“That was the most sorry a$$, woe is me, princess blog post I’ve ever read,” was what my friend Cynthia, fellow blogger at Samurai Cynthia and my IronMan training partner told me as we rode our bicycles.   She was referring to last week’s Tri Chat post where I was whining about my direction-less training.

“In my defense,” I told her, “the whole point of having a blog and documenting my journey is to show the good, the bad, and the ugly.”  Life is not linear, nor is it always eloquent, nor clear.  I really was confused and perhaps feeling sorry for myself.  But it was real … it’s where my head was when I wrote the post.”

Since then, things have cleared up a bit.  I did some research and realized I can’t afford a coach.  Rephrase – I am not willing to invest that much in a coach because I don’t think I really need such personalized attention.   I was about to buy a plan and follow it independently when I went back and read this post, about pushing myself when no one is looking.  Sure, I can train on my own, but I was happiest in my training when I was training with friends.

Cynthia had also written me: “You have been doing this thing of leap frogging from lily pad to lily pad and hoping you’ll end up where you need to be … pick a goal and a plan then trust that plan (whatever it is). Don’t waste time thinking when you could be doing. You got this. You just need to commit.”

God knows why Cynthia and I ended up together in this journey.  She has so many of the qualities I lack.  She is strong and upfront and tells me like it is.  My sensitive side has to go on hiatus when I am with her, and I have learned to embrace her honesty and learn from it.

So I came to the conclusion that not only do I need a training plan, but I need people to train with. But I need a group that understands that life is a bit busy right now and that can help me adapt and encourage me to find solutions.  A group that is happy to see me when I can be there, accepts when I can’t make it, but still holds me accountable for getting my training done.

And it turns out that a bunch of my friends with whom I started my triathlon journey a couple of years ago had formed such a group: the Wolfpack. I could have bought a training plan and followed it on my own, but this just seems a better solution for someone like me.

It’s a hybrid.  There is no coach, there is a leader who selects the training plan.  He has lots of experience and I trust he would be better at finding the right plan for my goals than I would on my own on the Internet.   Not everyone has the same goals, so plans are different but we meet up for training.  The sessions, the few I have been to, are very independent and which helps maintain drama at bay.  You go, you do your thing.  If you are dropped on the bike you are dropped.  If you can’t run as fast you turn around earlier.  No hard feelings, just focus on the task at hand.  Towards the end, everyone communicates that they finished, they are safe and how it went.  It’s hard to explain the dynamic but it seems to work.  The even better part is that Cynthia is in the Wolfpack so now we are on the same training schedule making the long training sessions for IronMan a bit more bearable.

The thing is, I don’t think I would’ve appreciated the unique structure of the group if I hadn’t gone rogue.  If I hadn’t “jumped from lily pad to lily pad” and found myself alone and lost.  So that is my new plan … I am part of the Wolfpack and am getting acquainted with what that entails.  This week, training was better… here it goes:

Monday: Rest – Joe was out of town.

Tuesday: Run – Fast fartlek. My first workout with the pack.

Wednesday: Spinning with my sister

Thursday: Swim

Friday: Run – long tempo run 9 miles

Saturday: Rest – I had a bike rodeo with Bike Key Biscayne and wasn’t able to make the time

Sunday: Swim, Bike and Run. A long brick workout for Mother’s Day.

So I end this week feeling more confident.  I made a choice, I have plan, and now I have to trust that it will get me to where I need to be.  I must focus on doing, and not on thinking.

How about you? What is your training situation?