Week 3 wrapped up my time at the “Green Room” an experience for speakers unlike any I’ve attended. Saturday Drew and I said goodbye to the most recent cohort and were left to reflect on the lessons we all shared.
Travel can make the long runs hard to get in but this Saturday a 2.5 hour 25 kilometers run in Muskoka, ON was the perfect way to reflect on the week.
While there was so much I could share about the weeks experience I will keep it to the pride that I feel when I think about the discipline it took to stay to my schedule. 68.8 kilometers total. 1,734 meters of vert.
Tempo Tuesday — ten minutes easy, thirty minutes in zone three, ten minutes easy. Hills Thursday — 740 meters of climbing in 90 minutes.
Two bodyweight strength sessions, both done.
For the first time in this build, every prescribed session got finished. No misses. No notes-to-self about Friday’s strength getting eaten by travel. Clean week.
Sunday I flew.
I flew east. My son Chris is graduating from St. Francis Xavier in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, with his accounting degree. Four years on the east coast and a term in Madrid that he fully embraced. He’s earned the walk across the stage. There is no way in hell I would miss that.
Week 4 of the plan is the BASE deload. Volume cuts roughly 40%. The Saturday long run drops from 25 kilometers to about 14. Hills get cut in half. Strength holds.
That’s not a coincidence with the trip. It’s the plan I wrote in March, knowing the calendar would do what the calendar does.
I keep having to relearn, and it’s worth saying out loud: pulling back is the work.
The body doesn’t get fitter when you stress it. It gets fitter when you stress it and then let it absorb the stress. The deload isn’t a break from training. It’s the thing the training is for. It is the transition to the next phase.
I love the parellel in Chris’ journey. He’s done the work. Made the Deans list, go the career job that will set him on his CPA path. Watching Chris walk across a stage isn’t a break from being a father. It’s the thing the fathering is for. I may not have always got it right but damn am I proud of the man that stands before me now.
I am thrilled to stay at his new apartment and help him get it organized and furnished for his Build Phase.
Build 1 starts when I get home. Volume goes back up, the long run pushes toward 30 kilometers, tempo work gets longer. I’ll be ready for it because I stepped back. Chris starts his career with a degree behind him and Madrid in his pocket. Both of us get to keep going because both of us know how to finish a phase before reaching for the next one.
The work isn’t always the work. Sometimes the work is knowing when to put it down.
Signed,
Proud papa
Note: One of the issues I ran into is that my scheduled job with Claude code did not run since I suspect my home machine went to sleep or powered off while I am away. The solution was to manually download the Garmin and Cronometer data and upload to Claude.