I am dropping Jeff (Galloway's halvmarathon plan)

I decided a few days ago to stop (pause) the Garmin Coach halvmarathon plan by Jeff Galloway.
Here is why:

While I somehow love the idea to get ready-made workouts on my watch, and also like doing them so I do not have to think about who to do a workout, I also at the same do not like the rigidity of a pre-made plan.
That's mostly because I am changing preferences all the time: some days I like to "just follow a plan", on others I prefer to "train the way I think is right for me".

Btw, the Garmin Coach Plan do not have to be done the exact way they are laid out. You won't get expelled from them when you chose to do more, or less.

But I wonder, what is the purpose of following a ready-made training plan, when you don't follow it but accostum it so much that you could actually just train the way you want to?

One other thing with Jeff's workout is, that the two shorter workouts (well, the one with the 800m repeats is 55min long actually, including warm-up and cool-down) are done at medium intensity.
They are neither easy nor really hard.

And I have successfully avoided that this year:
Until may this year, I did most of my training really easy.
As in: I could chat with someone while running, and I'd walk when heartrate went up.
That way, my recovery time stayed short, I felt refreshed and energized after my runs and bike rides, and was also able to do more strength training.
Once a week, I'd go to the track and do a short workout of 1min repeats of hard and fast running, with a minute rest in between. From five to ten repeats were enough.
And I love them!

What I will take with me from Jeff Galloway's Garmin Coach plan are:

•  the drills: I think working on cadence will benefit me, so I'll continue doing them. 
• the Magic Mile: I "hated" doing it - not short enough to go all-out, not long enough so I was able to plan the laps - but I think it is a fun way of testing oneself
• the walk/run-method: although I will just incorporate the walking part based on how my heartrate is (walking up hills) - not using predefined walk/run ratios
• the hill drills

I found out that three workouts, with two of them being at medium intensity, left no room for my bike rides, and I didn't appreciate Jeff Galloway saying in one of his videos that "You can cross train for sure, but it will have no benefit for your running" (I am not quoting him literally here, just by what I remember).
I strongly disagree - but will not further elaborate my opinion right now (maybe later).

One big thing that seems not to work for me is the simple follow-a-plan-and-stick-to-it way of training. I need flexibility since my energy levels are greatly fluctuationg throughout my week, and in order to follow a training plan, I must be able to fully customize it.

Meaning that I'd rather want to be doing the long run on tuesday since I felt good, had enough sleep, my stomach was ok, weather good, legs fine, and so on - and postpone the short intervals for a quick workout on saturday afternoon.
Or whatever.

My training is strongly influenced by the way I feel.  I do think that you do not have to feel great in order to work out, but I have to use my feelings to my advantage in training. Meaning that, on an "angry" day after a night with nightmares and an emotional flashback from cPTSD during the day, I can use that kind of negative energy for a good hard hill workout on the bike.
On a "sad" day, I love to be on my bike and do an easy ride.
On a balanced day, strength training is what I do.
And so on.

It would be great to be able to have a more steady way of live and to be able to "just follow a plan" but that is not a good option for me right now. I don't like the feeling of not going a good job, so I'd rather make a good job at following my own, highy customized plan than doing a mediocre job on a pre-made plan.

So thanks for the training input, Jeff!
I will certainly look into your books and use some of your training tips and technique, but apart from that, you are better off without me 😊

Garmin Coach Training Plan - how I found a workout I had missed.

Yesterday I was supposed to do a workout consisting of a warm up, two blocks of drills (cadende and acceleration drills), the Magic Mile, and a cool-down.

It was freeing outside, raining, and I was not focused at all, so I managed to hit the lap button when I wasn't supposed to, and then, since on my oldest Garmin watch the "return button" is the lower right on, I even pused the lap button again which ended the whole workout.

No way of getting it back or repeat it.

I tried to upload again from the app, transfer it to my watch, but gave up soon, since it was freezing and windy and raining, and I soon got cold and also had not eaten enough, so I felt drained and thought I could find out how to fix that later.

I think I have the solution here, but will try it out later today:

I just use my watch, press "START", choose "Running" as a workout, hold down the "UP" button to get into settings, select"Training" - "My workouts" - and there they are: all the different workouts I either had done so before in my plan, or those being scheduled for later this week or next week!

If it works, it would be actually pretty easy to do a missed workout (to good to be true? We will see...) 😄

Strides.

I'm still doing base work.
That is, triathlon base training, in order to get my endurance as good as possible, and improve my basic skills.
I'm also  trying to work on my weaknesses, although it's not that easy to find out what those are.

