If you haven’t used Training Peaks, let me tell you something about this workout online tracking tool. You like your workouts to turn GREEN.

If you have a coach who uses this program, they plan your workout schedule and put it all in Training Peaks. Then if you do what it says, it turns green. If you do part of the workout, it turns yellow. If you don’t do it, it turns red.

Red is bad.

Red looks angry that you didn’t do your workout.

We don’t like red.

Believe me, I’ve had plenty of red days in my workout schedule.

I have a job where I work from early morning until late at night sometimes. Where I work weekends. Where I travel around the world.

And I have three kids. I’m a single mom when I have them.

I have part-time projects that keep me busy — I blog, I write, I do some social media work on the side.

I race direct a local 10K.

I am busy.

I can’t always get in 100% of my workouts. But I try. So when I have weeks where most or all of the workouts are green, it’s something to celebrate. To feel proud of. To ride the high as long as it goes — which is usually through my Monday rest day until I’m trying to figure out how to get in the workouts Tuesday and beyond.

So that’s how the past two weeks went. I totally rocked it. I turned Training Peaks green. It went something like this:

I swam.

I biked.

I ran.

I parented.

It wasn’t always pretty, but hey – after a long workday this is what I look like at bedtime with my kids! Hashtag #reallife, right?

I took care of my lovely doggie, Daisy the Great Dane. She hovers while I ride the bike.

I threw a birthday party for my daughter’s 11th birthday.

I worked. A lot.

It was an awesome two weeks of totally green last week, and almost totally green the week before. However, this current week hasn’t been quite as successful. I’m gearing up for a big international business trip and have been working a lot. It’s hard to get up for workouts in the morning since the time change, and then I’m at work until late at night getting more work done.

But I guess that’s how life is – some weeks you rock it, and some weeks you just do what you can. I try to stick to my training plan that my coach Bob gives me, and I’m so proud and happy the weeks that I turn it green.

But the weeks that have some yellow or red entries? Well, if I know that I did the absolute best that I could, then that’s going to have to be okay.

I want to be well prepared for my races.

I want to be faster, stronger, better.

But I also want to be successful in my other areas of life. As a mom, a “career woman”, and in everything else I do.

I love the look of a 100% “green week” – it used to be rare for me and now I find that I’m rocking the training some weeks and turning Training Peaks Green. But then I get sideswiped by life. By work. By other obligations. And I can’t let it derail me.

Life is a series of ups and downs, and we’re not machines. We’re triathletes, runners, moms, workers, humans.

But I really want next week to be all green…

Turning Training Peaks Green – Ironman training as a working mom of 3! #ironmantraining #triathlon…
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Do you have a training plan or do you work out more unstructured? 

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