Lessons learned.......

I've been training a little while now and while trying to forget the boredom of another pool session yesterday, was thinking about what I had learned from my experiences so far (inspired from a post I read from Michael saying it's about the lessons learned with each step rather than the race results...)

Here's my personal musings and I'd be interested to hear others experiences as well. These are all covered many times in many articles but I'm afraid I tend not to learn them until I experience them for myself!

1. Start slow and gradually build up (got injured overdoing my running recently when I felt really good and then couldn't run for 10 days - ouch!)

2. Train the sport that needs most work when most rested (swimming last in the training cycle left me with no energy to complete my most needed workout)

3. Keep it simple and don't read too far ahead (so much is written about advanced training techniques but I need to build significant endurance first before attempting the fancy stuff.....)

4. You are what you eat (I get as much of a boost from healthy eating and abstaining from too many treats as I do from a successful training session)

5. Commiting to a specific goal keeps me focussed (2nd May Sprint Tri in < 1 hr 20 mins)

6. Take a long term results focus (a 35 min swimming session may not be outstanding but 4 weeks ago I could barely do 5 mins without a break - 3 months ago the goal of losing 20lbs seemed a million miles away but now it's achieved!)

7. Doing triathlon training gives me a real inner buzz and greater self esteem (and impresses others!)

8. Swimming is boring!!!!! (starting lessons next week will give me a new focus on technique and not just watching the minutes tick away)

Just a few of my pool musings......happy New Year all and may we all achieve our goals for 2004!

BP