With less than ten weeks to go before my first big race of the year, my training volume is starting to increase.  This coincides with an increase in the number of days, where I do two workouts.  This in turn, means early morning visits to the pain cave, that is my basement.

When two workouts are scheduled for a day when I am at work, I have no option, but to do one workout before I go to work, and the second one, after work.  Doing the workouts ‘back to back’ is not the way to go, as it places too much stress on the body.  This means that the second ‘back to back’ workout will end up being compromised; it won’t give me the benefit it should. Hence, I nearly always split them up.

The only exception to avoiding a ‘back to back’ workout, would be a scheduled ‘brick’ workout, such as a run off the bike.  I don’t do these at this stage of my training build.  I will do a few small runs off the bike, as I get closer to the race.

As I mentioned above, this move to two-a-day workouts, often means early morning trips to my basement, where my bike trainer and treadmill are located.  Getting up early, means that I now have to also focus on going to bed early.  I have to make sure that I get enough sleep, so that I can recover effectively between workouts, as the volume builds.

This morning, my workout was an easy 25 minute run.  I am doing these on the treadmill right now, so as to minimize the impact on my foot and knee, which are both recovering from injuries.  In a couple of weeks time however, I should be able to do these early morning runs outside.  I can’t wait for this, because I really don’t like treadmills.  

My run went well and I’m hoping for a relatively stress free day at work.  My second workout today is going to be a doozy … a super hard session on the bike.