Native Restoration Day and Periodization – BionicOldGuy

Tuesday’s trip was an extended onerous 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 trip is right here on Strava

Periodization

Periodization is various your coaching in the course of the yr to emphasise various things. Now I’m coming into a section the place I’m rising my mileage, so it’s a good suggestion to compensate by chopping again on depth. On onerous biking days I used to be doing a couple of 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 muscle tissue. After I’m performed in a few months or so with my longer distance challenges, I can change issues up once more by lowering quantity and including extra depth again in.

I seen one thing fascinating again once I was operating marathons. Main as much as the marathon I’d be closely centered on rising the size of my runs in coaching, and lower 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 pace as a substitute of distance. Inside a couple of weeks I might all the time 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 rapidly add pace. 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 thought 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.