Saturday 26 July 2008

Saturday Training

Hi

Here's where I got to today:


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Lovely weather today, almost too warm in fact but mustn't complain about that, had to stop off to buy more drinks before the Rothbury leg, not a section to start when thirsty.

Performance very similar to last week though am starting to feel a touch tired but that doesn't matter because I've got an "adaptation" week coming up next week which is good. My plan is to maintain the intensity but drop the total volume and not recommence my training "cycle" (pun intended) until my legs feel fine and my HRV data looks fully recovered.

I'm convinced that there are 2 aspects to fatigue. There is "central fatigue" which I think is made up of CNS fatigue and exhaustion of the complex hormonal systems which control our physiology (adrenals etc.). I think central fatigue is potentially the more dangerous because of it's insidious nature, it creeps up on you slowly but surely eroding performance and progress and tricks you into thinking that you are not doing enough because your performance is falling off.

The other aspect of fatigue is plain and simple muscular tiredness which is more up front and readily apparent, you legs just HURT! It's interesting though that even muscular fatigue has a sting in it's tail and it tries to sneak up on you. What I mean by this is that after very hard exercise, even when soreness has subsided and things feel Ok muscular weakness can still be present up to 6 days later. Again this can make people train more (power may well be down) at a time when they should be doing less and recovering fully before pushing on again. Just because the soreness has gone does not mean that it's time to pile on the effort again, that's my theory anyway!

So, no heroics tomorrow, might have a lie in the sun if it's a nice day. Depending on how I feel as part of tomorrow's session I might try to establish my current 5 minute power as a guide for my forthcoming L5 work. As much of my training is done with at least some fatigue in my legs it would be daft to establish this figure when fully rested so tomorrow might be a good time to have a look at it, I'll see how I feel.

Here's the route profile:


[Uploaded 26/07/2008 20:45:13]

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