We have all been there. Life gets busy and we do not feel like we can hit our goals the way we want. This has been my weak. In this post I am try to decipher between my legitimate reasons and my excuses to find my weak points and also talk about a conversation I had with Charlie Engle about all of this and training for this run overall.

My week has been busy! Students coming back to school, computer based state testing prep, meetings and calls about The Pain in the Canal Virtual Challenge, and a few board meetings all have been on the schedule. Mix this with being a father to an active 5 year old and you have a perfect mix of a hectic schedule. 

I honestly have been beating myself up over this all week because I often feel like if I really want something nothing will stand in my way. Did I make excuses this week that impacted my training? The answer to this question is always yes! I actively chose a few times to do something else that could have waited rather than training. These are the obvious excuses. Fortunately for me there were only 2 or 3 times this week that happened and really only provided me at most an hour or two of training. I did however look at it as rest for my sore calf and wanted to make sure I did not overdo it on my right leg just yet.

With all of that being said I need to make sure I remember that I have priorities and obligations and there are times where I am not going to be able to train the way I want! This is not the important thing from what I what I was told earlier today.

On a call with Charlie Engle who has done more running than just about everyone that reads this combine, Charlie pointed out to me that the number of miles is not the important factor for going into my run this August. The important thing is to focus on going in to August HEALTHY!

The fact that my days have started at 6 and end at 10 providing me only 8 hours to sleep and train is not nearly enough. I know this and anyone that has trained for any endurance event does too. So this week is going to have to be a light week and I have to focus more on getting the sleep I need to recover. That doesn't leave me off the hook for this weekend however! I still need to make sure I take some time to train and get the work in that I can.

Another shift I need to try and make is not to focus on the amount of miles I am putting in. Charlie stressed this to me early on our call. I need to focus on time on my feet. Walking and hiking count as much as running because this summer there will be a combination of all of this! With the plan, as of now, I need to spend 8-10 hours a day running (12 -14 if I walk a lot). That means I need to just get comfortable with being on my feet as much as possible!

With that being said I plan on taking a few calls while walking on the treadmill this upcoming week and maybe even a few calls while on a run. Charlie pointed out that he was out training during our conversation, so it was not too hard to do!

To start my weak though I get to see what it is like to be a lab rat! I will be going to Syracuse University's Sports Lab and having a whole bunch of tests ran on me. They are going to chew me up on Monday to see what kind of shape I am in and provide me with a lot of data points. The tests they are running are going to be:

1. V02 max test on a treadmill for aerobic capacity (15-20 minutes)
2. Wingate test for power (cycle test - 5 minutes)
3. Bod Pod and 3D body scan for body composition (15 minutes)
4. Heart and blood flow scans (20 minutes)
5. Heart rate variability and 12-lead ECG to see if you're overtraining (10 minutes)
6. Pulmonary function tests (10 minutes)
7. Saliva test to check your inflammation 

I will be very interested to see how these tests go and where I stand. We plan on running these tests again in May and possibly June, July, and August to see how my body has adapted through the training. I am excited and scared to find out a few things about my body, but this will be very helpful!

Also, later tonight I plan to launch the new YouTube channel for this and get a few videos I have recorded up. This was not my idea, but I do love the opportunity to use my voice as well as my blog to let people know where I stand. More updates about that will be coming soon.

Thank you for taking the time to read this and I look forward to hearing your feedback. See you on the canal!

Over the past few weeks life has been BUSY! From trips all over the state to work related stress and all sorts of other "life" things I feel like I have been thrown around a lot more than normal. Not to mention the pressure I have put on myself to get things done for The Pain in the Canal Challenge. So a few weeks ago I had the thought of running longer but a little less frequently. Maybe 3-4 times a week with 10 or so miles for my normal day and a long run day. My thinking on this was that I needed to get my daily mileage up for my run in August anyway and as I get closer I would be able to start adding more miles to the runs and more days. I had a solid plan for my spring break from school and I was excited.

Spring break however was not much of a break. I ended up spending a lot of much needed time with my daughter and ended up driving the entire length of my run (Albany to Buffalo) throughout the week. With the meetings I had, the fatherly responsibilities, and a few unfortunate services to attend capped off with a packed Easter holiday schedule, my plans fell through.

My mental "go to" when things are not going my way or the way I plan is that I am not doing enough and I get in my head with this. It usually lasts for about a day or two and then I am able to snap out of it, but the fear of failure is real with this event! I am shooting for something that I have never come close to achieving while planning and organizing the majority of it myself and trying to train around a packed schedule. So how does someone like me get through these mental blocks?

I wish I had the golden ticket here! The magic bullet answer that would solve all the problems of fear in people. Today I am honestly wondering how Kevin deals with it! How does he deal with the fact that he has a fatal illness? What does he use as motivation to keep pushing himself the way he does?

When I ask myself these questions the mistakes or missteps in my training seem irrelevant and I am given a bit of a boost because in reality what the hell do I have to be afraid of? The worst thing that is likely to happen to me is I will embarrass myself and just look like shit as I beat the hell out of my body for a week! That is nothing in comparison.

So today I will focus on what I can do. This afternoon I get out of work a bit earlier than I normally do (Wednesday's we finish at 3) and I have a 90 minute window or so before I pick up my daughter. This gives me about an hour to get a run in before I have to start driving. During this run I am going to work on some of the mapping/direction questions I have that will be necessary to have hammered out on my run in August and hopefully also figure out why my watch is not sending a tracking link like it is suppose to (hoping just an update to the software). After all of that I will probably try to squeeze in another run this evening and see how many miles I can pack in today. The simple fact is that I cannot change the last week, I only can do what I need to today!

Later this week I am hoping to launch a YouTube channel dedicated to The Pain, training and reviews of products that have been donated to me for training including all of the wonderful shoes I have received! I will also post video updates of my training with the hopes that having a more fluent way of channeling my thoughts will provide me a lot more benefit and help me to get out of my headspace.

Please do not hesitate to leave a message here and let me know what you are going through with your training and how you are succeeding or finding motivation! Thank you for reading and look for more updates coming soon!