Through 2010-14 I have held discussions, meetings, race and program reviews, and constructed strategic performance plans with over 700 runners and coaches (and 350+ triathletes). Here are the Top Ten Run-training Traps as a summary. There’s also a cure or ‘get-out’, and a long-term prevention strategy for each.
You want training to be what you want it to be, and effective. Yet, amongst the technology, self-professed gurus, and Coach-google, basic training errors are still made: many out of running’s present culture, some out of habit and ego. Are you trapped by these?
Trap 3: No log, journal or diary.
There is a difference. A log is
a simple objective recording of each training session, week, cycle and phase.
It has two parts: a written record of each workout’s content, and a graphical (or
tabular) representation of day-to-day, week-to-week and month-to-month
summaries that plot changes in training load.
A journal
is kept in many formats. The simplest and most effective is that of a
personal journal where subjective feelings about racing, training, and life are
expressed: dreams, thoughts, inspirations etc.
These are reflective and introspective and provide links between the
‘real’ you, the runner you, and your training. They become predictive and
constructive in the sense that you learn from them, coming to represent
different plans, strategies and hopes for the future.
A training
diary is a combination of a log, and a journal. A diary also includes a list of goals and
objectives, strategies for meeting these objectives, short-term & long-term
plans related to training, and various health and lifestyle information.
- Get Out: Use one: many printed and software based training diaries and planners are available. Shop around before purchasing, otherwise it will end up in the bin or on your ‘desktop’.
- Prevention: Better yet, construct your own. Look for trends and cycles over time. Use the feedback to feed-forward for your next Plan.
What type of log, journal or dairy do you use?
No comments:
Post a Comment