A Scheduling Nightmare

Great beginners learning tool

  So in one of my first blog posts I mentioned schedules and explained that I would get into that topic a bit later. Now it's later. I really don't know how other triathletes manage their time, but for me it was and remains a total nightmare. How much of each sport do I train? When? What type of workouts? How much rest? (uhm yeah still working on that one...), etc. I found a great video series called "Science of Triathlon" that really helped me out at the onset of this crazy idea. My girlfriend Chris and her friend Steph have been great resources for my run and cycle training, but admittedly I let too much of their words of caution slide in one ear and out the other. One of the reasons I loved skateboarding is there are no coaches or scheduled practices. You simply grab your board and go. This is what drew me to triathlon as well. It's a sport where you can train alone and only pit yourself against others in competition. Yes, I know there are many coaches, teams, clubs etc, but that aspect doesn't interest me at this time.

Chef de Partie at Ristorante Giardino

   In my previous career I was a chef, well in my last position I was a Food Services Manager for a large retirement company. I was in charge of two properties, more than 30 employees, numerous suppliers & contractors to keep track off and multiple departments to coordinate with. Oh and don't forget the company cell phone that never stopped ringing. It took my organizational skills to another level and I was already pretty effective as an efficiency consultant. It was one of the reasons I reached the level in the company that I did. Little did I know all of these skills would really be tested with triathlon. Now before I get into the meat of the matter let me just say that I'm sure ALL triathletes must have issues with this. Even more so if you have a family, which is something that I don't have to schedule around. All I can speak to is my particular set of circumstances and what I have had to work around.

    A week is a great microcycle of time to use when planning. Oh some quick vocabulary I'll use and what my intended meanings are; macrocycle - a yearly schedule of training, microcycle is a week and mesocycle is a repeating group of time, such as a 3 week cycle that I use. 

     So lets do some simple math. there are 24 hours in a day, that's 168 hours in a week. First off I work 12.5 hours a day, that's including travel time and no I'm not exaggerating  I leave for work at 6:30am and I usually walk back in the door at 7:00pm. I work as a finish or trim carpenter in Toronto. It's not overly physical, but a hard days work all the same. Ok so let's knock off 62.5 hours right there. We're left with 105.5 not too bad. On top of that I spend about 1 hour on work days getting ready, packing my lunch and eating breakfast. Plus 30 minutes after work to unpack, wash thermoses and get everything ready for the next day. Also about 30 minutes every night to shower, stretch, foam roll and ice. That's approximately 11 more in the week, now we're at 94.5 hours. Groceries, house cleaning, laundry, errands, etc. on the weekends and you can put down about another 10. Hmmm  84.5 hours left. Well we all need to sleep, especially us athletes. Unfortunately with my schedule I average 6.5 hours of sleep through the week and I squeak out 8 on weekends. That's a total of 48.5 hours a week. Yep we're down to 36 hours. I try never to train on Friday, Saturday or Sunday evenings. It's for rest and time with my perfect partner Christine. So let's chip away 16 more hours and we get a grand total of 20 hours even. Sounds ok right? We still have the commute times to training destinations like pools, tracks and such to consider. Then of course time to get ready, changing in and out of running gear and the swim suit. Seems like nothing, but I end up losing another 30 minutes of time each day and for me that's 6 days so 3 hours. Now we've whittled the week down to 17 hours of possible training time. Somehow though I still lose a few hours here and there to the unknown! In realty I`m lucky if I get 15 hours to fit in all my sports and activities. Sounds ok in writing, but look at how tight things have become and notice that I have hardly any time for friends, hobbies or anything else. Even writing a blog post is a little tricky to fit in.

   The love for something and I mean truly loving something or someone usually means one very important thing, sacrifice.

   I've tried numerous schedules in the past few months. They always need double training days because of time constraints. In addition to the troubles are pool times which have to be worked around. Most nights I was training my shorter harder runs with swimming or biking. One other thing I would like to mention is that there should be a "brick" workout each week, which is cycling followed by running and a swim then cycling session. This way you train the sports in the succession that they occur in. Another issue I struggle with is I'm not just training for triathlon, I weight train and do core workouts once a week for all around fitness, as well as still finding a day a week to skate. I've also worked a day of mountain biking (one of my favorite sports) into my already hectic 3 week mesocycle.

Here is my current training schedule as of January 2013:

TRIATHALON TRAINING WEEK 1
MONDAY	TUESDAY	WEDNESDAY	THURSDAY	FRIDAY	SATURDAY	SUNDAY
Work	Work	Work	Work	Work	Cycle: 30min Interval Workout	Masters Swim Class
7:30am -7:00pm	7:30am -7:00pm	7:30am -7:00pm	7:30am -7:00pm	7:30am -7:00pm
Core & Weight Training	Skate board	Run: 5km Tempo	Swim: Distance  Workout	Rest & Recovery	Run: 30km Zone 2	Cycle: 30km Tempo
TRIATHALON TRAINING WEEK 2
MONDAY	TUESDAY	WEDNESDAY	THURSDAY	FRIDAY	SATURDAY	SUNDAY
Work	Work	Work	Work	Work	Cycle: 30min High Tension Workout	Masters Swim Class
7:30am -7:00pm	7:30am -7:00pm	7:30am -7:00pm	7:30am -7:00pm	7:30am -7:00pm
Core & Weight Training	Skate board	Run: 10km Tempo	Swim: 1000m Tempo	Rest & Recovery	Run: 45 mins Hills &  Drills or Intervals	Mountain Bike: 20km
TRIATHALON TRAINING WEEK 3 (ACTIVE RECOVERY)
MONDAY	TUESDAY	WEDNESDAY	THURSDAY	FRIDAY	SATURDAY	SUNDAY
Work	Work	Work	Work	Work	Run: 22km Tempo	Masters Swim Class
7:30am -7:00pm	7:30am -7:00pm	7:30am -7:00pm	7:30am -7:00pm	7:30am -7:00pm
Yoga	Cycle: 2hrs Zone 2	Run: 8km Recovery	Rest & Recovery	Rest & Recovery	Rest & Recovery	Skate board

   My intention here was not to bore your with numbers and my apologies if I have. The intent was to really make you think about how you spend your time every week. When you're not trying to squeeze every possible second from it you probably don't even give it a thought. I know I never did until triathlon came into my life. Now every second in the day is as precious as gold and must be used wisely.