From the newsletter

The weekly athlete check-in

The check-in from issue 15, on one page. Five signals, rated honestly. A rule for reading them back. And when one goes red, where I look first and the quick fix that usually moves it.

No plan survives a full training block untouched. Work travel eats a week. A cold lands right before the long run. A knee starts acting up. The plan isn't broken. Not noticing is the failure.

This is the athlete check-in I run through the platform every week. Two minutes on a Sunday, on paper if you like.

The five signals

How was your week?Five signals. Rate honestly, not optimistically.

EnergyOverall, training and life.

Low → High

RecoverySoreness, fatigue, how rested you feel.

Poor → Excellent

StressLife stress counts too, not just training load.

Low → High

Sleep qualityQuality, not just hours.

Poor → Excellent

FuelingHow did fueling feel this week?

Rough → Smooth

How's your body?Any pain your coach should know about before next week? How did the week feel overall?A sentence or two is plenty.

Reading it back

The rule

Two or more signals at the bad end of the scale: hold this week's step. Repeat last week instead.

Say stress comes back a 5 and sleep a 2, two weeks running. You don't push through. You hold the long run where it is, or drop into a lighter week to let the body catch up, and you step up again once the signals come back. The plan didn't fail. It moved.

When a signal is red

Where I look first, and the quick fix that usually moves it.

Signal	Check first	Quick fix
Energy low	Food and sleep, in that order.	Eat before sessions. One earlier night. Swap one easy run for a walk.
Recovery poor	The last two weeks of load.	Hold the long run. Drop the intensity for a week. Keep the easy runs.
Stress high	Life, not training.	Shorter sessions, not skipped ones. Long run on the calmest day.
Sleep poor	Quality, not hours.	Same wake time every day. No hard session late.
Fueling rough	Timing around sessions.	Something to eat before. Carbs with you past an hour. Drink through the day.
Pain	Flag it, don't rate it.	Don't run through it. Swap to something painless and tell someone.

You notice, you adjust, you notice again. Do that every week and the plan on paper turns into a plan that actually fits your life.

The point isn't to protect the original plan. It's to protect your rate of progression.

This is the companion page to a Page Street Performance newsletter issue. Read the newsletter · Back to home