Periodization 8: epilogue

I may take a break from posting for a while, as I'm getting tired of writing about running as well as tired of running itself (and, oddly, I expect that will mean I'll run more). I did promise an end to this series, however.

From crash training, I take the idea of two weeks of high volume and two weeks of low volume and, from Galloway, I take his percentages of mileage for easy weeks, but put the easy ones back-to-back. From glycogen depletion and loading plans, I put a string of hard days together, followed by a string of easy days. I add the standard weekly schedule from one of my previous series of: Tuesday intervals, Thursday speedwork (hills and/or sprints), Saturday races and Sunday long runs.

There are two ways to increase volume; one can either increase the duration of individual runs or increase the frequency. I have one week of two-a-day short runs and one week of longer runs. Then a week of lessened mileage but increased intensity follows. Lastly, there's a week of low mileage and only one hard workout (generally a race or time trial).

Because I like three easy days before a race and another three after a race, if the race is on Saturday, the low mileage week runs from Wednesday to Tuesday, a completely unnatural feeling idea. No one keeps track of their week starting on Wednesdays, but it's useful for planning. The schedule ends up looking like this:

Week 1 (100% mileage): Two runs each day. A fast continuous run (e.g. tempo run) on Saturday, long run on Sunday, intervals on Tuesday (stressing short recovery).

Week 2 (100%): speed on Tuesday, tempo Saturday, long run Sunday, intervals Tuesday (stressing long repeats).

Week 3 (70% mileage): speed on Thursday and Monday, tempo Saturday, long run Sunday, intervals Tuesday (stressing pace intensity).

Week 4 (50% mileage): race or time trial on Saturday.
.......................................
This is very much the way that I trained when I was a 32 minute 10K runner (rather than doing strict track intervals, I did timed fartlek sessions). Why did I stop training that way? I hate running two-a-days, but it seemed worthwhile when I was running my best. I also need more recovery now that I'm older. I can recall being constantly tired for weeks at a time when I was in peak shape, but willing to go through it for the results, but that kind of commitment doesn't make sense for what I can accomplish now.

Periodization 7

If you plan to increase training workload over a season, you can't just ratchet it up every week and expect to go uninjured. Thus, the idea of incorporating easy weeks as a safety valve was created.

In the popular training schedules of Brad Hudson, he keeps mileage constantly "moderately high." His method of nonlinear periodization depends upon a couple of beliefs: 1) The standard method of linear periodization leads to injury from doing too much of one type of training and then abruptly shifting to too much of another. 2) If one runs high mileage, the hard miles one does is a relatively small percentage of the total, so increasing their intensity is not a big deal. This method works best for those who have a keen sense of their abilities and who don't push themselves to their limits in workouts.

By contrast, the other currently popular schedules, those of Jack Daniels, have a repeated three week cycle. While the numbers vary, in general it looks like 100% maximum mileage, 90%, 70% and then repeat, with the low mileage week also having fewer hard miles. He gives no rationale for his weekly mileage variations.

The biggest proponent of easy weeks is Jeff Galloway. In his first book, he recommended a four week cycle of 100%, 70%, 100%, 50%, with the 50% week having little or no speedwork. He gives no reason for these particular percentages (and in other places says "find what works for you") and probably came up with them empirically. Some would argue that his easy week is too easy, but it is better to err on the side of caution. One source of inspiration for his easy weeks may have been Dr. Costill's idea for increasing mileage every other week, with intervening easy weeks, published in the 1970's.

If you search the Web for "crash training," you'll find Peter Snell's plan for increasing mileage. His cycle looks like: 100%, 50%, 75%, 25% and then increasing each number by 25 percentage points each cycle, leading one to double one's mileage in 5 months. This might be possible for beginners, especially if they're young, but can't be recommended. I always advocate beginners getting the most they can out of as little mileage as possible to begin with, racing often for experience and then increasing mileage by 10% per week, but only once or twice per year.

Next: Combining all the ideas into a whole (but there's probably going to be a race report before that).

Periodization 6

In the last post, I gave the periodization idea of starting with high mileage, then decreasing the mileage while increasing the pace. The important point was that overall training workload or stress stayed constant after the initial mileage increase. Generally, people have felt that, as the season progresses, fitness increases and therefore training workload should increase. This has led to the more common periodization plans, which I'll describe under their most common names (names that irritate me, by the way).

Linear periodization

This is the standard plan, seen in all training manuals from the 1980's. First, one works on one's endurance by doing long steady runs. Then there's usually a transitional phase, incorporating hills, either fartlek or hill repeats, the idea being to increase the workload and develop leg strength in preparation for the next, more difficult, phase. The next phase incorporates speedwork, either interval running or tempo runs or both. The last phase is a taper, where the workload is decreased by dropping mileage, but incorporating some very fast running, such as strides or sprints. Depending upon the length of the race for which one trains, there may be a racing phase and/or a recovery phase.

