Flashes of Panic

(If you missed them, and are curious: Parts one, two, three and four.)

I don’t have much to add to this section, since I was having a Far Side moment as we got to this part of the seminar. (“Can I be excused? My brain is full.”) And without my notes, I’ve forgotten quite a lot in the last few weeks.

The last week or two of the training period is the toughest, because the coach and athlete have to balance so many competing priorities. First, the athlete has to arrive at the race rested and psychologically prepared. Second, they have to maintain some speed training; one of the traps of anaerobic training is that it is very much “use it or lose it,” and it fades quickly without regular sharpening. Finally, they need to at least nod to their aerobic base. And this all has to happen as they back off their overall volume and intensity.

The details of managing this are very particular to the athlete, but understanding the goals is important to managing it well. I’ve found that it’s tempting for me to race too much in the last phases before a peak race, but those detract from my goal race. Also, the athlete frequently feels sluggish, slow, or just irritable during this phase; in a way, it involves withdrawal from something they had become quite addicted to: heavy training. One of the favorite traps for athletes to fall in to is “just one more hard workout,” or, alternately, “I’m losing all my fitness! I have to work harder!”

There are a lot of theories about post race recovery, but they all agree on one point: you need some, before starting another cycle. Not only does the body need some time to recover, but it’s a good time to evaluate performance, and see if there are lessons to be applied for the next cycle.

I haven’t mentioned the scheduling yet. An entire program should be structured (at least in terms of laying out the blocks for each phase of the cycle) based on the date of a single target race. Lydiard’s athletes performed at their best when they had been focusing on a single race or block of races; training to race, say, an entire cross-country season while racing hard weekly does not fit with the Lydiard system. However, “training through” most of those races while peaking for a single championship race is more manageable. This is called “periodized training,” and it’s a hugely important concept. Simply put, you can’t be in your best shape all the time, so you pick your moments, and get in “peak condition” for those moments; the rest of the time, you get ready for those peak moments.

Anyway, one picks a single race, a marathon or another target race with significance to the athlete. Preferably, the race is four to six months in the future. Then the calendar can be built by working backwards from the race day, starting with tapering time, then adding speed work, bounding, hills, and giving over all the remaining time (up to ten weeks or more for a marathon) to building base. The time spent in each phase can be adjusted depending on the results of previous cycles; Lydiard’s books give more specific advice about how to start out.

Beyond that, improvements on this program can be cumulative over several cycles. Improvements in the aerobic system aren’t lost from one cycle to the next; in fact, from one successful cycle an athlete can start the base phase for the next cycle while retaining almost all their base from the previous cycle. Lydiard stressed that it can take three to five years to reach the full benefit of the program; it is not for the impatient.

That’s the size of things for now; I have some wrap-up thoughts which I will try to post before much longer.