It’s been a while since I put up my weekly training summary, and I wanted to quickly update all of you who have been poking me to find out what’s going on. Bottom line is things are just crazy busy and while I am training, I have had minimal time to log it all in…sound familiar?

In retrospect I was very pleased with my Half Marathon time — it put my vDOT back up to 56 or where I was for most of last year, and it was a 3.5 minute improvement over essentially the same course less than 9 months ago. I took some down time and have been staying as consistent as possible on the bike given the need to run more with Boston Marathon right around the corner (will you be there? if so, let me know). I put in a 17 miler on Monday at about 7:20 pace, which felt good but I was still fatigued from the race the weekend before.

This week I have been on the road to consult in Minneapolis and now down to Austin to train. I have been active, but not on the OutSeason schedule and a bit lighter knowing I have some good training to do this weekend. Without a doubt I have not been training to the volume standards of previous years — as limited as those years were. But the benchmarks are there.

This is the basic strategy known as raising the left and filling in the right. For users of WKO+, you are familiar with the mean maximal power curve. The shorter the time frame the higher the power…the longer the efforts become the lower the power goes (i.e. my 30-second power is much higher then my 3 hour power). Now that I have raised the left to levels consistent with what I was able to put out two years ago in my Ironman prime (10:04 at IM CDA and Kona) I am breaking to do some filling in of the right. I will put in three solid days of big aerobic training and then return to Boston for similarly focused work through the Boston marathon. Then it will be time to go hard again for 4 weeks before heading out to the Tour of California for a slightly longer endurance block.

Of course, planning is one thing, execution is another. I want to crush myself this weekend, but there are many potential conflicts (new town, new weather, rented bike). Whatever plays out, I know it will be fun and I will be shelled. I can’t wait.

If you’d like to follow my training exploits, please find me on Twitter (www.twitter.com/pmccrann). If you are in Austin and want to meet up we are doing so on Friday night from 5-7pm, just hit me on Twitter for last minute info.

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Before I forget, some quick notes on what’s on my radar this week. I wanted to thank the folks who participated in the consulting project I attended – you all brought your A-game and it showed. In particular Sally McKenzie (@mckenziesa, Michael Silberman at EchoDitto (blog), and Dan Cramer at grassrootssolutions.com).  I haven’t read it yet, but plan to get a copy of ReWork by 37signals as soon as I can — these guys simply transformed the way I work about two years ago and I have never looked back. Someone just showed me the TaxiMagic app for my iPhone that lets me order — and pay! — for cabs in certain cities right from my phone. I am halfway through The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Taleb, a birthday book that is really a mental mouthful, I love it. What are you up to and, more importantly, what should I be checking out???

have been consistent

Day Two found me just a little bit tired from the Friday afternoon bike ride…dowh! I got up early and got in a quick 4 miles + 100 pushups + Crunches. Some quick coffee and it was off to Fitzburgh Road. Some of the Austin Sleeper Cell let me know it was good, and Margot was kind enough to lead me out. Barely any traffic, plenty of hills and great scenery — this was awesome!

The road was a simple out and back, 30 miles each way. There was a slight headwind on the way out (got worse on lap two!) but it made for a faster ride home each time. I really enjoyed the terrain, and I was pleasantly surprised at how well I rode considering I haven’t ridden longer than 20 miles in months (save for yesterday when I did 65). Just a great overall ride!

Day Two Totals: 4 miles run and 120 miles bike.
Totals Thus far: 3k swim, 10.25 miles run and 185 miles on the bike

Let’s Meet & Get Hydrated!

It’s that time of year again when I get to hit the road. While it’s no Tour of California, it’s still part work / part fun. You can help make it even cooler by checking your schedule to see if you can meet up while I am on the road.

First Stop, Minneapolis (Work)
I am speaking / facilitating at a workshop on building communities based on the experience of building EN into a real, viable, paid online business. I’ll be on a panel with some real heavy hitters (day 1) and then we all hit the ground to do some serious brainstorming for the client on how they can implement similar strategies in their niche (day 2).

Having done a great deal of training during my days in the Peace Corps and then again in Azerbaijan, I am just psyched to get to wear this hat again. I am a bit daunted about being asked to explain Endurance Nation (I think the members are what have built it, not us) but I look forward to being able to share what we have grown together and hope it inspires similarly-minded people to build something cool.

More on the overall project when it’s done, but I hope this will prove to be just the first step towards doing some legitimate consulting. Several readers have asked for help in building a paid niche community, and I am working on how we could do this in a way that we all win. If you want more info on this project, please contact me here.

Second Stop, Austin (Fun)
I am then headed to Austin for 3 full days of epic training. I have a bike rented from Jack & Adams and a bunch of maps, some chamois cream, and ton of energy bars. Three days isn’t a lot of time, but I plan on trying to do as much damage as possible. You’ll be able to follow those updates on Twitter.

