Thoughts for the New Year

The start of a new year is often a time for having another look at training plans and making resolutions. "Having a plan that you can change is better than having no plan at all" said Arthur Lydiard and he wasn't the first either. "How do you plan to do that?" asked Michael Johnson's father and Michael himself uses the phrase often. You can do nothing without a plan. BUT having made the plan doesn't mean that you stick to it - some assume that having written down a plan it will filter through to their legs just by being written down. 'Taint so!

Frank Horwill is credited for saying that "Failing to Train is Training to Fail!" I used the phrase for a teacher's seminar I was organising at one point - it was true for them and it is even more so for athletes. Make your plan and then keep to it. If you are a junior athlete or a senior with modest ambitions and only train four times a week, then missing a session because of a sudden commitment that has been made on your behalf either by your social secretary (or wife or husband!) or your employer presents no difficulty. You just do the prescribed session on one of the other three days. If you train seven days a week and you find something unexpected comes up, then you have to find some other way to get the work done. It is possible to train (a) before breakfast immediately on rising; (b) after breakfast before work (When I taught in Easterhouse for six months and lived in Lenzie I ran in to the school on every second day which gave me seven and a half miles before the day's work started); (c) at lunchtime; (d) after the working day before dinner - if running is a habit, this is a good time to do it; (e) after dinner. Missing a session because you have to go out one night does not mean that there is no time to get it done. It is usually a case of the running not being a priority.
Geoff Ellis highlighted a more insidious problem when he said "Cutting short a workout sows the seeds of failure." The reason he offered was that if you DO miss a workout then you know you have to make up for it somehow; if you do half a session you can kid yourself that you did something - and something is better than nothing, isn't it? Well, no. Cutting short a session makes it easier to cut another later in the week or at the start of the next week - every failure to complete a session makes it easier to cut another.
Finally, Ian McCafferty was asked by a television interviewer if he really had to train as much as he did to be world class. His reply was that if he missed a single day, he felt it next time out; if he missed two days, his training partners knew it and if he missed three days, the opposition and the spectators all knew it.
So get your plan and stick to it. Happy New Year!