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 dwelling. It was nice and my legs felt higher afterwards. The journey is right here on Strava

Periodization

Periodization is various your coaching in the course of the yr to emphasise various things. Now I’m getting into a part the place I’m rising my mileage, so it’s a good suggestion to compensate by slicing again on depth. On exhausting biking days I used to be doing a couple of kind of intervals, plus some sprints, plus “on-bike energy coaching“. I’m dropping the intervals for now and simply concentrating on cardio coaching with extra regular using. 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 energy coaching, each of which goal fast-twitch muscle tissues. After I’m achieved 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 observed one thing fascinating again once I was operating marathons. Main as much as the marathon I’d be closely targeted on rising the size of my runs in coaching, and minimize approach again on the whole lot else. After I’d run the race, I’d recuperate for a few weeks and once I’d resume coaching I’d emphasize velocity as an alternative of distance. Inside a couple of weeks I’d all the time set a private document in a 10K race. So the several-month interval of excessive quantity, decrease depth acted as an excellent base, on which I may shortly add velocity. I didn’t invent any of this, it’s a traditional periodization idea going again to Arthur Lydiard, but it surely’s good to know one thing works for me personally. I’m hoping the identical concept will for me in biking. That is known 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.