I hit a MAJOR wall yesterday in my training! I’ve been pretty steady all season in my workouts and have increased the duration and intensity as the season has progressed, but yesterday I struggled through a biking hill workout and I mean struggled!!! . I was looking for a cliff to ride off of I was so tired! One thing that is very difficult to juggle in endurance sports is pushing yourself hard enough without over training. I mean isn’t the nature of endurance sports to push your body pass the limits your mind sets? The trick is to pass the limits set in your mind, but not the limits your body has. You have a finite amount of muscle, energy, hydration, and lung capacity so knowing those limits is important. The problem that I have encountered is ramping up training from sprits to 70.3’s without overtraining. The literature out there on training has several ways to approach the gradual increasing of your workouts and as a rule most subscribe to the 10% philosophy. The 10% philosophy states that you should not increase a workout by more than 10% in length or duration at any one time. While this seems reasonable especially if you have 8-12 months to train for a singular goal, it really doesn’t fit into what I’m trying to accomplish. So if I’m biking 150 miles a week, going by the 10% rule, I should only increase by 15 miles the next time I bump up my workouts? Once again, I can see the logic and it certainly will be easier on my body, but there is no way I would be ready for my 70.3 at the end of June.
So what am I left with? I have to increase my workouts by roughly 20% every ten days and run the risk of injury or burnout or increase slower and possibly not be fit enough to compete. What this whole experience has taught me is to plan my longer races for deeper into the season so that I can have the gradual build-up, but sometimes race schedules don’t accommodate training schedules. For example, this weekend is the USAT National Duathlon Championships. How can racers be at their peak this early in the season? I would guess that the answer is that they are not.
Well, good luck to Bobby, Gretchen and Cody this weekend and to everyone else competing.
great post. This is the hardest thing for me too. I've found Eating healthy & every 3 hours helps u take on more training quickly, Ice baths after hard or long days, and taking chocolate milk after your workout, then a meal 30 min- 1 hour after the milk, & sleep sleep sleep!!!
ReplyDelete. Here's some of the articles on chocolate milk. http://cody-the-clydsdale.blogspot.com/search?q=recovery+drink