*chirp chirp* Nothing but crickets in here! 

Thought these articles might be helpful to those of you who are interested in doing more than one race, but need a little help with planning your season.

The ABCs of Planning Your Race Season

This is an excellent time to consider what you'd like to accomplish athletically in the upcoming year. As with many things, planning is the key to accomplishment for your race season.

Recreational Athletes

If you're a recreational athlete and your goal is simply to complete your events, then you only need to train one aspect of fitness: endurance. This entails planning enough time to slowly build your mileage to within about 10 to 15 percent of the distance of your goal race.

Note that many overuse injuries are caused by too much mileage too quickly. Don't increase your duration more than 10 percent a week and take at least every fourth week as a rest and recovery week. During a rest and recovery week, you should cut back your mileage by at least 25 percent, reduce your overall training volume, and add in an extra rest or active recovery day. If you're a runner, take a day of non-impact cross-training in place of a run.

Competitive Athletes

Competitive athletes, however, must take a different approach. A competitive athlete, by my definition, is any athlete who sets a specific performance goal. This may be as simple as a personal record. You don't have to win races to be competitive.

If you'd like to set a personal record or race placement goal this season, it will require more careful planning and organization of your race events. Start by prioritizing races into A, B and C events.

A Events
Your "A" events are those that you'll direct your training efforts towards. For best results, all of your A events should be similar or of the same format (ex. sprint triathlon). These are your main goals for the season and your training should gradually progress towards these races or events. Put these on your calendar first.

Note that A races take time to train for. Plan on spending at least 12 weeks of specific and directed training for an A race; this is called "peaking." Schedule your A races in four-week clusters or separate them by at least 10 to 12 weeks. Your training should ramp up in intensity and specificity as you approach your A races. Your last workouts prior to your A race taper should closely mimic race intensity and format.

What is a "taper?" Tapering means reducing training volume prior to a goal race in order to facilitate total and complete recovery. You should incorporate a taper a week or two prior to A race(s). The length of the taper will depend on the length of your event; the longer the event the longer the taper. There's nothing you can do the week of a goal race to physiologically increase performance, but there are many opportunities to reduce it. After completing an A race, plan on taking a week of active rest and recovery.

B Events
"B" events are training events that you'd like to do well at, but aren't goal races. B events are excellent warm-ups for A events. They're an opportunity to test and hone your race skills without the pressure of an A event. B events don't have to be the same format as an A event, but should help contribute to your A race performance. You still want to give 100 percent for a B event.

An example would be a 10K race prior to an Olympic-distance triathlon. You should rest or reduce your training load a few days before a B event, but don't taper as you would for an A event.

C Events
"C" events are fun events you enjoy doing, but aren't goal related. These are good events to leave the heart rate monitor at home. You don't have to push yourself physically during these events or have any performance objectives.

I like my athletes to schedule C events during their base training to keep up their enthusiasm. C events can be completely different from your A events. If you're a runner, you could do a 50-mile cycling event for charity. C events keep you active and interested in training.

A good place to start is with a 12-month planning calendar. Put your A races on first and then add B and C events. It's important not to schedule C events close to your goal events. This time is reserved for more specific and directed training.

Not only does prioritizing your races help with your training, it also helps identify what you'd like to accomplish as an athlete. Don't let your races sneak up on you!

10 Lifestyle Factors That Affect Training

As you look toward assembling your training plan and goals for next season, there are several things to consider. Of course the distance of each event and how much time there is between now and the event are important, but there are additional items that you should think about when putting details to your plan.

This column contains ten things to consider when deciding how many hours per week to train, how long your longest workouts should be, how many workouts to include in each sport each week, how many key or hard workouts to include and how many workouts you should string together before giving yourself some recovery. Let's begin.

1) What is your sport history?

If you are a triathlete trying to decide how much time to devote to swimming each week, that answer will change if your sport history includes no swimming experience compared to a history of being a former collegiate swimmer. A person with a deep swimming history can swim fewer days per week and fewer hours per workout.

2) What is your current level of fitness?

How long has it been since you've broken a sweat due to sustained aerobic activity? Someone that is currently a fit runner can handle more intensity in a training plan compared to the person that hasn't done aerobic work for years. Of course if you combine item 1 with item 2, combinations of sport history and current fitness levels will change training needs as well.

3) How much job stress do you have?

While exercise is a recommended method to reduce stress, too much volume and intensity along with a very stressful job can lead to injuries and burnout.

4) What are your family obligations?

A single person with no family living in the same town has different time commitments to family than someone taking care of their own three children and aging parents. Of course a single parent has a bigger load than two parents sharing responsibilities.

5) How many social obligations do you have?

Some people are very active with volunteer organizations, church groups, youth groups and other social groups. People that have multiple social obligations need to budget time differently than people with no social obligations outside of sport.

6) How much down time or recovery time do you have in each day and week?

Too many athletes cheat on sleep. A commonly heard quote is: "I can sleep when I'm dead." Well, you can't turn in good performances and enjoy yourself when you're dead, and those stellar performances don't come without adequate rest. Sleep and recovery periods are necessary for the body to absorb the benefits of challenging training. Plan high quality recovery periods.

7) What is your injury and illness history?

People that are dealing with old or current injuries need a different training plan than someone that has bullet-proof health. Of course, people that are recovering from a recent viral or bacterial illness have different training needs than a healthy person.

8) How physical is your job?

If you spend eight to ten hours each day doing a very physical job (firefighting, mail delivery, military services, construction, etc.), your training needs are different than someone that is self-employed and sits in front of a computer all day long.

9) How much training time is available?

People often think, "Gee, I get off of work at 5:00 p.m. so I have three hours to train each day, in order to wind things down by 8:00 p.m., and I have unlimited time on the weekends." When you consider actual training time, be sure to consider all of the items listed above, commuting time, preparation before training and clean up after training. Once you consider the items listed in the column, you may find you have one hour, at the most, on three nights per week. Fortunate are those of you that have ample hours for training and recovery, in addition to the luxury of flexible workout time to cherry-pick the best weather and daylight conditions.

10) How old are you?

No athlete considers themselves "old", but the fact of the matter is that as we age, our recovery isn't as fast as a young, sub-30-year-old person. The overall training volume and intensity that brings about improvements toward sport goals differ for a 25-year-old when compared to a 65-year-old.

If you assemble your own training plan, be sure to consider life and lifestyle factors that affect training, recovery and performance. If assembling your own plan from scratch is overwhelming, you can certainly make great use of ready-to-use training plans as your starting platform. From the plan framework, you can slight adjustments to volume, intensity and frequency of workouts to meet your personal needs.

Anyone need some indoor equipment?  ProForm is having a SB sale.  I had looked into their 995 treadmill awhile back.  The 2010 version had a few more perks than the 2011 model, but still a solid 'mill for $1k.

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