Last week I was in enjoying time together with my family on vacation in New Mexico, but I was also feeling tired and out of sorts. Ok, here is a little context. I am training for a 50-mile run in the Grand Canyon this fall, R2R2R, on my way to try to qualify for the Boston Marathon next year. I have been logging quite a few miles. I am also hosting the Life in Transition Podcast, which I love, and facilitating my Mid-Life Transition Mastery groups, and launching a related coaching business. These are all good things, but I haven’t yet mastered working on any of them in a sustainable way. Last Wednesday I woke and realized I was supposed to do a 10-mile run instead of the 5 mile I had thought. I felt fatigued, and wanted to be at home with my family for breakfast and be there when my wife woke up. I was feeling disconnected from my other work projects as well. I jumped into my morning practices of journaling, prayer, and meditation and through those I decided to integrate my run with our family fun that day by running back from the Toas Ski Valley, after we had played up there for a while and I worked on my business projects until my wife awoke. It felt good to keep the momentum moving on those instead of just thinking about them, and it only took 30 minutes or so. I also talked with my running coach, and he said it was clear that I was fatigued, I was doing my easy runs at too high a heart rate and starting out too fast. The body needs to warm up for every run even the easy ones and I need to stay in my Zone 2 heart rate at least for the first 75% of the run. With this clarified, I had a good and easy 10 mile run back from Ski Valley. And later in the week, after following this much slower pace for a few days, I was able to hold the desired pace for an entire 10-mile run including a slow warm up even at an altitude of 7,000 ft. The next day, I was to do an easy 5-mile run but wanted to pull ahead my long run based on the weather and travel later in the week, but my body was not up for it. We need varying intensity of training. We also need 1-2 rest days per week, when we are completely off. These are the most important.
It is just the same with work. We need to work at varying intensities, over all different time frames, the day, the week, the month, the year, and the career. We need to have 1-2 days completely off each week, and 1 -2 weeks completely off each year. And we need to keep the momentum on all the other days if we want to make progress. This is where I have been struggling recently, where I am not doing anything on certain projects for too long, losing momentum and taking lots of energy to re-start. To change that, I have started integrating listening to edited podcasts and some calls into my easy runs, even on adventure days. Or stopping briefly to record a video or make notes. That also feels very good and keeps things moving.
Whether in training for an epic adventure or being productive in your career, work with varying degrees of intensity, with consistency of action on the working or training days, 5-6 per week, and really rest 1-2 days and 1-2 weeks per year, often after a big push at work or a race in training. And there will be seasons of lower activity as well, even sabbaticals where you recharge and then try new sports or projects. This will ensure you feel much better, train more effectively, and get more accomplished as well.
Have a great weekend,
Art
PS: Cal Newport’s latest book, Slow Productivity, is a good reference here too.
#effectivetraining #sustainablework #rest #momentum #productivity #variableintensitytraining