I also plan on making it to part of SXSW to check in on some of the social media rockstars that I stalk via Google Reader. If you are going to be there for the conference, or you live near Austin, let me know or or RSVP so we can set a good place for that Friday!

The RSVP Stuff

Minneapolis Meet Up
Wednesday, March 10 @ 8pm
Kieran’s Irish Pub
RSVP on Facebook, or tell me via the Blog

Austin Meet Up
Friday, March 12 @ 8pm
Location TBD
RSVP via my Blog and I’ll update you re the final location!

In the seventh installment from my new book on Endurance Lifestyle Design, I put my jedi mind trick powers to work in an attempt to convince you that you are already well on your way to building your Endurance Lifestyle.

If you want to get these excerpts and my other regular posts via email just click here to sign up. You can also subscribe to the RSS Feed or follow me on Twitter for updates.

What’s the Worst that Could Happen?

By now you should have a pretty good sense of where this book is headed. Depending on where you are right now, in your life, the following chapters will either: (A) fit nicely with your world view or (B) seriously change how you think about everything from racing, to planning, to eating and more. History has shown, however, that what I have written isn’t as important as whether or not you’ll actually do any of it.

Do You Really Have Any Other Choice?
I found myself at a crossroads of my life. My training time was maxed out, work was suffering and we were about to start a family. With my back to the virtual wall, the path out became extremely clear . I took those first few steps and have never looked back. But what if you aren’t in the same place and don’t have that same sense of urgency?

If you are reading this book, chances are you are in the same place…even if you haven’t fully grasped it…yet. Understand that time is your most valuable resource, not money. Odds are that your current training approach is nothing more than a black hole that sucks up all the time you have that you aren’t sleeping, eating, or working. This leaves you with precious little time to do the other things that matter to you. In other words, you are already paying for the decision to place your training above everything else, even though you might not realize it.

Understanding the Resistance You Have to Change…So You Can Change.
The biggest challenge of the new Endurance Lifestyle isn’t the intervals. It isn’t the schedule. The biggest sticking point is change. Inertia is simple, easy, and convenient. Change is hard, even though at the end of the day we are trying to make your life easier by bringing your training in sync with everything else that matters to you.

Your current endurance worldview holds that more hours/time/miles equals a higher probability of success. Take away the hours and it’s easy to see how one might think the odds of success have also shrunk commensurately. Not to mention that we are creatures of habit, and we typically lead very full lives. Shifting things around is understandably a little disconcerting, and not only because it means a bit more work over the short-term.

Defining the Worst Case Scenario
If you have all these nightmare visions of what changing your training might do to your fitness, wellness, results, etc., then you need to step back for a second. Remember that this is all just a game; you play a sport and you do it because it’s fun. Many folks lose that perspective as they become progressively more wrapped up in their sport, unconsciously defining themselves by what they are training for instead of by who they are, what they like, where they work, etc. Sport is important, for sure, but it’s not the be all end all. Make it so at your own risk.

For a second let’s say you take the advice outlined here and you do revamp your training. What’s the worst that could happen? You cut back your hours and now you are sleeping more. You are more focused at work. You have picked up a new hobby or reconnected with some old friends or are content just spending more time with the important people in your life. Race day comes and you have a miserable day despite following the guidance of this book to the letter. After you dissect your race, curse me out in a nasty letter, and sulk for a few weeks, you wake up and realize that you can still go back to the old school way. Maybe you lost six to nine months, but in the grand scheme of things, that’s little more than a drop in the bucket.

Besides, it might just sink in that while you didn’t hit your goals…you actually did relatively well on half as much training and you still managed to lead a pretty full life. Imagine that.

I have been a coach for a long time. Well, at least a long time in the game of triathlon. While I by no means have all the answers, I have seen enough to have built my own “sense” of how things work for the athletes I work with. Rather, how my approach to training affects the folks who follow it.

It’s simply part of how I put you, the individual, into the context of my coaching world. And for the first three years of coaching, I got it wrong every…single…time. Let me tell you why so you can fix your game too.

I had masterful plans. Season plans. Multiseason plans. Plans for plans…which I planned for. But the one thing I always glossed over was the individual athletes plan. The intake process was more of a formality than a discovery process; and it wasn’t until I had a client really put her foot down that I realized my mistake: I put my ideal schedule before their real one.

I needed to know not just when they usually swam (say Tues/Thurs) but a much deeper understanding of all their commitments. When do they work? Who knew they volunteered on Wednesday nights? And look at all that time on Friday.

Instituting this simple formality gave me a great deal more useful information than a family history or reviewing last year’s results. We aren’t talking rocket science here. No charts and darts. Just a much better understanding of the athletes schedule.

What about those all of those early athletes? Thankfully, most of them saw improvement simply by following a consistent program. The change was enough from the typical workouts they subjected themselves to, and the build across a season, while not perfect, did the job.

Please download your copy of the Weekly Time Sheet here.