Top Mistakes I Make When Training for A Race

Once again I am registered for the Lumberjack 100. While the weather outside may have us thinking June is a millennia away, in reality it is only 80 days until race day. And some of us decided it would be a good year to break a foot and sit on the couch all winter (ahem, me). Eighty days is not a lot of time to train for an endurance event. For the runners out there, this is the equivalent of going from the couch to marathon in 10 weeks.

It can be done! But there is little to no room for mistakes or slacking when it comes to a training regimen. It's pertinent I don't repeat the mistakes of the past. The next few posts will be a compilation of common mistakes I make all the time.

1) Focusing on the duration of the training.
Not all of us have 5 hours stacked together for training rides on the weekend. Its easy for me to question my own training plan when the hours are paltry compared to others. Unfortunately this down attitude has caused self-sabotage when I spend precious mental energy being worried rather than focusing on the purpose of my training session.

When you have limited training time its vital that you make every minute count 10 times of that which would be used for an endurance ride. There are two keys to boosting the effectiveness of your training time:

1. Approach every minute of the training session with intention (interval, hill, recovery, tempo, etc). Craft your rides to work towards specific goals. How often are we told to eat a 'colorful diet'? Training should be the same way: full of variety. There should be rides to practice technical skills, rides for building strength, anaerobic capacity, etc. Every training session has a purpose and every minute of each training session serves a purpose. Make the time spent on the bike work for you and leave sleeping for the couch. 
2. Be 100% present. I've become rather skilled at compartmentalizing in my attempt to balance motherhood, career, wifedom, and bike racing. Trying to do all of that at once is exhausting. So I don't. Instead I give 100% of myself to one thing at a time. When I'm home with the kids, I'm Mom. When I'm at work, I'm 100% at work. I don't waste mental energy worrying about things at home when I'm not there to do anything about them. It's the same with training. In order to get the most out of my training I block everything else out of my mind and put 100% into what I'm doing in the moment (that's the goal at least). 

Come back tomorrow for Mistake #2: Being Afraid of the Deep End.

Preview: It's funny watching my kids learn to swim. When they want a challenge they'll dart under the divider from the shallow end to the deep end then quickly pop back up safely at the depth of 3.5 feet. They are pumped from their dare-devilish flirt with the deep end. It's humorous because you know they've kept one toe safely on the shallow side and never fully plunged into the depth of the pool.

I can easily fall into a similar rut when it comes to cycling.