Failing to Plan may be Planning to Fail...

..but planning training is a pain in the arse.

January has arrived and now that the excesses of Christmas and New Years are out of the way its time to get serious about training. I've been training quite a bit up until the end of last year averaging about 3-4 sessions a week over the last few months. Now though its time to step it up a gear.

Over the last couple of weeks I have been spending quite a bit of time trying to work out a suitable training plan. This is actually a lot more difficult than I imagined it would be. My plan is to fit in 7-8 sessions a week including 2 swims, 3 runs of varying length/intensity, 1-2 Trim Trail sessions and a few hours walking with a weighted pack on whatever I can find that somewhat resmebles a hill.

Due to other training commitments it sounds like there is only going to be one official Trim Trail session now on Thursday nights so that is my one fixed point. The hillwalking I really need to do in daylight so that is confined to saturday or Sunday. The challenge is trying to balance the rest of the running throughout the week so as to give my legs a bit of a rest. I plan to do one long run a week which will be 15km - 30km so I really need a couple of days off after that to rest.

Anyway I'm on to about my ninth iteration of my plan and still can't make things work which is frustrating. I guess I will just have to give it a crack and see how it goes and adjust my plan if I find I am struggling with it.

Along with my new training plan is a new eating plan. Since I started training properly for this thing I have lost about 5Kg. This is particularly painful because I worked hard at the gym for months to put on a few Kg before last summer and now its all gone. I am now tucking in to a fairly high protien high diet, along with plenty of carbs to keep me going on those long runs. I'm back to eating a proper breakfast and trying to eat 6 small meals a day instead of cramming and snacking as I am used to. I'm only on the second day of this so i will have to see how it goes.

My days of drinking are also firmly stuck in 2008 and I plan to make it through to April without a drop passing my lips. Seriously. I actually mean that.

For anybody that is interested I have set up a webpage to log my running training. I use the Nokia SportsTracker application on my phone to record a GPS track of my runs which I upload to my website. Check out www.chrisbeale.com

You can select a workout form the box on the right hand side and it is displayed on the map along with information on duration and pace. Currently its a little bit slow to load the workouts, but when I get round to it I will be making some improvements. This
page only displays my road-runs. Aside form this my training to date has included Kiwis run club, Trim Trails, swimming, hill running and hiking.

Chris