Rethinking Volume

Due to life happening, I've found myself having to reduce the planned time or distance of a few of my long training days. Typically my approach when I have done this has been to work around the top end of my heart rate range, instead of at the low or middle ranges. Over the last few weeks I have noticed a couple of things, that has made me rethink my approach to the long days.

Basically it comes down to fatigue levels and quality of training. I find I start to struggle from a fatigue point of view, need more sleep and have my ability to push the harder efforts decline when I am consistently putting in the really long, low intensity days. When I have cut back a little, I find I not only do I feel like I have a ridiculous amount of energy, but the quality of training seems to improve. Remember I do not use the word quality purely as a synonym for "high intensity". By quality, I mean achieving the goals of the session.

To put things in a little perspective, the extra long runs are over 3 hours, and on the bike are over 6 hours. The reduced versions give me something like 2:45 on the run and 4:30-5:00 on the bike. I still think there is a place for the extra long days, but I am rethinking the need to do them every training cycle. A little more variability in the training load appears to be a bit more productive, even if this is only through having me feel better about my training.

Just because it is written on my plan, doesn't mean my body is able to cope with the demand. I need to keep in my head, that training should be designed to build the body up so it can perform on race day, not wear it down before I get there. This reevaluating is all part of the fun of training for the Ironman. If it was easy, it wouldn't be worth doing.

Comments

  1. Hamburglar10 January 2008 at 13:49

    Interesting post Jason.

    I think we can all get caught up in achieving our volume targets and treating quality as a secondary concern.

    I am interested in your thoughts as to why you would like to run over 3 hours each cycle. Is it really necessary? 3 hour runs take it out of you no matter who you are. Do you think they are of much more benifit than say a 2:15 or 2:30 run.

    For HIM and IM training (on a weekly cycle), what do you think of alternating weekly long rides and long runs so you only do one long run/ride every fortnight? This way you can ensure you are not overdoing it, but ensuring the quality of a really long session each fortnight.

    I would be interested in your thoughts.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Sandy Point Half Marathon

Image
Any race that uses a picture of myself as promotion makes me think I should compete in it. Wouldn't want to disappoint the masses. Last year my race slow and cold over the same course. A time of 1:30:20, was disappointing and a kick up the backside to get to what really works in training. Since then I have put in a lot of consistent kilometres and have seen some improvement. I was definitely going to race faster this year. Based on my race results over the last few months the hope was to see if I could get down to near 1:24:xx. The weather was very different this year. Far from cold, in fact I think it was our warmest night in a few months. However, there was a Damaging Winds warning issued, with predictions of 65km/hr gales to slow things downs a bit. The winds hit, according to the weather sites: NNE averaging around 50km/hr with gusts of 76km/hr. That made for some interesting race tactics. Luckily the rain held off until after the race. For some reason I felt ready with only 1...
Read more

Fitting Together

It's interesting how easy it suddenly becomes to prioritise aspects of life. I have missed plenty of training in the last week, but for the first time in my life, it really, and I mean really doesn't matter. That's not to say I am throwing training on the back burner. Far from it. Of course I am finding it hard working out how life now all fits together, but I am thoroughly enjoying the process. Training is now just part of the puzzle. What was a very easy load a couple of weeks ago, is now just manageable. This is what I anticipated. As things settle down and I work out of few things the training load should again become much easier. At the moment it looks like I will be able to get in all the key sessions, so in reality it is going fine.
Read more

The Gorge

For work I am currently stationed away from my normal branch. This is a recent roster change that I am not too happy about due to a number of reasons that I won't go into here. The good thing is that it gives me different roads to ride on when commuting. Nothing like a bit of variety to break things up. One particular bit of terrain that I now get to cover is known as the Gorge. It is exactly as the name suggests. The road that takes you into the Gorge is simple. One side is a very wide bend, that could almost be thought of as a straight road. The other side involves a couple of reasonable bends, which wouldn't normally be an issue, but can be when hitting speeds of 60km/hr on the descent. I want to make it clear that the Gorge is far from the toughest of climbs, while quite steep on both sides it is relatively short. So what is it about the Gorge. For me it has provided a good bench mark for my cycling fitness. Back when I first started on the bike it took all my ef...
Read more