Native Restoration Day and Periodization – BionicOldGuy

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

Periodization

Periodization is various your coaching through the yr to emphasise various things. Now I’m coming into a part the place I’m growing my mileage, so it’s a good suggestion to compensate by slicing again on depth. On exhausting biking days I used to be doing multiple sort 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 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 energy coaching, each of which goal fast-twitch muscle groups. After I’m finished 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 observed one thing attention-grabbing again once I was operating marathons. Main as much as the marathon I’d be closely centered on growing the size of my runs in coaching, and reduce method again on every part 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 might all the time set a private file in a 10K race. So the several-month interval of excessive quantity, decrease depth acted as a superb 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, 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.