Journey to Kona Day 155: The "Science" of Periodization

I was talking to my coach this morning, and this topic came up.  I've realized that one of the reasons (I think) for my intermittent injuries, is that my body tries to tell me when it's time to rest.  We're all familiar with DOMS (Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness), which is fairly obvious.  Mine peaks 36 hours after finishing a hard workout.  While my muscles actually felt fine Sunday night, and even felt pretty good Monday morning, by last night I could feel some soreness from my Sunday morning run. Sometimes I can "delay" the feeling of the soreness with continued training "through it."  That may or may not always be good, which is what fascinates me about this topic.  I believe that theirs a similar phenomenon that I'll call DOCF (Delayed Onset Cellular Fatigue), which may also peak at some point after a hard workout, or a series of hard workouts.  Fatigue is often more insidious and can by hidden by endorphins when we keep training through it.  This is one of the reasons, in my opinion, for overtraining.  One wonders sometimes how athletes manage to continue hard workouts while entering an overtraining zone.  I'm sure that I'm oversimplifying it, but I think it may not be all that complex.

Obviously, I'm addressing this topic because I'm trying to "rationalize" my rib injury.  I want to say that it occurred as a reminder for me to get a few extra days of rest.  If my previous injuries in the past year are any sign, I'll come through this in even better shape!  Hence the discussion of Periodization.  The concept is one of causing stress or "injury" and then achieving healing and recovery and coming out the other end fitter, stronger or faster.  I put the word injury in quotes because at a cellular level that's what we're doing with a hard downhill run.  We're causing micro tears and injuries, that upon healing, leave us stronger.  Nevertheless, it's an injury.  Which is the irony to all of this.  You've got to break muscle down in order to get stronger.  That's pretty much standard thinking and science.

The concept of periodization has to do with how we "schedule" our workouts to allow for the stress and injury to occur, and then for recovering and healing to be maximized.  There are many books written about this, and many different training schedules.  At the end of the day, we're all unique.  I've  been looking back at my training logs and wondering what is my ideal training "period."  As I write this I realize that may very well depend on the type of training.  If I'm just doing volume based training, i.e., lots of hours spent with little to no intensity, I may be able to go through a longer block of time before I need to rest and recover.  On the other hand, higher intensity will very well require that the rest and recovery be more immediate.  Over the past several months, I've had quite a variety of training stimuli.  I started on New Years with my 100 miler, which required a month of rest.  I've put in 2-3 week blocks of volume, and I've certainly put in some 4-7 day blocks of both volume and intensity.  The most important take home message is that I appear to have been making significant progress across the board.

My result at Ironman Boulder certainly backs this up.  My swim was solid, and my bike was stellar.  While I'd have liked to run faster, I know that the altitude was my limiter and that I was pretty consistent in relation to others in my age group.  In the end, it became a very solid "training day" as witnessed by my ability to do an intense week of training just a week and a half after doing an ironman.  Then, I needed some solid rest.  Similarly, and again I know I'm rationalizing my rib "tweak," but now I have a few days of enforced rest and recovery after another very solid 4-5 days of training.  The bottom line is that we're all individuals, one size never fits all, and there is as much art as there is science to periodization.  The real answer to this will be in just under 3 weeks when I race the Santa Rosa 70.3!