A Bad Plan is Better Plan Than No Plan

Yep, it's that time of year again. Time to figure out what I'm going to do with my life. Don't worry, I won't wax metaphysical or anything on you here. I'm talking about my training plan for the year.

Last year was my first real year of planning for the entire cycling season. In the past--2003-2009ish--it had always looked something like this....

1) Snow Melts, Craig goes outside again and starts running or something. (Remember that's can be as late as April in Minnesota)

2) School lets out, Craig starts riding his bike and sometimes triathloning as early as one week after school ends. (those June races were never too pretty)

3) Go like crazy all summer, usually facing the danger of burn-out sometime around the 3rd week in July while the race schedule has a lull

4) Peak in mid August (usually with high aspirations for the Turtleman Triathlon)

5) Go back to school in September and let the fitness slowly fade through the cold white months of winter.

6) Repeat steps 1-5.

So what made the big difference last year, you ask? A Christmas present, I tell you. No ordinary one at that. I got a copy of The Cyclist's Training Bible, by Joe Friel. It's a fantastic read and one of the best things I learned while reading was to make goals and plans for the season. Then structure my training plan around those goals. This may seem basic, but taking the time to actually sit down and do it is something that most of us never do.

The next part is the hard part. Learning from your results of the year before. That's where I'm at now and am trying to figure out how to layout this next year. The other difficult aspect is that I've now moved to Wisconsin and don't know the race calendar around here. I think that my main goal for the year will be to peak around the second weekend in July because that's when Superweek comes to town around here. I got to race in one Superweek event in Geneva, IL last year and it was lots of fun. We'll see if I can give it a go again this summer, maybe with a race in the Tour of America's Dairyland as an appetizer.

If you've never taken the time to make long term fitness goals or plans, do it. You won't regret it. Because the plan is aimed several months out, it's important as you go to evaluate it's effectiveness and tweak it as necessary. What's the worst that could happen, you learn something about yourself? After all, the only plan worse than a bad one is no plan.