Fall arrived abruptly in the Pacific Northwest, and I know that my training routine has certainly taken a dramatic change in direction.

After lots of long hikes and evenings where it was too hot to cook, I suddenly find myself surprised by how early it’s dark, trying to restructure my training program, and looking up soup recipes!

How are you faring?

Honestly, I’m old enough and I’ve lived in Seattle long enough, that the change of seasons should no longer come as a surprise. But, it did — and it threw my entire game off. I failed to plan.

In an ideal world, we’d all sit down one day a week and schedule our meals and training programs, and life would go according to plan. But, since life is what happens WHILE we are busy making other plans, let me share a few tips I’ve learned over the years:

The beauty of the backup plan.

When it comes to training have a Plan B … and a Plan C.

The first backup plan is to plan for an alternate location/time — indoors if it’s raining outside, or something you can do on your own in case you get out of work too late to make spinning class.

The second is in case time gets compressed and you don’t have time for your full workout. It’s tough to beat a 4-minute Tabata workout, a few hundred kettlebell swings, or 10 minutes of jumprope in terms of pure work.

Options — it’s all about having options.

Night-before thinking.

After dinner or before bed, think about your next day. Do you know where your training fits in? Do you have your meals planned? Do you even have a slot for lunch? If the answer to any of those questions is no, take a few minutes and think it through.

Can you get up an extra 20 minutes early and do Tabata or jumprope? Leave work a bit early and hit the gym and be a half hour late to happy hour?

Can you stop by QFC and grab some lean protein, veggies, some cashews, and fruit from the deli and put together a healthy lunch? If you are running from meeting to meeting to meeting all day, be sure you have something healthy to grab in between so you aren’t grabbing a scone from Starbucks. (Did you know their fall favorite, the Pumpkin Scone, is 420 calories?)

Say it out loud.

This may sound crazy, but once you’ve made a plan, saying it out loud — even if no one hears you — means you are more likely to stick to it.

Say you have dinner out planned, and you know you should skip the bread basket. You know, and yet every time, you devour half of it before anyone else has even had a slice. Next time, as you are finishing getting ready, simply tell yourself (it HAS to be out loud) that you are going to leave the bread basket alone.

Whether it’s processed carbs, going to the gym after work, or not having that evening glass of wine as you sit down to watch Grey’s Anatomy, making the resolution out loud — even to an empty room — works.

Your turn. You tell me – what are your planning tricks?