While it is very easy to buy a piece of paper with so many 100s, 200s, 50s or 500s, what does that information really mean to you and your goals?  If you like what you see on paper and think it is doable or challenging, by all means, try it.  Yet if you can not make it half way through the workout, a self assessment is in order.

Just like we think about our technique, it’s very worthwhile to think about what we are attempting to do with a workout.  Here are my suggestions to guide your thinking towards building up for a race.

In preparation for an important race:

1) Go backwards.  If the race is July 1st for example, decide on your June workouts first and then May, then April and then March.  In June your workouts will be timed intervals that will show your race potential.  May, April and March will be build up months to increase aerobic capacity and technique.

2) Train with a partner with the same or a similar goal.

3) Train hard and train easy.  Train long and train short.

4) Base your training on how you feel on any given day.  If you feel great, hit it.  If you feel puny, train easily and live to train another day.  On great days, I practically risk unintentional injury just because everything seems to working well.  While I feel great on great days, I often wonder when I am done if I will still feel that good the next day.  On puny days, I am recovering and setting myself up or a better tomorrow.

5) Be consistent in training.  While you have my permission to take it easy, you do not have my approval to take days or weeks off.  If you do, you lose technique and risk injury in just starting up again.  Even five to ten minutes before calling it a day is a worthy goal on a bad day.

6) Know what you are trying to achieve with each workout.  Categorize the workout as aerobic, anaerobic, technique, strength, pace work or time trial.  If swimming aerobically is the goal, don’t go anaerobic.  If working on your race pace is your goal, don’t go out too fast anaerobically.
7) Be smart in knowing that the work order that makes the most sense in building towards a successful race needs to be technique, aerobic, technique, pace work, technique, strength, technique, anaerobic, technique, rest, technique, and then race.