Trains, Travels

Right now every blog and news site around the world is putting together their year in review. It would be remiss of me not to join in, I’ve checked the archives and I certainly attempted it before. The emphasis is on attempt as they read like lists of training and racing without much to take forward. I want this year’s review to be a little more personal and point you to my season review on Endurance Corner if you’re after training specifics.

Yet training is where I start. The year began with Epic Camp, riding the length of New Zealand over sixteen days. The atmosphere and encouragement those camps foster is always a positive experience, navigating an entire country took it to a new level. I’d reached the fitness where a week of Epic was fine, so this year they’d thrown in two! Physically and mentally challenging beyond previous camps somehow I got through seeing amazing scenery on route.

I fully appreciated the real value of this and all the other camps I’ve done on a recent ride. The weather wasn’t much, but with a group of capable cyclists we could push each other. It’s not that I don’t work when training alone, but I work better in a group. Swim, bike or run I can see the value of having a team. They may have their own goals, but each member pushes the others a little bit further. Were I to take this as a lesson it’s not about exotic training camps, it’s about finding situations and people that make you work.

Throughout life I’ve sought stability, believing a certain level of income would bring happiness. I was an accumulator of things and an avoider of experiences. A couple of years travelling destroyed that viewpoint, I’ve returned to the UK as someone who relishes challenges and seeks out change. Despite knowing this the end of my hiatus from reality brought me to a low point of the year. There was the positive of being amongst family and friends, but a self-indulgent regret I was no longer entirely free to do as I liked.

Eventually I recognised that balancing earning a living with racing was a challenge even if it didn’t involve new countries, climates or training. I’d written about making a ‘sustainable‘ life in endurance sports, but apparently been unprepared when the task arrived. Denial is always a mistake the sooner you accept a situation the sooner you can deal with it. I embraced the challenge as I had before and got serious about coaching.

Seriously coaching required change. Establishing principles on which my services would be based and recognising the need to add value beyond one size fits all plans. There are fundamentals to training that return results, but a coach needs to offer something beyond what you read in books. Fundamental to this is the feedback loop and the ability to interpret and adapt to an athlete’s requirements. I needed to work on my communication and constantly expand my coaching knowledge to provide athletes with the best program possible.

In that respect this website changed, it became a platform to develop my viewpoints. If this blog had a purpose it was to track my life around the globe, whilst that hasn’t vanished there’s less to follow. The (hopefully) interesting aspect of my life isn’t what I’m doing, but what I’m reading, thinking and deciding. Readers have followed me solidifying viewpoints as I attempt to take experiences and apply them to a broader audience. I’ve enjoyed making this change and the challenge of becoming a more competent writer, definitely an area I want to visit more in the future.

I hadn’t abandoned seriously training, the summer months were a very focussed period in my athletic life. Ambitions were strong and motivation high I pushed hard, tried new approaches and managed one good result before I broke! Two years of pushing myself and I finally took things a little too far. I’ve written about the injury more than enough, but rarely about burn out.

More significant than the physical impact on training was the loss of drive. I felt confident about my fitness and ability to develop this, but had doubts about my desire. Start me training and I’m fine, but first you have to start me training. It wasn’t laziness I filled my time with work and activity, I simply wasn’t as drawn to putting in the hours. When you’ve chosen something as a lifestyle it’s scary to find yourself wavering.

It remains an issue. Motivation fluctuates when it’s there I work harder than ever, the problem comes when it’s absent. I don’t think I’m burnt out, I enjoy training, I still have challenging goals in racing, but it doesn’t feel as it did. Perhaps this is an ongoing adjustment to balancing training with work and I’m overreacting to a lighter schedule than the past.

I considered just focussing on coaching. I don’t need to be a highly active athlete to coach well, just coaching would do more to make me a better coach (specificity!) I pondered this on yesterday’s run, the idea of taking a year out from my training and putting the same energy into coaching. Having the time to read and research more, work with others and develop my skills. Whether I could really abandon my training is another question I suspect I’d find myself drawn back.

There’s more uncertainty in my life than I experienced at any point abroad. At times it’s a cause for concern when it possesses the potential to hamper some of my goals, but it’s far from a negative. My problem is deciding what’s most important to me, I don’t lack for opportunity. How far do I want to take coaching in the coming year? How much do I want sub-9 at Austria? How important is going to Kona? What about the chance to perform well at Challenge Henley? I’ll be honest there’s a lot of motivation in peaking for a home event.

I don’t need to make any resolutions for a couple of days, there’s still time to decide! This year has been filled with change and reminded me of the importance of adaptability. It’s not taken me where I might have expected, but it’s been fun along the way and set the bar high for 2011.

