Thoughts on training schedule

The first few weeks of the semester always include a lot of extras, there's no doubt, but I do also see more clearly what will and won't work in the training schedule I posted the other day.

Once I get through the rest of that schedule, I'll post an updated version (of workouts actually completed) and the plan for the next stretch of time. For now, though, a better version of the shape of the training week, though it's not worth bothering with a fancy update....

(Bike stuff in the meantime will mostly still be trainer rides. It's better for fitness, though it doesn't let me work on road confidence and bike handling. Will see how this goes and try and have a mix once weather's sorted out and I've built some base cycling fitness. What I think I will try and do is have the Sunday long ones in the quite early morning in Central Park, it is definitely not going to happen between now and the May race that I become happy about the notion of riding by myself up Riverside Drive and over the GW Bridge to New Jersey!--but this is why it seems important to fit in a real fitness-building trainer ride on Monday evenings also...)

Mon. am: 1 hr. gym workout plus 2-3 treadmill miles; pm: 90-120 min. bike

Tues. pm: 20-30 min. run on gym indoor track, 1 hr. swim

Wed. pm: 90-120 min. bike plus a couple miles possible outdoor run off bike

Thurs. pm: 6 miles run, 1 hr. swim

Fri. pm: 30-60 min. bike, 1 hr. swim (if tired, skip one or other)

Sat.: am: 8-12 mi. run; pm: 1.5 hour swim

Sun.: long bike

This is more realistic based on which points of the week I can now predict myself to be reliably knackered at, as it were, as well as what I now see to be the most pressing training obligations (i.e. bike > run).

My teaching week falls heavily on Tuesday and Wednesday, and on Thursday morning I need to sleep in, collect my thoughts and do laundry, not a run! I will leave the run for afternoon, and if it ends up getting put off till last daylight hours and coming shortly before the 6pm swim, well, it's a good brick-type workout to do them near-consecutively or with only half an hour between...

This schedule includes "options": of the short Mon.-Wed. runs, really I would only ever do two of the three, but I can decide each week which one is the least convenient that week and cut it accordingly. "Real" runs always on Thursday afternoons and Saturdays, but other ones either indoors or at any rate short and joined on to something else and skippable as needed (once the weather's warmer, I can do a short outdoors run in conjunction with gym appointment, but in a way it's just psychologically as well as logistically easier to do it all at the gym). I can also always switch off long bike and long run between Saturday and Sunday, and skip either bike or swim (or both, if I feel the need for a proper rest day) on Fridays.

I like it when things are really well-thought-through and simple to execute. It is a pity about the regular female bathing suit that one might wear for training in the pool that it can't also be worn under clothes for a run or bike workout (too uncomfortable, plus inadequate for sports-bra control purposes!), so on Tuesdays I think I will just have to start experimenting with triathlon top-and-bottom stuff that can be worn for running with a shirt on top and then just stripped-down-to for the swim, because multiple changes of clothing make workouts more off-putting and less likely to happen...