How do you modify your workouts when life is sucking all your energy?
Typically, my training is the way I sustain myself and the energy balance is strongly positive. There are times, however, where there are inescapable events/conflicts/illnesses etc that confound our best laid plans. Times when as I get through a day the floor behind me seems finely polished from my glutes dragging across it. It seems to me fruitless in these stretches to try to maintain the intensity or quality of my training. And as I "mature", it seems recovery times are longer from either life's bodyblows or from a hard workout.
Often its a victory just to get to the pool and get wet. My response of course depends on where I am in a competition cycle. Fortunately, I'm in a flexible phase right now as I'm going to miss both long course nats and the open water season. Today, I decided to do some longer sets and completely ignored the pace clock. I focused on my stroke, and my turns, and intuitively gauged my effort level as my workout progressed. I'm happy to say that after a few 500's the expected endorphin surge was felt, and I was able to finish with some harder 300's- again without a pace clock.
What strategies are you using both in and out of the pool to endure the inevitable energy vortexes?
I stopped taking off days 238 days ago, and have no regrets, but I do reluctantly accept that there are days when I'm not going to swim/bike/run well, and I can't always tell when they're going to happen. Sometimes it's obvious, like if I did monster workout(s) yesterday and I'm sore, but some other times I just don't know why I don't have the elusive "it." On those days it is a victory just to get in a swim, some sort of run, and/or an uneventful bike commute to and from work.
However, there's a flip side. The workouts where I say "wow, I'm tired but the clock doesn't lie, I'm fast today!" Those workouts are pure gold. I train alone, so I can improvise when I'm rolling. The following isn't a common occurrence, but I have on occasion said to myself, "OK 200 fly for time, right now, on the top... GO!" I'm curious, does anyone else do that?
I stopped taking off days 238 days ago, and have no regrets, but I do reluctantly accept that there are days when I'm not going to swim/bike/run well, and I can't always tell when they're going to happen. Sometimes it's obvious, like if I did monster workout(s) yesterday and I'm sore, but some other times I just don't know why I don't have the elusive "it." On those days it is a victory just to get in a swim, some sort of run, and/or an uneventful bike commute to and from work.
However, there's a flip side. The workouts where I say "wow, I'm tired but the clock doesn't lie, I'm fast today!" Those workouts are pure gold. I train alone, so I can improvise when I'm rolling. The following isn't a common occurrence, but I have on occasion said to myself, "OK 200 fly for time, right now, on the top... GO!" I'm curious, does anyone else do that?