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Well this is a contrast. Two years ago I woke early on Christmas morning got on my bike and rode South along the beaches of the Gold Coast and Tweed Valley. One year ago I woke early and joined my mate Spike for a ride over the steep climb of Wainouiomata and along the valley. This year I woke early and set my bike up in my parent’s conservatory for an hour’s ride in front of the Christmas tree. One year hot and sunny, the next warm and windy and now cold and dark.

Christmas never felt like Christmas in the Southern Hemisphere it’s not the same when you’re in the middle of summer. Having been away I’d forgotten how early the season starts here and what pressure there is to buy gifts, I liked the more relaxed attitude down under. I say this knowing that despite my own indifference I’m looking forward to the whole family being together and seeing my nieces open their presents. The athlete in me would love hot weather and sunshine to train in, but I’m looking forward to a wintery Christmas too.

I’ve a bike ride, short run and a few hours of cooking to fit in this morning so that’s all for today.

Merry Christmas!

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Problems with training are easy to spot, you miss sessions or performance isn’t what you expect. Athletes are great at recognising when training isn’t where they think it should be. I’ve invested enough mental energy into the short comings of my workouts lately. What’s often overlooked is the impact the rest of our life has and how we’re recovering. Chances are poor performance or motivation stems from other factors not the content of the sessions.

Discussions on recovery often focus on how quickly after a workout you should eat, what to consume or how much compression gear should be worn. Quick and easy solutions that will have us training again in no time. There’s so much emphasis on recovery drinks, protein shakes and gimmicks to get ourselves back into shape. I’m not disputing their abilities these things may help, but we’ve all read how chocolate milk is as good as a recovery shake. Most of us can gain all the recovery benefits we need from real foods, the first thing I grab after a workout is fruit.

It’s taken more work than expected to rebuild my training routine. Only in the last fortnight have I recognised the role inadequate recovery played. Not only was I out of the habit of training, but also the habit of recovering. I’d built a program for the training I’d do, but not made plans or allowances for the rest required. Instead I’d perform the relatively light training load then still stay up late into the night. Going to bed with sore eyes is a sure sign of mental and physical fatigue, I shouldn’t have been surprised that I didn’t feel up to training the following day.

You can eat the exact amount of carbs and protein needed after a session, pull on compression socks and ensure your diet is sound, but without adequate sleep it’s a losing battle. Recovery has to be considered as a whole, before worrying about specifics you need to have an overall strategy. Product X may speed up recovery, but it’s a detail to consider once everything is in place. How well you can fit recovery into your life will affect how well you can train.

Inadequate sleep was clearly my biggest issue. I’ve never been a heavy sleeper, somehow as a student I lived on little more than five hours (I didn’t train then), as an athlete I suffer on anything less than seven. Cold, dark mornings make it harder to get up, but so does going to bed six hours before your alarm goes off. Few sessions should take longer than a day to recover from, but I’d wake still fatigued then add a little more. The solution was simple, go to bed earlier, if I want to train I need to sleep.

Diet was less significant, I’d already taken steps to eliminate empty calories before returning to structured training. I don’t often use energy bars or recovery drinks relying on whole foods and ensuring a good proportion of fruit and vegetables daily. I let myself down managing the quantities around training, tending to eat too much on some easier days and not quite enough on bigger days. I want a net loss of weight, but not at the expense of energy levels in the day. Overall I’d say I allowed myself to become too catabolic at a point when the body was readapting to training.

Injury management has been of particular concern to me. I’m over the worst of the calf issue that plagued the last season, but have to be cautious. Despite appreciating this need for care at times I was reckless, the remnants of my problem leave little margin for error and daily running requires management of intensity. I ran too fast on occasion and opted to run in icy conditions, normally both would be fine, in the circumstances the subsequent impact on running was hard. I’ve spent the last week exclusively using treadmills to control pace and give me a comfortable, springy platform. Boring, but enabling me to build the consistency I want to achieve.

The positive side of this is it brought home the importance of maintenance work outside the training. Massage and the use of a Trigger Point roller have become a routine part of my schedule, both make heavy contributions to keeping me running. I’m aware there’s inconclusive evidence of benefits from stretching or massage, but these treatments make my legs feel better. Perhaps they’ve done nothing to prevent injury, but I’d not have had the confidence for twenty-five days of running without them.

It took a while to recognise my shortcomings, a long while in some cases, but I’m training smarter. I’m not adjusting the details of my sessions, but sensibly using the time between them to ensure I recover well. This is so often overlooked in our plans simply because it doesn’t get logged, the fact is success depends on it. We focus on what we can do in training and not enough on what can be done between training.

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