Listen......to your body

Coach Angela has a new athlete going long this year. He is new to long distance so he e-mailed me about my Ironman at Lake Placid and is looking for advice. Here is a copy of what I sent him.

Advice: With IM Florida 7 months away you have some good time to get properly trained to complete the distance. One word you should keep in your head is LISTEN.

Listen to what Angela tells you to do. Her workouts will be key and her knowledge invaluable, especially with IM Florida since she has done it several times.

Listen to your body. It will tell you when it is getting over trained or injured. Never feel guilty about missing/skipping a workout because you don't feel up to it. Sometimes a mental or physical break from the rigors of IM training is needed. You want to go into IM undertrained, not overtrained.

Listen to those around you. There are many experienced Ironman triathletes out there. By asking one question you will get alot of information. Most Ironman finishers love talking about their races. Just listen and absorb what you can. Don't worry about the details yet. You have time to figure that out as you get closer to race day and Angela will help you with that also.


Today I had to listen to my own advice and back off. Last week was a huge load of training and my body was accepting each challenging workout. My plan was to make it through this week and weekend then back off for recovery. I really wanted to overload the body and have a huge gain during recovery. My "goal" for the week was starting to blind me from what the body was telling me.

So I backed off today and skipped my evening run. I took the dogs out for a walk in the part instead. We had a nice time.

Game will be back On this weekend.