We are triathletes and we are typically very dedicated when it comes to doing our scheduled workouts.  It is important to remember however, that triathlon is a hobby and it should fit into your life… not the other way around, where life fits around triathlon.

We all have busy lives and sometimes things crop up.  A child gets sick. Your parents need help. The car breaks down and needs to be taken to the shop. When these kind of things happen, we have to chose between doing our workout, or dealing with what “life” has thrown our way.

When life gets messy, my constant message to the athletes that I coach is, skip or move the workout.  My preference is to have the athlete just skip the workout.  Missing one workout is not going to impact fitness or performance.  In fact, trying to squeeze the workout in, on top of the other life events, is likely to be detrimental because of the stress created.

I am also sometimes okay with my athletes moving their workout to another day, provided it doesn’t create too much training load.  For example, moving an easy pace, 30 minute run, to a day where you have a relatively easy swim session, is fine.  What we don’t want to do is to move a 90 minute, high effort bike session, to a day where you also have a 2 hour long run.  Obviously these are extreme cases, but I always like to err on the side of avoiding the creation of ‘big days’, when moving workouts.

There are times when your life conflicts with your triathlon ambitions. When it does, forget triathlon for a day and just move on.