At times it can be challenging to maintain training momentum when travel and/or family obligations find their way into your training block. This seems to be where a lot of athletes succumb to to 'life', and let sporadic training influence what could have been an otherwise great run of fitness changing workouts. Consistency is, and always will be key. It has to be year round, and I've had this reinforced for me by having the good fortune of being around some REALLY dedicated athletes.
A mentor of mine is Blake Boldon, the head Mens/Womens distance coach at the University of Pennsylvania. Blake isn't too far removed from his days of running professionally for Saucony, and with a little prodding from me, he would often tell me about the repeated daily sacrifices he would have to make in order to make sure he was maximizing his potential. Often these talks were precluded by me taking some shortcut, or compromising a training session for the sake of convenience. One thing that really hit home for me was Blake recounting how for several years he would have a 2x run day on Thanksgiving. Often this was an actual workout in the morning, followed up by 50-60 minute recovery run in the evening. Blake would tell me how much he hated judiciously picking and choosing what he ate for Thanksgiving dinner, while everyone around them stuffed themselves silly, in order to have a functional stomach for a 60 minute run effort while the rest his family settled in to watch football or nap. The part of Blake's turkey day strife that is seared into my memory is how empowered Blake said he always felt while finishing that second Thanksgiving day run. On a day synonymous with over indulgence, Blake could have reasonably taken a rare day off- knowing that just about everyone else would be doing the same. Instead, Blake would chose to put in effort to make himself a better athlete.
Stay the course, and be inspired by your own will to improve.
Thanks for reading,
jw
