'm also travelling alot for work and fun that is causing some schedule issues. It's also interesting that I haven't gained any weight with no workouts and eating and drinking whatever I feel like.

I'm wondering how others deal with this.

Still not 100% mentally after Pacific Crest Tri

It's been two weeks since the Pacific Crest race, and I still can't find any intensity during workouts. And the workouts I manage to get in are quite short. Example: over the weekend at Marine Corps drill, running barely four miles at sea level was nearly killing me. I got on the bike trainer this morning and could only manage 12 miles and 45 minutes before running out motivation.  A 1,000 yard swim today was nice, only because I decided I shouldn't expect more than 1,000 yards as the FIRST SWIM IN TWO WEEKS(!).

What the heck is going on? I was hoping to have a great race next weekend here in my hometown, the first time my schedule has let me do this race. Not sure what's going to happen.

The psychology game is definitely the toughest piece to get together sometimes.


Maybe I need to get this book!!!!

The Simple Ways to Sabatoge Your "A" Race

I've been busy with some travelling for work the past two or three weeks, and there was a holiday in there somewhere, too. Days fade into each other after too much rain. And there it is, the truth of the matter in two short sentences.

I have done more to sabotage my training plan for my "A" race than I could possibly imagine. None of it on purpose, of course. But all of it is my own doing.  

So, while running today (I have actually run my 10k loop three days in a row!), I came up with the first few of probably 7-10 ways that you, too, can sabotage your own race. Here are the first few. This is a look into my real world at this point.

1. Schedule your "A" race within three months of the birth of your child. This will do absolute wonders for everyone in your house. Of course, you prioritize the baby before your training and race (at least you should!), but the lost sleep and missed workouts start to creep into your conscious as something you wish wasn't your new norm. Then that piles onto the dumb comments you say while stressed out because the baby is screaming that awful "baby scream" for the last 15 minutes (hint: feed him, will work 90% of the time).  And then you have the car ride with a screaming baby and stops every 90 minutes for breastfeeding....I'm looking forward to making a ten hour ride into 14 hours.

2. Schedule your "A" race for June if you live in the Pacific Northwest and you don't like to ride in the rain or the cold. I can count this year's outside bike rides on my fingers at this point because of all the rain, wind, late winter conditions, and generally crap weather. So, when those conditions are outside, you can guarantee my bike is not outside. I can run in -20 with snow, but the minute it is cold, windy, and wet, I'm going to make it a swim day inside.  Speaking of swimming, you won't get any open water swim practice because everything is flooding in the spring, and the water is just to damn cold (45deg?) and generally dangerous to think about getting in. My psychology and confidence is in a downward spiral right now because of my lack of following my training plan.  At this point, I'm just happy to do something that makes me break a sweat.

3. Break your indoor trainer eight weeks prior to the race and during the crappiest weather of the year. Because you will now not ride a bike trainer for three weeks til you finally break down and buy one, this will guarantee that you lose nearly all the bike fitness and progress you made by busting your ass all winter. Refer to #2 on why you can't just ride your bike outside.

4. Schedule as much work travel as you can during the 3-8 weeks prior to your "A" race. Build period? What's that? Combined with the broken trainer in #3, you now certainly won't ride your bike very often. Nor will you get in any consistent running of good quality because you don't know good courses in the towns your visiting, and you're generally downtown in the smog and traffic anyway, and who wants to run in that crap when you're used to running in perfect mountain air? You might find a pool and be close to it if you're lucky...I got lucky, but it was so cool to then swim in a 50m outdoor pool that I don't think I can get back into the 25y indoor pool back here at home. 

More later............and remember, no matter how bad you got it, somebody always has it worse. But the guy at the end of that line is Guy Sajer.

Consistency...some more thoughts

Yes, more about consistency. I struggle with consistency, so I think about it alot. With a baby in the house, my consistency has gone away, many times based on the whatever the baby happens to do at night.   While cruising the internet for a bit, I came across a couple of must-reads about consistency that I'd thought I'd share:

http://www.slowtwitch.com/Training/General_Training/Consistency_killers_769.html
This article is a few years old but definitely worth reading. Dan Empfield gives some great and REALISTIC  insight into those little things that can keep you as consistent as possible.

http://www.joefrielsblog.com/2011/04/never-miss-a-workout.html
Joe Friel talks about consistency just a couple of days ago. There are some very interesting scientific findings from Randy Wilber at the Olympic Training Center presented in this article. Specifically....after three weeks of no training, you lose 7% of your lactate threshhold. Wow! That should help you get at least three workouts per week.  And there there is "Even just reducing the number of aerobic workouts from 5 days per week to 2 causes a loss of significant amounts of fitness [Brynteson]. And reducing the intensity of your aerobic training below 70% of VO2max has been shown to also cause a loss of aerobic fitness with a decrease in aerobic capacity, time to exhaustion and heart size [Hickson]."  The take-away being that you should get in at least three good, hard workouts per week at a minimum to at least maintain some of your fitness. The final gem that Joe gives us as an answer to a reader's question in the comments section is "Using the WKO+ model, a highly fit person takes about 5 hours of training to make up for one zero (1 missed workout). For a low-fit athlete it takes about 20 minutes."  Think about that next you are going to blow off a workout.

For me, consistency is all about establishing a routine that puts everything in place to make those first few minutes as easy as possible. Many people always say that if you can get the first five minutes out of the way, you're on your way to at least some sort of workout.  Here's a few examples from me that help create consistency...as much consistency as I have anyway(!).

