Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Planning 2012 season

I think that I should start thinking what I am going to do next year and somehow start putting a training plan together.

There are way too many unknows though. One thing is sure, I am going home on Jan 5th, I am not doing IM Mont Tremblant and I want to race Olympic distance races next year (and years to come).

Other than that, I have no idea what is going to happen to me. Will I go to law school in August? Will I go to work in Germany in February? Will I go work in Germany and then relocate to the US after a few weeks? NO IDEA!!!!

Here are races I might possibly do, assuming I remain in Slovakia:
28. 04. 2012 duathlon or 29. 04. 2012 duathlon
05. 05. 2012 duathlon
26. 05. 2012 duathlon
03. 06. 2012 Oly triathlon
30. 06. 2012 Sprint triathlon
14. 07. 2012 Half-Ironman – we shall about this one. I can surely fake running 13.1 miles but I do not want to screw ITB up again.
11. 08. 2012 Oly triathlon
18. 08. 2012 Oly triathlon
22. 09. 2012 Xterra triathlon

Lot of races, but it might be fun and I need experience. I will try to peak for Slovak Champs, which they have not decided yet which one of those above Oly races it will be. You do not have to qualify or anything for that. I think. You just need a tri license.
I might do a winter triathlon as well in February– run, mountain bike, cross-country skiing. But that would be probably little too ambitious.

And of course everything depends on my ITB as well.

Races in Slovakia are not as ridiculously expensive as races in the US are. Although I do not know exactly about tri races, but for example running races are either free or cost couple Euros (like 3-4 euros), so I will be able to afford racing. And hopefully I can get my parents to lend me their car or give me a ride there or something.

Although racing should be ok, I am little concerned about my training assuming I will have to live with my totally unsupporting parents. But hopefully I can re-educate them and teach them I need to get my workouts in!!! They just do not understand why someone would do a consistent training in one sport. And I will be able to train full-time and I want to train a lot so there might be some clashes:) If worst comes to worst I will just move to their house by the lake as soon as snow thaws. But there is no pool there... Maybe I can move to an empty house where my grandparents used to live. That would be awesome! Little scary sure, but I would be able to do whatever I need to do. But heating is powered by electricity so the bill would be huge and showering there is little tricky, because you have to use fire to heat the water up in a huge tank every time you want to take a shower and believe me chopping wood and starting fire and all the hassle would be the last thing I will want to do after the workout. I did that for 2 summers, it was ok, but it would be a different story in winter/spring. Hm, maybe I can go to take showers at my other grandparents’. And they will also feed me while I will be there:) And there is a pretty good pool in a nearby city. The pool where my parents live is horrible, although they live now in one of the biggest cities in Slovakia. It is more like bathing pool, not swimming pool. Sure, I will have to walk 4 miles to get to the pool because I cannot pay for bus everyday, but I will have nothing better to do anyway. Maybe I can become a local weirdo there as well and try to ride my mountain bike daily in snow. But then I am sure that some old lady will mention that to my grandparents and they will tell me to cut that out. Man, don’t you just love living in rural area in Eastern Europe? Sweet. Ok, I have a plan. Although I have a feeling that my parents would not be thrilled about my plan. We shall see.

First weeks in January will be little all over the place, because I will have to try to find a routine etc. I am looking into buying a home trainer and the cheapest one I can find is 130Euros! That’s way too much. My current trainer is fluid Tracx I bought on craigslist for $20. Problem is that we have nothing like craigslist, amazon, ebay in Slovakia where you can get whatever you want. And I do not know where to look for used stuff. Plus I guess that still not a lot of people use trainers thus chances of buying a used one might be limited. I have sent emails to some people and bike stores asking for advice, we shall see whether they get back to me. If not, I will just buy the 130Euro one. Then I should be able to roll:) And I will treat that like a beginning of a re-educating my parents. That should show them that I am dead serious about this stuff, although if they have not “got” it by now, I doubt they will get it now. I think that I managed to run consistently only because I was not living with my parents for the most part ever since I left for high school.

Anyway, my very rough weekly training plan is this. Not sure whether it makes sense, I need to work on it little bit more. I will do that after I am done with my law school applications. Any suggestions?

january
aerobic
aerobic
aerobic
aerobic
february
treshold
treshold
aerobic
aerobic
march
aerobic
aerobic
treshold
treshold
april
aerobic
aerobic
aerobic
treshold
may
Oly specific
Oly specific
Oly specific
Oly specific/taper
june
Oly race
aerobic
treshold
treshold/taper
july
Oly specific
Oly specific
Oly specific
Oly specific
august
Oly specific/taper
Oly race

1 comment:

  1. So what is the difference between 'threshold' and 'oly specific'? Are you thinking Oly specific is more tempo effort vs threshold? That would be more race specific. I would suggest spending more than 2 weeks at a time training threshold... more like 6-8 week blocks but of course not every workout within that block is going to be threshold... just 1-2 workouts/sport/week. Since you're not training for one specific 'A' race then you won't want to really periodize in a traditional way b/c you'll want to be ready race race rather often... so the big picture would involve listening to your body and paying attention to the data and essentially when next summer rolls around doing as many race specific type workouts as you can recover from and adapt to... knowing of course that the bigger aerobic base you have the more hard work you'll be able to adapt to when the time comes. :) You'll be good!

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