Native Restoration Day and Periodization – BionicOldGuy

Tuesday’s journey was a protracted exhausting one so yesterday was a simple restoration day, simply over 90 minutes close to residence. It was nice and my legs felt higher afterwards. The journey is right here on Strava

Periodization

Periodization is various your coaching through the 12 months to emphasise various things. Now I’m coming into a part the place I’m rising my mileage, so it’s a good suggestion to compensate by chopping again on depth. On exhausting biking days I used to be doing multiple kind of intervals, plus some sprints, plus “on-bike power coaching“. I’m dropping the intervals for now and simply concentrating on cardio coaching with extra regular driving. However this neglects the bigger fast-twitch muscle fibers in my legs, and at my age I can’t afford for them to atrophy. So I’m nonetheless doing the sprints and on-bike power coaching, each of which goal fast-twitch muscular tissues. After I’m completed in a few months or so with my longer distance challenges, I can change issues up once more by decreasing quantity and including extra depth again in.

I seen one thing attention-grabbing again once I was working marathons. Main as much as the marathon I’d be closely targeted on rising the size of my runs in coaching, and lower method again on all the pieces else. After I’d run the race, I’d get better for a few weeks and once I’d resume coaching I’d emphasize pace as a substitute of distance. Inside a number of weeks I’d at all times set a private report in a 10K race. So the several-month interval of excessive quantity, decrease depth acted as base, on which I may shortly add pace. I didn’t invent any of this, it’s a traditional periodization idea going again to Arthur Lydiard, however it’s good to know one thing works for me personally. I’m hoping the identical concept will for me in biking. That is referred to as base coaching adopted by race-specific coaching, however I’ve by no means construct as excessive of a base as I’ll be doing within the subsequent couple of months.