Sunday, August 09, 2009

400 Days until 2010 Laser Masters Worlds

It's been a quiet year in Lake Wobegon...

After competing in two Laser Masters Worlds in the fall and winter of 2007/2008 followed by my (failed) attempt to sail my Laser 100 days in 2008, I haven't sailed much at all since my final outing of last year, a brilliant sunny winter day on Bristol Harbor which I wrote about in If I Had a Boat.

Oh sure, there's been some Lasering. A blast or two with my son, a SailFit seminar in March, informal racing once or twice with the Laser dudes at Lake Massapoag, sailing with Mark and his Force 5, and a dozen or so solo practice days. But no regattas. It's probably been my least active stretch for a very long time.

Don't worry. I'm not going to write a long whiny post about why I haven't been sailing much lately. Suffice to say that sailing is not my whole life and I have preferred to spend time on other rewarding aspects of my life in the last 6-8 months.

But it's only 400 days from today until the first race day of the 2010 Laser Masters Worlds in Hayling Island in the UK. The last few days I've been thinking about those 400 days a lot and have formulated the outline of a plan of how I'm going to to use that time to prepare for the Worlds.

It seems to me that 100 days - approximately 3 months - is a nice convenient chunk of time. Long enough to achieve something worthwhile; short enough that the end date is close enough to give a sense of urgency to the endeavor. So I've been thinking of my training program as 4 separate periods of 100 days. What should I do in each 100 days? How should I change activities in each 100 day chunk in order to keep things fresh and stay motivated? What targets should I have for each 100 days? More on that in some upcoming posts.

I've also discovered a terrific resource about what to do when practicing alone... which I do a lot. My mind is buzzing with ideas for a whole series of posts on that topic.

Stay tuned...

4 comments:

Sam Chapin said...

So when you think of something else to practice other than the long list I have under "Self Coach"
lets have it.

I made that list up for one of our guys who couldn't think of anything to do when he was out by himself.

Sam Chapin said...

You are welcome to any thing on my "Self Coach" thing which is maybe too long -- but just as many things as I could think of the need practice-- some more than others. Hell, just do the ones you enjoy.

jbushkey said...

Have you ever watched video tape of yourself? After watching some tape of my game last week I immediately noticed a problem with my posture and two things I should be doing differently

The O'Sheas said...

The videotape thing is huge. I've used in work and also in coaching and can't imagine a more effective tool. No matter how many times somebody tells me something about my swimstroke, and no matter how much I believe them, actually seeing it on videotape reinforces it quicker and more effectively helps me visualize the correction I need to make than any alternative.

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