If you don't do what you gotta do you gotta do what you can to do what you gotta do

I am an old Army guy. Therefore, I have a few "quirks" that have been hard-wired into me from those days. First, I have to fold my clothes a certain way. No one else is allowed to do my laundry. Next, I am a hopeless morning person. No matter how hard I try or what time I go to bed, 95% of the time I wake up before the alarm clock. Also, I'm hardly ever late to anything. The motto "if you're less than 5 minutes early you're late" never left me.

Because of my military brainwashing training, I also always like to have a plan before I try to do something. And if the plan works, I do what I can to not deviate from it. Which is why my blowing off workouts this week -- including yesterday's speed workout -- is so perplexing. Monday I went to a baseball game (The Orioles suck but their park is still the best) and didn't have time to hit the bike for 45 minutes. I was ok with that, thinking I'd just use that as my day off and make up for it on Friday, my usual day off.

But when I was at the game I ate something I shouldn't have, an italian sausage loaded down with peppers and onions (and it was delicious). Unfortunately, I'm not toting around the iron constitution I had when I was 15 and can't eat everything I want anymore, like slim jims and Frito's. And now, I guess, italian sausages with peppers and onions.

That thing didn't sit well with me and I couldn't fall asleep until about 1:30am after the game, and since I was still up at about 5:30 I was exhausted. Add in a full day of work and the prospect of youth football for the boy, entertaining the girl, dinner, homework checking, shower time, etc. post-workout, the last thing I wanted to do was run 6X800M intervals. So I didn't.

And now I feel guilty about it because I've fallen behind on my training plan. I'm going to have to do the speed work today, cross train tomorrow, tempo run Friday, cross train Saturday, long run Sunday just to get all my workouts for the week in. And instead of having two non-running days before my long run day this week (12 miles) I'll only have one. But, fortunately, I should be able to get my Friday run in pretty early in the day.

While I'll have a compressed training schedule this week, I have a plan to fulfill the plan and I should be right back on track next week.

So I was able to come up with a way to get back on track due to another trait I like to think the Army instilled into me, realizing that not everything will always go as planned: the ability to improvise, overcome and adapt.