Change the plan

As a cyclist and a coach I like to plan things out. A training plan gives a sense of stability and security. I thought about why one training succeeds the other and that way I can say to myself: no worries, just stick to the plan and it all will be allright.

But since I started running around in hospitals I quickly learned that a schedule is just a relative thing. Patients tend to be a little unpredictable and sometimes take up way more time than anticipated. After countless hours of waiting on the phone, in the hallway or on a chair stuffed in a corner somewhere, I learned that stressing about (waiting)time does not make it go faster. In fact, it actually just makes it seem longer and takes up loads of precious energy. So I try to not get too stressed out if time goes too fast or slow. Easier said than done, but practise makes perfect right?

Another thing I learned from the hospital is that time spent in a certain way during the day, affects how I can spend my time after work and on the bike. Apparently running around all day at work doesn’t really match with a heavy interval training afterwards. Seems pretty logical when I write it out like this, but in reality every week again I find myself struggling with it.

There are weeks that occasional interval sessions go perfectly fine and I can stick to the plan. But on days like today, hospital life is interfering with my bike life. I’m currently in a nightshift block and adapting to the change in day and night rhythm is a little rough this week. Semi well-rested I got on the tacx at around 7 pm and set out to do my planned TT blocks. However, 2 minutes in the interval I have a ginormous headache, I can’t seem to get any control over my breathing and my legs feel like they are about to fall off. And the watts are just bad. I decide to break it off. Today is going to be an easy ride.

A while ago I would have just suffered trough, making it a bad training and killing my moral for the rest of the day too. It’s still very hard, but I’m slowly learning something: sometimes the circumstances change, so sometimes you also need to change the plan. Today is one of those days. I changed the plan, and I’ll try the intervals again on a better rested day. I guess that counts as progress too.

So keep calm and change the plan if necessary.