Developing a Plan

Training for an Ironman is not going to be an easy feat ... I'm sure of that.  One thing I know for sure is that to have any chance of success, I'm going to need a plan.  Luckily, I have a friend who provided me with a copy of the plan he used to train for his Ironman two seasons ago.  The main program is a 20 week program, with another 20 week off-season plan.  I have plenty of time for the regular season plan, which would start at the first of April, but I really need to get started on my off-season plan.  So over the last few nights, I've been mapping out the weeks on my calendar until the triathlon so I know what week I'm in, and now its time to go in and put my actual workouts into the calendar as well.

I've used Training Peaks (www.trainingpeaks.com) in the past to track my workouts, but unless you upgrade to a premium membership (close to $100 for the year), you can't input workouts into the calendar until the day of the workout.  Essentially that means unless I'm willing to pay $100, I can't put a "plan" into Training Peaks, but instead can only input / download workouts (from my Garmin 305 Forerunner) after they are complete.  This doesn't help me much, however, because I find that I am most successful when I have a calendar that I can look at the day before and plan my workout for the next day.  And the truth is that I don't need anything fancy ... putting them into a separate calendar (my "training" calendar in iCal) is good enough to keep me on track.  So I'm not sure I'll be upgrading my Training Peaks membership (although I'll certainly still use it to download my workouts).

So, with that said, tonight I will probably go start inputting my workouts into iCal for at least the next two weeks so that I can look at them, but more importantly DO THEM.