No God Of Mine Needs A Rest After Creating the Universe or My God Can Beat Up Your God

Around 4000 years ago, just a few years after god created the earth, a bunch of his people got together to write down what we today call the bible. Each person had claimed to personally have spoken to god. The first guy, who was a relentless workaholic, said, "God told me he created the earth in seven days, no rest." He eventually moved to Colorado, became a preacher and then ignored the bits he didn't like from the bible anyway. The second guy said, "No, you're wrong, on the seventh day he took a rest." This guy said this just because he didn't like the first guy. No one did, really. The third guy, who eventually moved to France, said "No way, God told me he worked three days and took three days off and then went on strike on the seventh day."

Like all great works of fictional literature written by committee, they compromised and settled on god resting one day.

I've begun reading another triathlon book called "The Perfect Distance" by Tom Rodgers. It's a pretty good book that doesn't break any new ground. Triathlon books are very much like books by Tom Clancy. You reach a point where your ability to suspend disbelief is so abused you throw the book down in disgust, only to pick it back up grudgingly and finish it. For me, this happened on page 65 under the heading "Potential Training Week for Experienced, Working Triathlete." It lays out a training week that is between 13-17 hours. For me, this is pushing the limits of time I can put into training and still bathe and dress myself. But I'm a backpacker with a struggling work ethic.

But what really bugs me about this and so many other training programs is this seven day per week training plan. COME ON! Active recovery is a 60 minute workout? You are higher than a kite. Active recovery is walking up my stairs and making an actual dinner after another long, tedious day of work.

When I started following the training programs from Championship Triathlon Training, these programs all called for six days a week. This is more reasonable, but I'd still rather have two full days off.

Which is why I've abandoned yet another training program. It's been a great guide and I will still keep my eye on the workouts, but I am going to go back to focusing on a 10% weekly increase in time spent working out while maintaining a five day per week workout plan. I'm up to about 8 hours this week, so I'll add about 40 minutes to next week's total, dividing the additional time between swim, bike, run and weights, roughly.

I'll probably adopt a four week increase and then a recovery week where I'll drop back 50%, and then resume the build from where I left off, building up to a total of around 15 hours. I'm not sure what I'll do once I get there, but that's roughly nine weeks out and I'll worry about it then. I have my doubts that 15 hours a week is sustainable, but in past seasons it was unsustainable because I wound up with injuries so that I had to cobble together workouts the best I could.

I do this every year. I start out with the best intentions to lay out and follow this elaborate plan, and then three or four months later I decide just to go back to the gradual increase. But each year I add a few new tricks, techniques and workouts and I am feeling very good about where I'm at, though admittedly I'm still very early in the season.