Helpful Training Log Adjustment

[bedellympian]

I figured I'd share this as its helped me a fair bit as someone who trains constantly. I've told several partners about it and they have started doing the same thing. I find it very helpful for mountain athletes, especially when the local weather is not consistent (i.e. winter in the PNW). 

Most endurance athletes keep a weekly total of their volume and start their weeks on either Sunday or Monday, but I've started beginning my weeks on Saturday (or whatever your first free day is if your schedule is not traditional). This allows you to have more flexibility on the weekends. I used to start my training weeks on Monday and I would spend hours watching the weekend forecast, trying to move around workouts and adjust aerobic session lengths in anticipation of what I would most want to do that weekend. Obviously you want to keep your training fairly consistent, but you also want to take advantage of those occasional winter weather windows. Too often I would see next weekend looking really good and slack off on my volume a bit in the hopes of going into the alpine, only to have the forecast slowly shift and I'd be left trying to do all my vert and my long effort for the week by lapping crap snow in terrible weather. Conversely, I'd see terrible weather coming and would front load my week so I could spend a little extra time with the wife on the weekend, but then a good weather window would appear and I'd be left wondering if I should go way over my volume to try something while tired, or just sit around and watch a great opportunity pass. 

Now that I start my weeks on Saturday I can make last minute plans and have way less stress. If the weekend is great, I can go do an alpine day or ski tour that fits within my weekly volume, and then do shorter strength and easy aerobic as needed to meet my weekly total by Friday. If the weekend is crap I still try get a longer effort but it can be on the lower end of that range and it could be out in the desert or just around town without pressure to hit a certain mark, then I can do some medium-long efforts before/after work during the work week to make sure that I still hit my volume by Friday. 

For those of you tracking weekly volume and still trying to enjoy some mountain adventures with your days off I highly recommend this strategy.

[aikidjoe]

I started that this year too, basically for the same reasons. It's funny how just a simple shift of when the week "starts" can make such a positive difference in managing weekly volume!