Do's and don'ts · July 2, 2023 · 2 min read
The plan is written in pencil
2023 had a rib in February, a houseful of family in June, and a work calendar that doesn't know what a taper is.
If you watch our 2023 videos in order you'll notice the plan keeps changing, and it kept changing because the year kept changing it. 2023 had a rib in it, and a houseful of family, and a work calendar, and each one took a turn at the schedule.
The rib, the family, and the job
In the third week of February Michelle hurt a rib over the weekend. We aren't going to diagnose it on a website, since we aren't doctors and we don't know your ribs either, but what it did to training is simple enough, because a rib changes how you breathe and breathing is most of endurance sport. The plan for March had a 10K and a half marathon in it, and some of it happened, some of it happened slower, and the Ku'ikahi 10K in March ended with Michelle winning her age group anyway, which tells you how much of a race is the last three weeks and how much is the two years before them.
The week after Jay's first 70.3 turned into a week with kids in the house, then nieces and a nephew, then hikes up Diamond Head and out to Makapuu, so it wasn't much of a recovery week. Running came back in the last week of June, after everybody flew home. We used to count weeks like that as lost, and now we count them as the reason we do any of this, since nobody is going to remember the tempo run we skipped and everybody is going to remember the hike.
Then there's the job, every month of the year. Jay's work calendar doesn't know what a taper is, and Michelle's weeks have their own shape, so some weeks the plan was three sessions, and all three happened at 5 a.m. because that was the only hour nobody else wanted.
What pencil means
Pencil means the plan has a pecking order, which is different from the plan being optional. Every week has one or two sessions that are the reason the week exists, usually the long run, the long ride, or the brick, and those are in pen, while everything else is in pencil, and pencil gets erased when a rib or a nephew or a work week shows up. Keeping the season alive through the bad weeks mattered more than nailing the good ones, which is why running came back in the last week of June and not the first.