Native Restoration Day and Periodization – BionicOldGuy

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Tuesday’s journey was a protracted laborious 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

The east foothills throughout Hill Ave

Periodization

Periodization is various your coaching through the yr to emphasise various things. Now I’m getting into a part the place I’m growing my mileage, so it’s a good suggestion to compensate by chopping again on depth. On laborious 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 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 power coaching, each of which goal fast-twitch muscle mass. After I’m executed 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 fascinating 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 means again on all the things 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 a substitute of distance. Inside a couple of weeks I’d all the time set a private file in a 10K race. So the several-month interval of excessive quantity, decrease depth acted as base, on which I may shortly add velocity. I didn’t invent any of this, it’s a basic periodization idea going again to Arthur Lydiard, nevertheless 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.