Friday, December 24, 2010

Ahhh, recovery week!

This week, thankfully, was a recovery week in my training. Those who follow structured training plans understand the joy and relief I had when I took a look at my plan on Monday and saw BikeMike's Goal #1:

Week's goals:
1. Unload Residual Fatigue
2. Ride & Swim twice
3. Run Three Times

I don't want to turn this post into an opus on periodization but in summary training goes through phases and phases are comprised of one or more training blocks. Typically these blocks include two or three weeks of increasing load with a week of active recovery to unload fatigue. This doesn't mean complete rest but lower durations and/or intensities to get the body for the next block. This planning hopefully ends in peaking at an "A" race. My "A" races aren't for some time yet (June and November).

While most of the time I view recovery weeks with primarily a physical focus, I sometimes find it easy to forget the mental aspects of unloading. This time I needed this recovery week more mentally than physically. Work typically gets stressful this time of the year and the holidays don't necessarily cooperate with stress reduction. Weather being cold and dark doesn't help. Anyway, this recovery week was welcomed.

Back in the day I used to do all my Christmas gift shopping buying on Christmas Eve. Yes, for amateurs it can be stressful but I had this down to almost a science. My wife has been shopping for months already (I think her mother is already working on Christmas 2011) so she humours me when I still do some Christmas Eve shopping for old times sake.

I finished my shopping mini adventure without adding undue stress this morning. A little workout, mix in some Christmas church, and the Christmas celebration will be in full swing. Mental and physical fatigue will be unloaded. Recovery week will be officially over on Sunday with either a 90 minute spin class (better socially) or a hard bike trainer workout (more time efficient).

PS: Yes, I actually do training from time to time even though this blog may not have a lot of evidence of it recently. There will probably more training adventures chronicled next year.

PPS: Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night....

2 comments:

Jason said...

There is nothing like recovery day. I get one every Friday and it is such a blessing. Sleep in (6am) and feel rejuvenated.

Have a Merry Christmas.

Big Clyde said...

Rest well.

Then, let's get back to our regularly scheduled training plans.