nav|gator wrote:
So far I missed/skipped this year more workouts than in total for the last 5 years. The racing schedule just made the workouts to come naturally. Now the first race (later than usual) of the season was cancelled and for other races there are no recent news. On top of that the weather wasn't too great and I skipped some runs due to strong wind or rain.
I took advantage of the low training volume and I'm doing 2-3 strength session of 1h per week. Overall I can say that it's a struggle to keep up with a training plan those days.
Can you put a strategy in place which is to put meeting slots into your daily calendar and put workouts on your list of daily objectives. Firstly scheduling into calendar blocks it from other things. Secondly adding it to daily objectives, you put a check mark beside each objective achieved (workouts or work or family) or an X beside it if not done. At the end of the day, you put X beside everything that was not done. its a bit painful being accountable to yourself and putting X marks up daily. Pretty soon, you just go do what is on your daily objectives and you put check marks beside everytthing and the workouts get done with or without racing.
Racing we get ready because we are accountable in racing to a results sheet, to competitors, to peers and this "going on stage to perform" energizes us. But with no racing there is no going "on stage" for accountability. So you need to build a system to be accountable to no one but yourself. But you have to enjoy the process. The reason the best professional in tri, in other pro sports, in finance, in research are the best is because they are accountable to no one. Their hardest accountability is to themselves.
So some of this is building your own system. For sure, in my system, I leave things open....I have my meeting appointments, and I have the type fo workouts, but that's it for now. I try to keep it fun.
Last night after work, I just had a time slot to go run. I really did not feel like it. I already did a 40km bike and 5km run at lunch. But I have a goal for the week to run 70km (average 10km per day). So I needed 5km more minimum to stay on track. My first 100 steps felt like death, but the sunset from the track at the park 1km from home is really peaceful so decided to go up and jog around the track and take in the sunset (and also see real humans during lockdown, walking and jogging at track). Anyway, suddenly my pace picked up and I did a set of 2x100, 200, 400, 800, 1600, 800, 400, 200, 2x100 at 10km race effort. The track stuff was totally unplanned. If I had that on my plan it would have demotivated me. I just had an appointment slot and the slot was to run and I have a week target for 70km meaning 10km per day. That was it. I hit the checkmarks.