New Math
Little Johnny wants to do a 6 mile run. He plans on averaging 10 minutes per mile. How much time does he need for his workout?
a) 45 minutes
b) 60 minutes
c) 90 minutes
Pencils down. The correct answer is "c."
I basically live in the middle of a city, so I can't just step out my front door and start running. (I'd have to run on sidewalks which knowing from experience kill my feet, and I get stopped by traffic lights every 2/10 mile.) I need to drive 10-15 minutes to get to a nice running area. Then I can run, there's a little bit fo cool-down time afterwards, drive another 10-15 minutes home and then shower. A one-hour run takes an hour and and half to 1:45. A 3-hour weekend bike ride can easily take 4.5 hours.
The Ironman training guidelines I'm using has suggested workout times ranging from 10 hours during a recovery week, up to 20 hours during an endurance week. With the overhead, that is more like 13-25 hours per week, and I'm using the easier schedule. I'm allowing myself one big cheat to make sure I meet my weekly hour goals: I am defining the shortest workout I can do as one hour. In other words, if I swim 30 minutes before work, that's 1 hour. A 4-mile run is one hour. However, a 30 minute bike ride followed by a 30 minute run still counts as one hour. A 90 minute run will probably count as 1.5 hours.
Yes, I am fully aware that the quality and intensity of a workout is far more important than time. But if I don't have a strict, quantifiable plan in place then I will skip many of my workouts. I'm just lazy that way.
posted by Wedgie @ 12:06 PM
5 Comments:
I hear ya!
When I lived in Tokyo, a 10-mile ride could take 60-70 minutes, depending on how one would hit the traffic lights. It pretty much took any motivation and chucked it out the window.
Ohh...that's tough. Since i just moved to a city...i'm discovering this 'overhead'. Not a fan of it. Meeting up with people will help with the motivation.
don't get the logic. 30 min run is 1.0 hour in your log, 30 min bike and 30 min run are 1.0 hour, 90 min run is 1.5 hours. I am lost. why is 0.5 hour run 1.0 hour run?
Don't include overhead and try to add your time up based on the the time you spend training. Breaks, travel or anything else don't count. It is the total time each week that will let you know how you progress and how you start learning how much your body can handle week by week. This info is helpful to understand how you respond to a heavy week of training. If your following week is crap and you feel completely out of gas you need to lower the volume on your heavy weeks. It is all a learning process and by including overhead or not being true about time really spent training you are excluding important information.
Jon
Oh, I do not count overhead at all. Only actual training time. A 30-minute bike followed by a 30-minute run is only ONE brick workout, which is one hour.
What I'm saying is for weekly-goal purposes, the minimum time for any workout is one hour. If I drive 45 minutes to the ocean, swim for 30 minutes, drive 45 minutes back, that's 1 hour. If I drive 45 minutes to the ocean, swim for 30 minutes then run for 30 minutes, that's also one hour because it's a 1-hour brick.
In my training log, the actual workout time is entered exactly: 43 minutes for a run. 3:07 for a bike ride. The 1-hour cheat rule I'm doing is just to get stupid Joe Friel off my back.
I had the same problem training for IMLP last year while living in Boston. It was tough but doable. I did do most of my running from home, especially bricks after a trainer ride. Can you find a loop of all right-hand turns to run? Good luck!
Post a Comment
<< Home