By this time in the season most athletes have completed their first A-priority race of the year. And more than likely there is another A race coming up soon. How should you tweak your training to prepare for it? This is the single most difficult question to answer when it comes to periodization.
The most challenging scenario
is when the next A-priority race on the calendar is less than six weeks after
the previous one. That’s especially true when the next race is a long one. For
the shorter events the challenge isn’t as big since the time needed to
recover and prepare to race once again isn't as great. Still, the challenge for having such closely spaced A
races is rebuilding fitness and coming into form in a short period of time.
There is no formula for this. You have to address several questions to which
the answers are solely dependent on your unique circumstances:
yourself, the more time you’ll need to shed fatigue, heal sore soft tissues and
take a mental break from focused training. In this case it’s best to not have
another A race on the schedule for at least four weeks. Following a race that lasted a couple of hours of less you can be ready to go back into serious training
within a matter of a few days – a week at the most. But if the event was a running race that time may easily be doubled depending on how quickly you have bounced back in the past.
require a lot of low-intensity, long-duration training. The shorter races are
more dependent on high-intensity, low-duration training. So the key question
is: When will you be ready to either go long or go fast again? If your last
race was long and your next race is also long, then rebuilding fitness can be
done rather quickly once recovered. But if your last race was short and the
next one is long it will take more time to prepare. On the other hand, it’s a bit easier to build
fitness for a short race if the last one was long since speed seems to develop more quickly than endurance.
fitness abilities that must be developed in the Base period before you can move
onto the Build period – aerobic endurance, muscular force and speed skills. The
first, aerobic endurance, is the most critical at this juncture since it is the
most basic of all abilities for endurance events. If it is weak then any advanced-ability
training (muscular endurance, anaerobic endurance, and power) you do now will likely
have little benefit for faster racing. If you went through a two- or three-week taper
as prescribed in my Training Bible books and you are now
taking a week or more to recover from your A race then aerobic endurance is
certain to have faded. It will probably take two or more weeks of focused
training to adequately rebuild it. For an upcoming two-hour or less race you
can have this back to a high level quickly. But if your next race is longer than four hours it will take several weeks of aerobic endurance training to be
ready to race well again.
I need to mention at this
point that when I post a periodization blog here I always get questions from
readers on what they should do given their unique situations. I’m really unable
to do anything more than guess what the athlete should do in these situations.
There are even more variables to deal with than I addressed above. For example,
how well did the last race go, is the athlete a fast or slow responder, has the
athlete done such back-to-back races in the past and if so how successful were
they, etc. the number of variables is far too long for me to be able to tell
you what to do based on a little bit of info. I wish I could help everyone but I
simply can’t. When you choose to coach yourself these are the issues you have
to learn to deal with frequently. If you have a coach he or she will make such
decisions for you and all you have to do is train.
