Fail to plan, plan to fail!

I am a planner...I have always been a planner. I plan everything- I plan our dinners for the week, I plan my training schedule, I plan my nutrition out, I plan our vacations, I always like to have a plan in place. I drive my husband nuts asking him, "What's the plan for the weekend? What's the plan for tonight?..."

I strongly believe that if you fail to plan, you should plan to fail. But, I also know that things don't always go as planned. I have learned to handle it pretty good when they don't as long as I know what the new plan is :) I also don't always stick to the plan even though I always have a plan, I'll just come up with a new plan when I find myself not sticking to it!

For the past few months my training partner and I have been following a plan I came up with for us to follow for this California Half Ironman we are both doing. By the way she is going to win this race and qualify to go to the World Championships in Hawaii. So, I wrote this plan with her in mind, making sure she is ready to compete against the best in the sport and win. Needless to say this isn't an easy training schedule.This is the first season I have had a training partner to help me stick to my own plan and we have not missed a single workout.

This weekend was no exception. We had a Brick planned for Friday with a 30 mile hilly ride and a 30 minute run and then a strength training workout later in the afternoon. Saturday I was going to do my usual long run and Sunday we had a 50 mile long endurance ride and a swim.

Well, we decided to move things around some and put the run on Friday to space it out even more from the Half Marathon next weekend. Since we do our runs on our own, because we are at different paces(she runs a 7 min/mile and I run a 9 min/mile), this worked out better since she was going to be out of town on Friday.

Friday- Did my 8 mile run and averaged a 9 min/mile! I finished in 1:12. Last year I did the Half marathon averaging 9:33 min/mile so I should be able to beat that this year! I felt very good about this run!

Saturday- Wake up and we have a Brick planned to ride a hilly ride and then run 30 minutes but...it is pouring rain outside. Now my training partner lived in Minnesota, before moving back to California,where it rained more then it rains here so she always says- "We will never miss a workout because it is raining." So, unless she says we aren't going, we are going...

She calls and says- "What are we going to do about the workout, it looks pretty dangerous out there?" Alright, if she is saying this then we are not going. Time for a new plan! It is going to be hard to assimilate our hilly brick on an indoor trainer so I decide that we can easily do our endurance ride, scheduled for tomorrow, indoors because that means keeping our heart rate up for about 21/2 hours or 50 miles while riding a bike. This doesn't need to be done outside, although much more exciting outside! I knew this was going to be really boring and hard to do but we could do it and not miss a workout.

So, there we were on the indoor trainers pedaling away for 2 1/2 hours, sweat pouring off of us, going through water bottle after water bottle, towel after towel, song after song on my ipod....maintaining a heart rate around 150 and about 20mph speed we rode 50 miles in 2 1/2 hours. Because the bike is still and you are turning your legs over sitting in the same spot without any repreive, unlike outdoors, there tends to be more chafing. This wasn't pretty.

We made it...we did our 50 mile ride and lost probably 10 pounds of water in sweat. We were both wiped out! We went to the pool and did our swim in the rain which actually felt good. We did 3 x 600m. After a Surge Post workout shake and jacuzzi we were good as new....well, not really, I think we both went home and went to bed at 8pm.

Sunday was a new day and we were both praying for sunshine! We still had a brick to do. Woke up and it was drizzling still but we decided to head out anyway and stick to the bike paths where we wouldn't be in danger of a car fish tailing. People in California don't know how to drive in the rain. So, we rode 30 miles on the bike paths, not as hilly as originally planned but with our left over fatigue from the day before our legs were pretty tired by the time we got to our run. We both hit the pavement running after 30 miles on the bike, Erika covering just over 4 miles and myself covering just over 3 miles. Another good workout in the bank!

To finish the weekend off, we met later in the evening to get our strength training done. This took a half hour, we got it done, felt pretty good and felt great that we had stuck to our plan for the weekend and hadn't missed a single workout!

Can't wait to see what I put on the plan for this week!