Like Winston Churchill, I don’t like worrying in advance about events or activities. I start with understanding the goals, challenges and expected outcomes and then plan for success.  That is the reason I developed a formal training plan for achieving my Camino goal of walking an 800 kilometer route to Santiago de Compostela in 40 days. Here are the 10 Steps I followed in creating and maintaining my training plan:

1.   I documented my goals, and constraints.  The goal was to comfortably walk the 800 kilometers to Santiago de Compostela in 40 days.  The key is to start the route with a good level of fitness so I can enjoy the journey.  I had to determine a realistic amount of time I could spend each week on exercise considering my time constraints:

• Demanding full time job with travel.
• Family and social commitments.

I calculated that 12 hours a week was the maximum time I could spend on exercise.  The target for my training plan was the ability to complete a 20 km walk each week, and practice yoga 6 days a week for at least 4 months.

2.  I then completed a fitness survey to understand my current fitness level, attitudes toward exercise, and my history of maintaining challenging exercise programs.

3.  I documented my requirements for an exercise training application and did an evaluation of existing mobile, and internet applications available.  My requirements were:

• The solution must have a mobile application which I can use on my iPhone to capture in “real time” my walking distance, speed, duration, route, average pace, calories burned.
• The solution must have the ability to create a baseline training plan, and be able to capture actual exercise data, and measure actual performance to the baseline plan.
• The solution must have an internet portal, so that data can be entered from any computer or location.
• The solution must provide performance reporting.
• The solution must have the capability to download data to Excel.
• The solution must be able to post to social media sites.

4.  I chose TRAININGPEAKS as my solution, and set up an account.
I upgraded to the premium service, to use the advance planning features.
The link to their site can be found by clicking here.

5.  I downloaded Walk Tracker Pro their mobile GPS training application on my iPhone.

6.  I created my baseline training plan in TRAININGPEAKS, using an average of 10-12 hours per week.

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7.  I entered my weekly goals and exercise plans and started capturing exercise data.  Walking data is captured through the mobile application automatically, and Yoga data I enter manually.

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8.  I review my training results weekly through my dashboard, and decide whether to adjust my baseline training plan.

9.  I add comments to my baseline training plan, indicating areas where I can make improvements or add general observations for the week.

10.  I post training results to Facebook when I want to share my training accomplishments.

Updating and reviewing my training plan takes me less then an hour a week. No advance Camino worry now.  With advanced thinking, planning and a great tool, I have mitigated my risk and have a plan for success.  I think Winston would approve.

Send me your comments. Don’t forget to leave a link back to your own blog too if you have one via the commentluv feature here on the site.  I would be happy to hear from you and help you with your Camino training planning.

Buen Camino

Marion

“Let our advance worrying become advance thinking and planning”.

Winston Churchill