Joe Friel suggests to compare oneself with the other participants in an age group to see where you are fastest and slowest.
I think my weakness is definitely the bike part.
My strong side is the swim.
And I'm doing ok on the run, at least on the run part in triathlons.

But what I think is one of my abilities that need most improvement is force and muscular endurance, both on the bike and on the run.

I love my bike, I'm just not that fast on it :D

At the same time as I'm trying to improve those two, I'm also trying not to stress my feet to much, and take my plantar fasciitis into account. That is, the PF is almost gone. I'm actually synptom-free, at least really pain-free!

Do what you can do in the moment!

When we had our kick-off meeting with Dave Scott in Oslo in february, I was really lucky.
I was the only triathlete who was actually staying at the Olympiatoppen hotel,
and since I was a bit early, I had extra time to talk to Dave Scott before all the official stuff began.

I told him about my training, why I like triathlon, about my dog, about hiking and Norway, and finally about me and my mental health issues. After so many years working hard with my health issues, on my bad days it's hard to even get done the most basic things, and when it comes to training, I often find it hard to get done.

So I thought I'd ask him about that.
In the end, he was going to be my coach for the next four months, so I could just as well tell him about that, right?
So I asked him about what I could do on those day, when I don't have enough energy to do anything, and training feels just impossible to do.
He had a very good mantra for me: "Do what you can do in the moment!"

Dave Sott on our kick-off meeting  in Oslo.
Photo: Dag Oliver

So if you're not able to do the long run lasting 1.5 hrs that you had planned, why not go for a 45min run?
Maybe doing a three-hours bike ride seems to much on a given day, but getting on you bike and pedal for halv of that time er well better than nothing?
Or what about hard training, on those days when you had planned your run intervals and feel like lying on the sofa and watching TV, what about an easy run on a trail?

Dave Scotts tells it like this:

"You may go through several days when you’re not clicking or maybe you’re highly
motivated but your body is just not responding. The phrase I like to use is “Do what you
can do in the moment.” This is key. Just do what you can. Things will start clicking again." 
Dave Scott, taken from his Training Guide, 2013.

So far my training has been okay.
I had to skip some workouts.
I haven't been able to swim a lot either.
Especially last week I was tired and exhausted and simply not able to do all those planned workouts.
I was hoping that skipping workouts on friday and saturday would help me get together my spirits, but on sunday I was still exhausted and tired.
Although I was motivated to work out, I couldn't get myself to do the planned 3.5hrs brick workout (yes, I know, a 3.5 hrs brick does require some gut, but I had actually seen forward to that workout).

Running and biking for 3.5 hrs was definitely out of question that day.
But I really wanted to do something.
So what did coach told me?

I had two other workouts left that week that I hadn't done.
A 1.5 hrs bike ride and hill intervals.
And I chose the hill intervals.
I like doing hill interval - when I run all the way up a hill, I get the fantastic view down afterwards, which is totally worth the hard work.
That sunday, I even took Lukas with me (which is always a risk - I mean he is really fit, but terribly stubborn - and he is not a fan of intervals unless they are his own intervals - that is, running from tree to tree or scent mark to scent mark ).

Well after the 20min warm-up I started the 5 x 70 sec intervals, followed by an easy six minutes walk/jog, and after 4 x 45 sec I had come to the top. The training schedule said 9 x 45 sec, but I was feeling very nauseated and chose to end the intervals right there.
I guess my stomach didn't appreciated the two slices of bread with banana and chocolate butter, but after almost not having eaten anything that day, I had to eat something.
But immediately after I had begun the jog-down, the nausea disappeared, and I enjoyed my run.
And it was fun!

As for hill running, I found some useful tips - by - who else? - coach Dave Scott:

Well, instead of ending the day as exhausted as it had started, I had done what I was able to do "in the moment" - not the 3.5hrs brick workout, but I had actually completed some of the planned workout on my schedule.
And I'm happy with that!

Now I have to think about what I can do about my swimming.
("Imke, you have to get into the water!" I can remember coach said to on our last net meeting).
You see our local pools has been closed since the end of march and the nearest pool is 20miles away. And I don't have a car right now.
And I get sick on a bus ride.
Bus rides are quite expensive as well.
There might come moments where I'll be able to ride my bike to the pool, swim, and ride back home.
There might also be moments where I'll be able to immerge myself in the ice cold water of our lake, doing an outdoor swimming workout instead.

We'll see...

Two months of training with Dave Scott - am I still uncoachable?

Now we're already into may, and it's been two months since I started following Dave Scott's training schedule for IM 70.3 Norway.

Front page of Dave Scott's training plan guide.

So how was that so far?

