Do You Have a "Day One?"

Lately, there has been a lot of talk about everyone's "day one." I suppose I'm a little confused as to the impact Day One's have on overall training plans. We are technically in the off-season for many athletes. This is the time people presumably use to recover from injuries, focus on weak-spots and generally build up a solid performance-base in which they can spring-board off of once they officially begin a build-taper period for their first race of the season.

So what is the difference between the first day of your off-season and your Day One? Is "Day One" still considered part of your off-season or the first day of your actual race season?

I imagine people give themselves plenty of dietary slack in the initial stages of their off-season to indulge in all of those things they resisted during race-season. Alcohol, fried foods, dinners out... alcohol. And of course there's Thanksgiving-time, and nobody wants to deny themselves any indulgences on that day. I've certainly given myself plenty of slack this past month, particularly the last 10 days or so spent in MI.

I do think it's important, mentally more than anything, to have your own Off-Season Day 1. To me, OFD1 means the start of looking ahead to the next season. Everything you do from that point forward is geared at preparing you in a progressive way towards your Regular Season Day 1 (RSD1), which for me would be the first day of a fixed-week training program geared at building off of the work done in my off-season and preparing me for my first race of the season. By declaring an OFD1, you mentally prepare yourself for the re-commitment of training regularly and eating right.

My OFD1 is tomorrow. I will have three straight weeks of training before I take another week off for a trip to MI. After that, I'll be back into off-season training mode again until RSD1, which I'll hash out in another post. Initial goals involve swimming three times a week (off-season swim goals), weight-training three times a week, getting 8 hours of sleep a night and EATING RIGHT. The last one is of particular importance. I want to try to follow some basic rules that will help me eat correctly and smarter along the way. We've all heard things like "nothing after 10pm," or "you can only eat sweets between 8-10am." What are some other rules you guys follow that help you stick to your guns and not break down and grab a bag of chips, a bottle of soda or say "screw it" and order some take-out Chinese food?