Man with a plan.

I got off the phone with Jim this morning and am feeling good about our conversation. I wasn't sure where to go from here. We reviewed my injury status and we both agreed I need to get healthy. I also told him that I won't have any races planned at least until after July and even then I think it'll be just some MTB racing and the Sprint Xterra at Snow Valley. What we came up with is a two week training block of some base-like cycling training with 2xweek strength/core training.

That's still training six days a week but much more manageable than 3 2xday multisport in a six day training week. This is something that I've been wanting to do for a while anyway, that is, focus on the bike. Everywhere you turn there is advice telling us to train the weakness. That's probably true but I think there is a lot of room for improvement in my cycling. I consider it a strength at this point and because of that I haven't given it the time to really break through. Since I train with Power, it will be pretty easy to monitor the progress.

As I get healthy and am able to get back in the pool and running on a regular basis, I think I want to continue with a similar type of workout block. Like laying out swim, run or bike focus blocks that allow a good amount of focus in each sport paying particular attention to technique.
I think that's a good amount of time to develop some positive muscle memory without risking overtraining/overuse related injury. The bottom line is to develop a schedule I can live, maint/gain some fitness, improve my skill level and have more fun.

There is a lot to be said for triathlon and the training, but it is the very idea of being able to train in a different sport every day that can become the most difficult part. It echoes the newly surfaced idea that multitasking reduces productivity in the workplace. Yeah you can do all these things at once but how well are you doing them. It's as if you showed up to work every day and worked on a different project each day. So when you sit down to work, you get the "so...where was I". If your a professional athlete or sponsored without a day job then you can put 100% of your effort into shifting gears and managing your life around the training. For me and just about everyone else, it's training around my life which risks the feeling of spinning your wheels that much more. To further illustrate, I've got about 4-5 house projects going on right now. None of them are done. I'm working on them all at the same time. If I just focus on one project and finish it before I start the next one, I'll have continuity be better able to anticipate problems and a lot less trips to Home Depot.

Back to making sense, I actually did get back in the pool yesterday. I was jonesing for a workout and swimming makes me feel awesome. My shoulder felt great. I took it easy for starters but also worked on initiating some of the technical refinements that will hopefully keep me injury free from here on out. I've talked about some of the potential causes of my problems but the one I'm keying in on is increasing roll onto my right side (non-breathing). I worked on spending more time gliding on the right side, which allowed be to roll more, opening up the recovery. This is just one aspect that needs to change but it was good to get some positive feedback.

I'm gonna go get on my bike. I love my bike(s).