The Q Workout Plan
BREAKING: SLICE OF LIFE FOUND DEAD, KILLER AT LARGE
Moments on the Cruise, Missing Puzzle Pieces, New Friends, The Rehearsal Season 2, My Book Obsession, all have fallen by the wayside. In their stead? An in depth look at my psyche during race training cycles.
As the ranking athletic authority in this blog (Gysa Cup Champion w/ Puj, Ironman 70.3 tiebreaker) I feel qualified to share my routine during periods of my life while I'm training.
First, it's important to highlight that for about 23 and a half years of my life, I've done almost no training of any kind, in any way. I generally have a difficult time finding my way in life, and tend to meander from point h to point z without any rhyme or reason. This is where the presence of friends plays a great deal in my life. If I am not driven to complete something for my own sake, I will at least be driven to complete it for the sake of others. I began my running career because August and Ethan wanted to do a 5k, this was when he was initially infatuated with the idea of Sprint Triathlons. I ran a few miles at a time to train, and ran my first 5k in August of 2023 with a time of about 35 minutes. If you're listening to the above track you can place yourself where I was, 8 am on Bayshore, ready to attack a 5k with this blaring in my left ear. I remember the feeling of August and Ethan jetting past me, and me having to stop to walk at the 2.5 mile mark. The wave of shame that washed over me was immense. I worked hard for the next month to get a sub 30 minute 5k, and in November laced up my shoes and ran a half marathon to prove that I could. After taking the majority of December off (no race to train for, a common theme), August approached me about running an Ironman 70.3 with him in Chattanooga Tennessee in May of the next year. He didn't want to train for something so arduous alone. I looked at my schedule, saw I had a 5 night cruise the week of the race, haggled for another date, was rejected, and signed up for the race.
The training block started on January 1st. I copied the majority of the Super Simple 20 Week Ironman 70.3 Training Plan into a calendar for the year. I craved the feeling of marking off each day with a red marker, signifying my completion of all of the small trials that led to the opus. I dedicated myself to training, shared incredible runs and bike rides with August, and honestly had the time of my life. This period of my life was the best far and away for many reasons, but honestly it was really just amazing to go to my Grandma's and brag about how far I ran or biked that week. Six months of training, however, is a roller coaster. Incredible runs that leave you feeling elated can give way to rainy bike rides that cause you to hibernate for 6 hours once you get home. Managing your nutrition, sleep, and body is a tightrope walk (I basically just crawl across the tightrope with alcohol and fast food fueling my vessel).
Race day comes and goes, leaves you with the greatest sense of self in the world, but then what. There's nothing to train for, you run for fun, hurt your knee, and now there's nowhere to go. In contrast to my disciplined first half of the year, the latter half was a hodge podge of gunk. I burnt out, didn't want to hurt my knee that throbbed every day, and ultimately ran a marathon alongside Ryan with zero training. I was very proud of Ryan that day, setting out to complete his time goal, and was glad I got to escort him for his first 18 miles, yet the marathon felt like a failure. The real race is run in the months leading up to the actual date.
Fast forward to the current day, 6 months into a new year, no training to show for it, just suspended in air waiting for an outside force to give me a push in any direction.
-Enter Lizzie Stage Left-
I have been reborn, a phoenix from the ashes of my former self. A new goal set: Sub 2 Hour Half Marathon in November. What better way to welcome the new-ish sister in law to the family than pacing her to her big time goal, in Chattanooga of all places. Poetic.
This post has been a lot of rambling so allow me to reveal the true point, constructing a training plan. As seen above I kind of just copied and pasted a training plan for the 70.3, not for this. For this race I'm just going to copy the Ironman training plan and add some flares I enjoyed from training. Here's the process.
1. Pick 0ut a Motivational Quote: On my calendar from 2024 I have a fortune (from a fortune cookie of course) taped to the first day in January, it reads: Discipline is the Refining Fire by which Talent Becomes Ability. That goes insanely hard in my humble opinion, so that was good. For this race I have picked out a cheesy ass paragraph from an unnamed motivational book that I saw on twitter. "Unless you're playing at the absolute highest levels, every game in life is just you vs. you." I mean that goes pretty damn hard I don't even care.
2. Pick a Rest Day: I liked doing Long Runs on Sunday, so Monday it is, this is subject to change.
3. Add Base Workouts: These will be the building blocks of your training plan, the volume and reps that you need to actually progress and grow during training, you can take these days slow and treat them as recovery. Maybe throw some Zone 2 work in there (workouts that focus on keeping your heart rate low). I'll make these my Tuesday and Friday workouts.
4. Add Cross Training: For me, this is biking, and will transition to dumbbell and swimming work when I'm in Minnesota. It's important to consistently give your body breaks while working out other muscles or something like that, also from my experience biking really helps so that's cool. I don't actually know shit, this is my Thursday and Saturday workout.
5. INTERVALS: You don't actually get any faster unless you're consistently implementing speed work, that's science. I will do interval training on Wednesday, legs fresh from a rest day and one day of recovery running. These are my favorite workouts because you want to die almost the whole time but you can feel the progression.
6. The Long Run: Your Sunday Best. The long run is the biggest part of training, it's important to relegate it to the weekend so you can truly focus on it, also I think these are actually my favorite workouts, sue me.
7. Recovery Weeks: It's important to implement recovery weeks to give your body a small reprieve from the torture, this will include shorter workouts, less intense intervals, and shorter long runs.
8. Put it All Together: Give me 5 minutes I'm gonna go put that in a google sheet.
9. Use All This to Farm Kudos on Strava.
I hope you guys learned something. Thanks for reading as always. Oh damn On the Nature of Daylight just came on while I'm writing this. Love you all.
No comments:
Post a Comment