A few years ago, when I was working out right after I got home from work, I noticed my probability of completing a workout greatly diminished if I wasn't out of the house in five minutes after getting there; so, obviously the basic goal was to just get out of the house within five minutes and make do with whatever happened after that.

I have a locker at the gym to hold my goggles and swim trunks. If I at least make it to the gym, I'm guaranteed to have my gear there for a swim. I also have a pair of swim trunks and goggles at home so that I never have to take those trunks/goggles out of the gym. The locker costs $45/year, but it's worth every penny simply because of the gear availability.

I keep a pair of shoes, shirt, and shorts at work so that I always have some sort of gear to workout during lunch.

For afternoon workouts, I use the mantra "just get the first five minutes, and you'll get the rest of the workout." It works every time! Unfortunately, that mantra has only about 50% success rate of getting me out of bed on those days that I don't get going easily.

I take about 30 minutes on Sunday evening or Monday morning to plan out my workouts so that I will actually hit the planned workouts. I no longer have the double-book problem of having a planned a good run at lunch the same day I have a lunch meeting for work.

Adapt to your feelings, both physical and mental. If I don't feel like running, then I reschedule to a bike or swim to get in a workout. If I'm not having fun, why am I doing it? What I really love about triathlon is the varying workouts that can be done. With three types of workouts (long and easy, race distance and near race pace, and short and hard) to choose from for three sports, there are nine different workouts to choose from.  Take advantage of the variety!

Another very important point that Dan points out on the Slowtwitch article is that you should always think about what your effort level is going to do to the next workout.  It's great to go hard and long every now and then, but know how it will impact the rest of your workouts.

Feeling committed = SNOW!

I wrote a couple of weeks ago about feeling a bit more committed to my workouts than last year. Today, that rang very true. At 11:00am I ate a large bagel and three brownies that were laying around the office area. Mmmmm...damn they were good! The sun was shining brightly through the window as I wiped the chocolate off my cheek. Then at 11:45, as I was getting my gear ready to run, another storm blew in....and now it was 30deg, windy, and very wet snow falling very fast.  I still ran my regular 10k route....mostly because I just felt like I want to get back into a consistent mode after the last few days.

I always put this type of workout into the "double" group. I would have normally bailed but I went, and lots of other people probably bailed today, too, (or whenever their last bad weather day was). Anyway, I consider this kind of workout getting a double affect of just doing it. In fact, today was more like a triple because I was really tired, the weather and footing really sucked, and I didn't see anyone else out there.........and then I had three more of those damn brownies later in the day!

New level of committment?

On business trips out of town, I generally don’t do the grand workout sessions I plan. Instead, I rationalize away the big efforts, and they turn into some 30 minute cruise that is barely worth the effort.

Not so this week. I’m out of town on business, and I am doing the big workouts I dream up (at least the one today!), and I feel great. I’m not out at dinner eating a big steak followed by a huge chocolate cake. I’m going to be getting to bed early and getting up early to hit the big workouts while I have chance away from little Paul who sometimes likes to wake-up early.

I guess that means I’ve found a new level of commitment. At least, this has become a much more consistent lifestyle for me…this getting up early for a big workout. And I like it.

By the way, I love running on a cold, dark morning with no wind and no snow. It’s kind of weird, but I feel like I’m the only person awake at that time of the day (and nobody is around to be seen!). Just me trotting through the darkness. I like it. It’s not as great as being out on a great sunny day, but I like the cold, dark morning with no wind……as long as I’m dressed right.

A new week starts tomorrow...thank goodness

I have a bit of problem in that I like to schedule out a week of workouts, and when I miss two workouts, then the week falls apart. I don't know how to fix it yet, but if you find yourself wondering why you have a great first half of the week and then a crappy second half, take a look at the missed workouts. I'll bet you find a trend.

This week's training fell apart. I was all set mentally for a great week of training. I got up early Monday for the bike workout. I ran in the snow at lunch on Monday.....and then I felt the calf muscle cramping up and feeling really tight Monday afternoon. I don't know what happened, maybe it was running on my toes more or something like that in compensation for really icy roads. Anyway, I haven't run since that Monday lunch run, and it's just barely getting to the point where I want to get back to a run. The no running then killed my motivation for biking in the motivation.....kind of funny, if you would talk to me at night, I couldn't wait to get up in the morning for a ride; then the alarm went off and I couldn't care less about it. I have to learn to beat that mental game like that and accept that no running doesn't mean no progress...it just means I don't run and all bike or swim can BUT DON"T HAVE TO make up for the lost running.

I chose to win today.

A while back I wrote a post about "choosing to win." Those are the times when you really don't want to workout but you do it anyway.  It's when you put yourself outside of your comfort zone, and therefore also when you stand to gain the most. Sometimes it's simply breaking a pattern or getting out of a rut. Sometimes it's about pushing yourself to new performance levels during a workout. You CHOOSE to make yourself better rather than playing a victim card of some sort and laying down mentally. This is an important point because it keeps you mentally in control of what happens to you.

Today I was really tired at lunch and didn't want to run the regular 10k route. I had several good, valid reasons not to go. I was really tired from adding about 35% volume into the week, and we have an hour of PT scheduled for my USMCR drill on Saturday, so a makeup session is guaranteed.  But I grabbed my gear and changed, thinking I would just do three miles. I did all six miles.

The way I see it, this is a double workout. Not only did I not bail, but I did the full-on workout that was scheduled. Instead of being lazy and not burning 800 calories, I burned those 800 calories.....for a total of 1,600 calorie difference in the day. That's the sort of thinking that gets me to do the workouts when I don't want to.

So I chose to win today. I won a mental battle. But more importantly, I won the battle for consistency that will build the foundation for good performances next summer.