Oh oh Chistmas is here
December 26th, 2007 by Aleksandar
It’s the 24. of december and even if you don’t celebrate christmas your life and traning is likely to be affected by this holiday - pools being closed and no one to train with. Over the past few years I have had the same experience every christmas - I gain weight and I don’t train as much as I normally do. In the past I have always had a pretty ambitious training plan for the holidays and every year I’ve missed some of the planned workouts - however I have still trained more that people I know which made me feel good. So when I was planning this christmas and trying to figure out how much I could train, I, for the first time, reflected upon the last few years, and how they had been, and used this experience to plan this holiday.
What I came up with was pretty intressting and pehaps a few of you out there can use it, no just for this christmas but for family holidays in general. To keep things simple I made a list of key points to remember this christmas.
a) Friends and family are number 1. I’m a busy guy, like any triathlete I know. In the past I haven’t been good at using the holiday to invest in my family and friendship.
b) You can’t gain fitness fast and you can’t loose it fast either. Over the years I have learned that I bounce back pretty quickly from not training. This doen’t mean that I won’t be trainig this holiday but I won’t panic if I miss something - remember point a (above).
c) Use the peace of the holiday to set goals for next year. Often I have forgot to make clear goals. I will use the calm atmosphear of christmas to develop my goals. Christmas is for me very low mental stress and therefor I have the opportunity to be creative and ambitious. Here is how I’m going to make my goals for 2008. I’ll make a list of 5 goals, number 1 is the ultimative and 5 is what I’ll be okay with. For exampel; 1. could be a top 5 in Lake Placid and 5 could be not giving up in my a race no matter what happens, making sure I can keep my head held high despite the result. I often find that people only have one goal in an ironman. When they realize they can’t fulfill this goal they give up an start walking- they don’t have any motivation to keep going. In making more than one goal you make sure that it isn’t “do or die” when you race. For most of us this “do or die” mentallity will only hurt us because we need go get a posivtiv feedback from our races. The races is the end of a long working period and we need to make sure we don’t feel like we have wasted our time. No matter what result you will always have gained something from the process. Setting clear goals will help you understand this
d) Be open minded. I’m a guy that really like my routines. This is good for the everyday life because routines can help you excecute a busy daily schedule. But for this holiday I’ll try and be willing to do what others like to do - even if that means staying up late and talking about all kinds of crazy things, or playing in the woods or going out drinking. I have often felt bad about doing this but when I think back I also think that it was when I did things I don’t normally do that I made the memories that would sum up my last years christmas.
These are the a,b,c and ds for my christmas this year. Hopefully it has made you think about how you want to spend your holiday so you can enjoy it the most.
Ho ho christmas is here.
