Drifting without a Plan

Recently, I feel as if I've been hitting some lows in terms of my fitness for various reasons. Fellowship interviews, holiday and vacation travel, chief responsibilities, conferences, and minor viral illnesses, have all combined to wreak havoc on any sort of regular exercise schedule that I have tried to maintain. As a result, in the past 3 weeks, my workouts have dropped to 2-3x per week, which is the lowest frequency of workouts that I have done in the past 2 years short of postmarathon recovery weeks. 

I have normally been able to maintain a rigorous training regiment regardless of distraction during my Pfitz training for the last 2 years. Even with heavy on-call responsibilities, travel, and other responsibilities, I somehow always managed to prioritize the requisite mileage for continued improvement. However, now that I have been "off-plan" for months now, I find that workouts often become a casualty of the varied responsibilties of work and life. I suspect most people would find this a normal and expected consequence of adult life, but I always find myself disappointed in myself when I am not maintaining a relatively high level of fitness due to scheduling reasons alone.

On the bright side, my foot has made a complete recovery at this point from the stress fracuture I suffered 5 months ago in August. I have been completely pain-free, even with long runs and 40 miles per week of running (with biking on top), so I am definitely ready to re-engage some serious runs. As well, my shoulder-rotator cuff muscles, which were inadequate for swimming, have gradually strengthened, and I am no longer experiencing the persistent (and sometimes debilitating) shoulder pain that plagued me for the first two months of my swim training. I'm hoping that the tendons in my shoulder have sufficiently strengthened at this point so that I can return to 4-5x swims per week without pain being the limiting factor in my swim workouts. 

I am currently trying to decide where to devote my energies to the upcoming race season. I still have a serious long-term goal of achieving the BQ (Boston-qualifier) marathon time which has eluded me thus far, but I am certain that I will require at least 1 full Pfitz cycle to get back to my previous peak form, and another Pfitz cycle to further improve to a sub 3:10 time, as I seem to be genetically challenged at the longer-distance races. Ordinarily, I would be all-go for this, but I also envision triathlon training as a better long-term prospect for my overall health, from the combinations of less risk of repetitive injury, fun on the bike, and enjoyment of swimming for a balanced fitness profile. It is true that triathlon training takes more time, but I do feel that in the long-run, I would be happier as being predominantly a triathlete, with dedication of a quarter of the year to dedicated marathon (or other single-discipline) training. 

As of now, my next major race will take place in March, where I will race the Washington DC Cherry Blossom 10 miler, as well as a half marathon about 2 weeks later. Why DC? I will be there for 4 weeks as part of a radiology conference which most residents attend during their later years of residency, and I have a friend from my PhD years who plans on running these races with me. It'll definitely be a humbling experience - with my low triathlon mileage and long time off from Pfitz training, it'll be a challenge just to approach 1:35s for a half marathon, or a full 10 minutes slower than my peak form. I'm still going for it though, and will likely adopt a modified Pfitz 18/55 schedule with adaptations for triathlon maintenance.

Hopefully I'll get my race goals and work priorities straightened out in the near future. I've also been quite busy as of late with chief resident responsibilities, which are sucking about 2 hours per day for the weeks which I am on duty, so that has made high-volume training even more difficult. I still think I can fit it in though - it's certainly easier than doing so with the high call volume I experienced during my first 2 years of residency.