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Training Anxiety:

I’ve had a lot of anxious days with my training over the last few weeks. Most of the anxiety is not over what I’m doing or how my training is going but with my analysis of what I’m doing and what is “optimal”.

A few weeks ago I got really anxious about my personal workouts as I started thinking about the optimal way to train for an Ironman. Specifically, the most effective way to train for an Ironman to reach the goals I have set out to accomplish this year. The interesting thing for me as a coach is that many of the same anxieties that I have about my own training are shared by the triathletes that I’m coaching.

The truth of the matter is that my anxiety had less to do with my knowledge of how to train for Ironman, then it did with being 100% accountable for all of my personal workouts and training analysis. As I sat down to write this training phase for the Ironman Louisville group I followed the steps that I normally follow:

  1. look over the annual training calendar and review what our training goals are for this phase
  2. review the benchmarks or fitness tests that were most recently completed by the athletes and see where they are at and if they are ready to move on (I do this for swim, bike, run)
  3. review conversations that I’ve had with the triathletes and see if I pick up on training issues that maybe going unnoticed: tired too often, consistently poor nutrition choices, stressed at home or work, etc
  4. take the key workouts for the training phase and put them on the training calendar
  5. complete the training schedule to fulfill both psychological training needs and to continue improving the triathlete’s fitness and physiological / metabolic profile to meet the Ironman’s requirements

What I found was that while I could sit back and answer these questions for my Ironman triathletes, I was having some difficulty answering them for myself?  It was difficult to be objective and honest.  It was impossible to be unbiased.  As I looked at the answers I was emailing and discussing with those triathletes that I coach, I realized it was sometimes the opposite advice I was incorporating into my own training.

Here are some of the inconsistencies I saw:

  • I’d tell my athlete to “be patient” and trust in their developing fitness, but I’d tell myself “you need to start running faster on this run every week”
  • I’d tell my athlete to “recover well and eat well” when they felt tired, but I’d tell myself that I “didn’t have time to rest up this week” (really bad the 2 weeks I had a cold)
  • I’d tell my athletes to remember what our goal is this year - Ironman Louisville, it is 26 weeks away (at the time) and we have several months to continue to develop fitness before we get into specfic Ironman Louisville prep.  But I told myself, “You’re not in the best shape of your life right now, how are you going to be your best at Ironman Louisville”.

In the end analysis, I had convinced myself that somehow my training needs were different.  I was different.  When in reality what I needed was an objective voice, a voice of reason.  What I needed was the ability to step back and review my own benchmarks and training history and realize that I too needed:

  • Pateince
  • Humility
  • Faith
  • Rest, Nutritious Food and Stress Relief

In order to help me get this done, I hired a coach.  It has been a very positive step for my training and I believe that it will be a very positive step for the athletes I coach too.  I ended up using the EnduranceCorner coaching services, primarily because of the respect that I have for Gordo’s approach to the sport and lifestyle.  I used to learn a lot from his triathlon forum back when it was alive at gordoworld and I enjoyed learning from his clinic at the Olympic Training Center back in 2006.  He also has perpective that I would like to draw upon; he went from a working “Joe” doing triathlon to a professional triathlete.  While I have no dilusions of going pro, I think that this experience is worth drawing from.

Data Analysis and Training Anxiety:
Here’s a lesson that we all can learn from

If you are not doing the training, it doesn’t matter what the analysis of the training data says, you are not setting yourself up to succeed.

I have to admit that starting in January of 2008 I began falling for this data “entrapment”.  This began with the greatest gift I’ve received from an athlete I coached in a long time - my Garmin 305.  I love that thing.  But with the Garmin 305 came a new level of data responsibility.

Prior to the G305, I used a basic Polar Heart Rate Monitor that allowed me to get an average heart rate, max heart rate and time (not even laps).  After a workout I would enter that information into my training log (at workoutlog.com which I had used since 2003).  But after the G305 the process got more involved, I had to connect the watch up and download the data.  I started using the Garmin Training Center only for the data download and then would try to manually enter the info into workoutlog.  This became too much so I decided to just use the GTC, until one day in June when I went  to load my data and notice that all the data is gone?

Frustrated I search the data, thinking that my daily auto back up of my computer would have saved it.  It didn’t!  Ironically I felt like all the running and cycling that I had done for the year was erased.  Almost like somehow because I couldn’t produce some chart to post on my blog or share with other friends/athletes my body had lost all that exercise and training benefit.  It was really that ridiculous.

I moved onto using Motionbased and GTC, and then on to a new traininglog website that allowed me to also coach my athletes.  The new site became as much of a job trying to maintain and use as my job of coaching was, so I just recently moved some athletes back to workoutlog.

The anxiety about all of this came back into my own training program when Gordo asked me “what kind of weeks have you been putting in over the last 10 weeks or for all of 2008″?  OMG - Where’s my chart!  So I spent 4 hours Sunday trying to recreate a training log to share what I’ve been doing.

I’m not saying that having data isn’t important.  It is a very useful and important tool.  As a coach it is difficult, if not impossible to assist someone or help them without having the data.  But as a coach, If I had to choose between someone who completes their runs regularly and logged occasionally or ran occasionally and logged obsessively, I’ll choose the former.

That being said, to cut down on this anxiety and get the information I need, I’ve chosen to use the following procedure:

1.  upload my G305 data to workoutlog after each workout / swim times just manually enter (workoutlog now has a very clean user experience when the G305 has been downloaded)

2.  weekly upload my G305 data to my WKO+ software to get the deep down analysis it offers

Alan over at EnduranceCorner has had a couple good posts recently discussing some of these topics:

The Positive Side of this data displacement and anxiety:

1.  I don’t have solid records of run/bike/swim from January to mid June 08, but I know this:  I set a personal best at the Iroman distance on Sept 6th (11:00), I then rode over 300 miles commuting from Illinois to Indiana and on Sept 13th ran a fairly decent 3:17 marathon.

2.  I set a personal best at the half marathon just 10 days ago, running 1:21:53.

Racing has a way of showing us “The Truth“…. training logs and charts often lie if we’re not careful or if we don’t have an objective eye to look them over also.  That is one of the best services I can provide as a coach.