With just a little more than 3 months to go before the 2012 GNC Pittsburgh Triathlon and Adventure Race, it’s time to get serious about training for it if you haven’t already. Starting this week, you’ll find free 12 week triathlon training plans for both the Sprint and Olympic Distance races for both beginner & intermediate participants available from the GNC Pittsburgh Triathlon, Friends of the Riverfront and Steel City Endurance Facebook pages, as well as linked from the Friends of the Riverfront and Steel City Endurance websites.
Creating successful training habits is probably the single best thing you can focus on in order to reach the goals you set for yourself. Positive training habits can help take over on those days when some things just don’t go as planned.
By minimizing opportunities for missing a training session, you maximize your trajectory of improvement in everything. Whether it’s swimming technique, running endurance, cycling speed or power or weight loss, you’ll need to create a positive environment of success. Let’s look at what some positive training habits look like. Can you envision yourself doing these simple habits that other successful triathletes practice?
- Preparing your gym bag in the evening before bed so that everything you need is in one spot, minimizing excuses for skipping a planned session.
- Immediately hanging up suit & towel to dry after returning from the pool so that it’s ready and dry before you leave for your next swim.
- Entering your training plan into your calendar two to three weeks ahead of time so that you have enough time planned to not only do the training, but get to and from the training site
- Positively visualizing the next day’s training, replacing negative thoughts with positive ones? And doing the same for your goal race on a regular basis?
These are all simple, effective habits that anyone can do that will help you create a pattern of consistent training. Take a few minutes to think about your current routines and habits and try to choose one that you can improve upon over the next week.
Thanks to the following members of the Pittsburgh Triathlon Club for their suggestions regarding successful training habits: Chad Holderbaum, Kam Hoffman and David Keith.
