Best of Coach Fred Issue No. 359 - 09/04/08

Best of Coach Fred Issue No. 359 - 09/04/08

A reader wrote:
Q: Yesterday I scheduled an interval workout having four 5-minute efforts. But during the warmup and on the first interval I felt tired and that ruined my motivation. So I went home. Was that the right thing to do, or should I have gutted it out and completed the workout? -- Barry A.

Coach Fred, of course, answered in a roadie coach way, all the while probably thinking to himself, "I didn't become a coach to answer questions like this over and over and over again. Heck, that's one of the reasons I do my newsletter, so people can go back and not ask again".

Beyond that, this question is about as vague as a question can get. In automotive terms it would be the same as asking, "Yesterday I brought my car up to 140 mph and it started shaking violently, furthermore the engine sounded like it was going to explode, is this normal?" Well, if you have a nice new Corvette, that is a problem, but if you have one of the last existing 1982 Chevette's, and you and your neighbor "Hank" thought it would be interesting to slap a nitrous kit on to "see how fast it would go" over a 12-pack of Busch Light, that's an entirely different story altogether. What Coach Fred should have said was this,

A: "Dear reader, that really depends what your training program is and what you are trying to accomplish. If you scheduled an interval workout all nimbly-bimbly with no structure in the plan whatsoever, then yeah, bailing on that and just riding your bike for fun would have been a better plan, heck it might have been anyway for a pure enjoyment perspective. I have to assume if you are going through the trouble of scheduling four 5-minute efforts, that you must know your body pretty well and know when you are tired vs. just feeling lazy and that this crazy interval effort is part of some bigger structured training program, but if I assumed that then you wouldn't be asking the question, you know what they say about ass-u-ming."