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?
On the "down" days, i'll play little games with myself. For running, it might be "okay, I'll run for five minutes. If I still feel the same way, I'll bag it and I'll still have run for five minutes. Almost ALWAYS what happens is that I forget that five minutes have long since gone by before I take a look at my watch. For swimming, I say to myself, "I'll just do 100 yards to warm up... then if I feel okay, I'll keep going." Again, once I start, it's harder to stop. Some days, it might only be 1000 yards or even less (not lately b/c I'm training for a long race, but have had those days!). Other times, it could be all I need just to take a small step or two, then I figure now that I'm doing this, might as well keep going.
One day, I had to get a paper delivered to a panel chair. But I was also training for a track event that was very important to me. And I was thinking, "no way do I have time to do today's workout... I have to fed-ex this paper by the end of the day!" (This was, mon dieu!, in the pre-email attachment days, if you can believe it!) Something kept telling me to do the workout anyway and the need felt so pressing that I decided not much was going to get accomplished if I ignored the "something"--but I decided I wouldn't worry about how fast it was or whether I hit any time goals. I just ran to the track, did it, ran home again, and... finished the paper on time to send it and meet the deadline! I think the energy from the workout fueled the rest of the day. My times that day weren't too fast but not terrible. Just that I felt better for having started the day pushing myself physically and could then focus my mind on the writing project.
On the "down" days, i'll play little games with myself. For running, it might be "okay, I'll run for five minutes. If I still feel the same way, I'll bag it and I'll still have run for five minutes. Almost ALWAYS what happens is that I forget that five minutes have long since gone by before I take a look at my watch. For swimming, I say to myself, "I'll just do 100 yards to warm up... then if I feel okay, I'll keep going." Again, once I start, it's harder to stop. Some days, it might only be 1000 yards or even less (not lately b/c I'm training for a long race, but have had those days!). Other times, it could be all I need just to take a small step or two, then I figure now that I'm doing this, might as well keep going.
One day, I had to get a paper delivered to a panel chair. But I was also training for a track event that was very important to me. And I was thinking, "no way do I have time to do today's workout... I have to fed-ex this paper by the end of the day!" (This was, mon dieu!, in the pre-email attachment days, if you can believe it!) Something kept telling me to do the workout anyway and the need felt so pressing that I decided not much was going to get accomplished if I ignored the "something"--but I decided I wouldn't worry about how fast it was or whether I hit any time goals. I just ran to the track, did it, ran home again, and... finished the paper on time to send it and meet the deadline! I think the energy from the workout fueled the rest of the day. My times that day weren't too fast but not terrible. Just that I felt better for having started the day pushing myself physically and could then focus my mind on the writing project.
