When life gets in the way of training

I'm writing this from Austria. I am on holiday with my wife and our girls. Mountains, autumn colors, beautiful weather, what's not to like about it.

Indeed, it's all great! Except that this is the first week that I found that keeping up the training regime became difficult. Which is interesting, if you think about the fact that this is a holiday, where you should have more time, instead of less 😄

Here's the funny thing about structured training: it's actually easier at home. At home, there's a rhythm. Alarm at 5:00, on the bike by 5:45 and even with a 3-hour training, you'd still be done by 8:45. Pretty easy, very manageable with ''your normal life''.

On holiday? Different story. We want to go onto the hiking trails while the weather is still nice and the colours are amazing. Work still needs some attention every now and then. And going on the bike by 9AM for a 3 hour training just ruins the planning for the rest of the day.

So you start calculating. "Maybe get up at 5:00 as well here? Pfff, I also want my holiday to rest a bit more than normal. But wait, we're visiting that village later on, so I can't really start later than 06:00. And wasn't the whole point of this holiday to actually be here and enjoy?"

It's one of those moments where training and everything else that matters just collide. You can't do it all. Something's got to give.

The thing is, this is just how it goes sometimes. Life happens. Holidays happen. And honestly, that's fine. The JOIN app doesn't know I'm in Austria right now. It doesn't know the kids want to explore and my wife also has been looking forward for this week a lot.

So I decided that doing just slightly less (2h30, instead of 3h, 2h20 instead of 3h30) and tomorrow a ride of about 2h with my neighbour, instead of another 3h30 session.

The training will still be there. This week won't make or break Cape Epic. And on Sunday we'll be heading home again already, so enjoying while were here trumps following JOIN to the minute. Next week, I'll be back in the regime.

Until then, Keep Chasing!