Two months of training with Dave Scott - am I still uncoachable?

Now we're already into may, and it's been two months since I started following Dave Scott's training schedule for IM 70.3 Norway.

Front page of Dave Scott's training plan guide.

So how was that so far?

I've done three halfironmans, an olympic triathlon, a few sprint triathlons and an Ironman (in 2010) before, by being my own coach. And I like it that way.
I'm kind of stubborn, I like to think through my training, and do it my own way.

So all of a sudden I had this huge Ironman legend as a coach, and sure, I'd like to do as he says, right?
I mean, how could I not trust his training principles, with his six Ironman World Champion titles and decades of experience as a coach?

Dave Scott is also a motivational speaker.
Picture taken from his web site, Davescottinc.com

The first weeks I found myself being rather uncoachable.
On the training schedule, it said something like "swim hard 150m, rest interval 15 seconds, repeat 8x" (although this is some kind of translation, the original sounds more like "150m L1 RI 15" repeat 8x").

But since I hadn't been swimming that much during the winter, and I actually love swimming, I felt like going really hard and fast. And of course, no way I could recover from 150m very hard to the next 150m by resting 15 seconds.
So I took 45 seconds rest.
So I could swim faster.
Which I did.
Nope, that was not what coach Dave meant.

Dave Scott is explaining training intensities in Oslo at our kick-off event at the Olympiatoppen sports hotel.

One of the features of having Dave Scott as a coach until IM 70.3 Norway is that we are being coached as a group, although some have their own schedules, and we were to choose between beginner, intermediate and advanced level (I chose intermediate).
And we can send our training questions to Dave Scott and his amazing assistant David Glover, and those guys are answering, by e-mail, or, by filming the answer and sending the video to us.

That's when I heard Dave Scott's comments about my own version of swim intervals...
Ooops... sorry coach :)
And since I obviously had been the only one posting his/her training data (heartbeat, pace, RPE) in the training diary in trainingpeaks.com, I also got some comments on my run intervals.
Way too hard.
Ok.
I thought so.
I was doing the intervals on the treadmill, and once I set the pace on the treadmill, I'm too stubborn to give in.
Of course, training hard is good ("I know Imke is training hard" said Dave Scott in the video) but this time, the workout was more about pacing oneself according to perceived rate of effort.

Ok.
Fine.
After that feed-back, I guess I started to let myself being coached.
I do what the training schedule says.
Well, at least if I'm able to.
I try to complete them as well as I can.
When I'm really exhausted, I shorten them, but that hasn't happened too often yet (more about the philosophy behind "Do What You Can Do In The Moment" later in this blog).

But I had to skip almost all the swimming workouts.
Our local pool closed at the end of march, and the nearest pool is 16 miles away and I don't own a car right now.
I'm determined to combine some bike and swim workouts, ride my bike to the pool, do the swim workout, and ride my bike back home.
That hasn't happened yet, but now with the spring temperatures rising and the darkness not setting in before 10pm (the pool is open from 5pm to 9pm), this is a real option.

Dave Scott says that if we're able to do around 70-75% of the training schedule, that's fine.
And that's what I'm going for.
My training schedule for the first two months looked like this:

Three swim workouts;
three bike workouts;
three run workouts;
with a weekly training volume of about 9-11 hours altogether.

We were also supposed to do strength and injury prevention training, about twice a week.

My focus for IM 70.3 Haugesund 2013 is to get faster on the bike and run, and have an ok swim.

I've found out that I almost swim at the same pace, training for swimming or not.
(My secret is that once I immerse in the water, I turn into a fish, but when I told Dave Scott that, he said he really wants to see that, but until then I had to get in the water!!)

So far, I've always done the three run workouts.

Running intervals - I NEED music! 

I've done two out of three bike workouts a week, maybe all of them some weeks.

My first bike workout outside, in march.

I've only been swimming once a months since march... (shhhh don't tell my coach!)

Hmm that swim cap has been dry for a long time now...

I've done strength training once a week and tried twice, but that just took time and energy from other workouts.

Lukas is my training assistent at home -
here demonstrating  one of his favorite positions: relaxing!

So far - not bad at all!
I don't think I'm that uncoachable anymore.
I have even noticed progression in my running in terms of pace and average heart running!
I've also started to like being coached.
It's more simple than coaching myself. No more overthinking. I look at the training schedule and do what it says. I stock some of the workouts around so they fit my non-triathletic schedule, but it has gotten much easier to get out and train.
No more doubts about what to do, how to do it, I go out and do it.

Which reminds me of today, and the big brick workout that is scheduled.
Bike-run-bike, four hours in total.
Who would not want to do that???