Being self coached I have an on-going experiment with how much training I can take in a given day and still be productive with other tasks during that day (aka laundry, grocery shopping, house cleaning, dinner, etc) and be productive the day after as well.  Usually I try to schedule only two harder workouts in a given day, and if there’s a third I like to make it strength/flexibility or an easy spin.

Well yesterday I decided to go for it.  Being Monday morning, I’ve decided that’s a good day for my longer swim since I’ve had two days off of swimming and Sunday is a very easy day.  I also had speed intervals on the bike, and a fartlek (speed) run.  Well the swim went great (3700 yds and attempted butterfly!), the bike was pretty high quality I thought  (4x4min in Z4/5 is harder than it sounds!!), and I was still in the game to give the run a shot.  Plus it was a beautiful day…can’t waste that.

I was supposed to do a good warm up, then 10-30x1min run hard with 1min jog recovery.  Survived the warm up (and by that point I can’t waste a good warm up), but by interval #4 I was thinking my original modest goal of 10 was going to be tough.  Also by this point, I think my lack of electrolyte intake was really catching up with me.  I’d been pounding water all day, but nothing was sitting well.  I made it to 9 intervals and said “eff this noise”.  Walked back to my house and immediately got my packet of Skratch drink mix I’d bought a while ago and had been waiting for a good opportunity to try.  Not sure if it was the resting, the good dinner, or the drink mix, but was feeling much better after pounding the Skratch.

Based on how pooped I am today, I have decided that I am going to limit my workouts to two in any given day, do three of each workout each week (swim, bike, run, strength), and an extra run or bike depending on how the week turns out.  I will also be making use of the Training Peaks feature that allows me to project my fatigue for given workouts.  The journey continues….  🙂