I am happy to say that I am more than 4 months into training and feeling great. I’ve only missed a few workout sessions and those were because of illness. My coach, Chuck Graziano, has created a plan based on the scientific principles of periodization. Periodization pushes your body in the areas of intensity and duration. It is constantly challenging your body and allowing you to develop anaerobically and aerobically. Another way of explaining periodization is that physical stress is gradually increased over the course of many weeks.
In the graph below, you can see how the weekly duration of my workouts increase progressively, reduce for a week and then climbs again. Those large duration weeks should, and do, become easier and easier. I can think of 20km runs that I now do over a few CBC Podcasts without much misery.
What strikes me as odd is that the effort required in the prescribed workout is generally the opposite of what you feel like doing. Better said, the weeks that you are most tired are those where you need to put in your longest workout and the weeks that you feel charged are those where your workouts are light. To get the most out of training you need to do the opposite of what you feel like doing. I know. It sounds a bit like investing.
The chart below highlights the progress of my overall fitness in blue. The decent that took place in the middle of the chart was when I was sick. The pink illustrates my level of fatigue and yellow indicates my level of form. You can see that fatigue and form are negatively related – meaning the more fatigued you are the worse your swim stroke, running stride or cycling turnover.
The quantification aspect to my training is interesting and fun at some level. Mostly, I like that my coach is more interested in it than me and changes my plan according to the readings. I like knowing that it is in the background and working for me. Sort of like mutual fund managers making adjustments to holdings in response to changing conditions.
Signing off for now…Bryan
April 22, 2016
