Consistency is the Key

A quote I recently read...

"Consistency is everything. Strength comes from consistency and the body loves it. Try not to get hooked on the quantity of the miles but rather the consistency of the miles. Efficiency, form, speed they all come from strength and the stronger you are the more efficient and faster you can become"

Everything I read and everyone I speak to seem to be pointing to the importance of consistency.

Looking back over my two years that I have been running, I can see that one of the main reasons that I have progressed well is that I have been consistent. I have only been injured once (for two weeks) and been sick once or twice in the last two years. My training however is a tad up and down. I will go for periods of time where I nearly train everyday and then have periods, for whatever reason, where the training in minimal.

I have seen other runners/triathletes do amazing things when there is a long period of time of solid consistent training. It hasn't necessarily been a huge volume, but week in, week out they maintain a certain level of training.

So consistency will be my new year's resolution. What that means I am not sure yet, however I will do all that I can to remain healthy (i.e. no injuries or sickness) whilst pushing my body as much as possible.

After 2 years of generally low intensity training, it was always the plan to do more speedwork/intervals in 07. Now I am not so sure. Will have to find the balance.

Therefore, with the above in mind I deceided not to run "Beyong the Black Stump" today. This weekend was meant to have been a 3 hour cycle on sat and a 4 hour run on Mon. This, no doubt would have effected my training for the next 2 weeks. I did go for the 3 hour cycle but I feel good about the decesion not to do the long run this morning. Instead I did a shorter 14k around home.

Let me leave this philosophical post with a quote from the Maurice Greene press conference after he won gold in Sydney. A reporter ask him, "what do you put your success down to?" Maurice reponded by saying that there are three things you need to do if you want to be successful in athletics. 1) Turn up to training 2) Turn up to training and 3) Turn up to training. At the time, I thought he was a tosser, but now I think he was on to something.

We'll see how it goes.....