No time to Tri

The thing with living is that life often gets in the way, especially when it’s something you really, really want to do! Like most full-time age groupers and indeed some professionals in order to make ends meet I have to work, and occasionally like last week, the opportunity to put in a few more hours and earn a little extra presents itself.

Triathlon is an expensive sport, not just race entry fee’s but even the training can be expensive, with pool costs, consumable equipment (tyres, tubes etc.) and sports nutrition products forever munching away at your hard earned pennies.

We all know that training for any endurance event is time consuming, the very nature of the events dictates it, but what happens when you can’t put the desired time in? How do you feel about having to miss a week due to work or family commitments?

But forced rest periods don’t have to be a bad thing, by using the time constructively by, for example, reviewing season goals or allowing some aches or niggles the chance to recover you’re more likely to return to training with your ‘mojo’ cup brimming over.

This week, I’ve hardly done any training of real significance, last Sunday after my Dad had departed, it was a family trip to IKEA to buy some flat pack Swedish crap that I’d been promising for months but kept putting off, I was lucky that between getting back and heading out for Sunday lunch with Helen’s parents I was able to get a session in on the Turbo, one my favourite workouts when time is at a premium is following a 10 min warm up I spend 10 minutes at threshold pace followed by 2 minutes rest, then 8 minutes at threshold, 2 minutes rest dropping the time spent at threshold by 2 minutes each time giving the workout the rather unimaginative title of ‘The 10 to 2’ workout which if followed by a 10 minute cool-down lasts one hour.

But with my time seriously limited, I’ve been able to spend some time planning my training for the rest of the year, entering races and of course writing for this very blog. With Helen off on her summer holiday (she’s a school teacher) we’ve been able to spend some time in the gym training together, something we don’t often get to do. We put our daughter into the Sports Centre’s Crèche facility and get an hour in together before I head off to work.

So time away from training doesn’t have to mean time away from triathlon, whether its planning or preparing the remainder of your season or engaging in some light stretching or core work, applying the ‘Tetris’ principle and fitting things in where you can you will eliminate the frustration of not getting out the door.