Reverse periodization

Here, the idea is that what's difficult is not the speed, but rather the distance of one's race. For example, a marathoner trying to break 3 hours might find that running a sub-7 mile is easy, but stringing together 26 of them is what's difficult. In this plan, one starts with the speedwork and then adds mileage, the reverse of the previous plan. Progress is measured by how many miles one does at race pace.

Nonlinear periodization

This is what most coaches now claim to advocate. One trains for all aspects of one's race at all times during the season, but shifts the emphasis from one aspect to another. This shift in emphasis, however, generally turns out to be "linear." A nonlinear approach to training for a 10K might be to have regular time trials to work on improving one's speed over the distance and an interval workout where one tries to run as far as possible at one's goal 10K pace; as the season progresses, the two workouts become more similar.

I think I have two more posts on the subject to come. One will discuss alternating hard and easy weeks and the other will be my own variation on periodization and crash training that I used with success in the 1980's.

Periodization 5

This post is confusing and poorly written. Sorry in advance.

Let's take a look at one approach to periodized training. The rationale goes like this: the goal is to run faster, but the faster you run, the less distance you can do, so you start by doing a lot of slow miles and then, as you approach the race, do fewer but faster miles. The high mileage version of this adds: after any workout, you're not completely spent, so you could add another slow mile or two, even if you had to walk, and you could add a second or third run each day, if you do it slowly enough. This is a huge increase in time, but only a small increase in overall stress. This slight increase in stress, however, can lead to an improvement. If you do a lot of slow miles early, then, as you start interval training, where you used to be able to do (say) 4 one mile repeats at a given pace, you can now do 5, as the stress level of doing 5 is equal to the stress of the earlier mileage. And, if you can do 5 at that pace, then you could do 4 at a faster pace than before. So, the reasoning goes, running further leads to running faster.

If you can follow that logic, it seems to make sense, though there are some holes in the reasoning.

Those who are against this idea reason as follows: Training is too specific for "garbage miles" to have any benefit. You just train yourself to run slower and more often. This too seems reasonable.

So what's my take on the matter? One gets used to a certain amount of training stress. Increasing one's mileage can increase that stress, but one tends to keep the stress level constant by decreasing the pace, so the added miles don't add anything unless one carefully and conciously tries to keep the stress level increased. If one suddenly increases mileage by tacking on slower miles, one can generally manage to keep up the pace in the rest of the running for four to ten days (depending on a lot of factors) before one starts to slow or get nagging injuries. Short periods of increased mileage every now and then may prove beneficial.

Periodization 4

I'm skipping the history post. It was dull, even to me.

There's always been periodization in training, but it only got a name in the 1960's, when it got formalized in the literature by Bompa (oops! history). It's worth taking a look at the different types of competitive runners to see who can ignore periodization.

There are racers and pacers and the two types have different goals, different mentalities and thus different training. The separation explains why there's so little overlap between Olympic champions and world record holders. A pacer might go into a race thinking, "To set my PR on this course, I need to average 7:05 miles. There's a long hard hill at the end which will slow me, so I'll try to run even 7:00's until the hill and hope I have enough left." A racer, on the other hand, might think, "One of the two guys I always finish near goes out hard and dies, while the other runs very evenly and has a devastating kick. I'll stay with Mr. Even and let him set the pace and, when we pass the other guy, I'll speed up to create a gap that can't be overcome by a finishing kick." Record setters are usually pacers, who do the same favorite workouts until they feel they're in top shape and then they look for a race. In races like those in the Olympics, one has a definite date to race and one knows the competition, so training is set up to run the best race possible that day. If you look at books written by Olympians or their coaches, they're always training manuals, whereas record setters tend to write personal memoirs about the obstacles they had to overcome: two different ways of looking at things.

If you're training to run a PR in a 5K, you do a variety of workouts, but keep going back to the same ones to look for improvement. When that improvement seems to be plateauing, you race every weekend for several weeks. The first races are for learning (or re-learning) how to race, then one waits until the weather and course are good and one feels right and goes for the PR. After a number of races, your time won't improve and will actually start dropping. That's when you stop racing and go back into training mode. The setting up of periods of training and periods of racing is one form of periodization, though it's not usually thought of that way.

If you're training to run a marathon PR, you can't just jump into a race when you feel like it (unless you're world class), but have to sign up months in advance, so you tend to follow a standard schedule of periodization (i.e., base endurance, hills, intervals, taper). The "pacer" version of training for marathons and ultras would have you sign up for a number of races throughout the year; if on any given race day you don't feel well or the weather's bad, you just make it a long hard training run; if everything clicks, you go for a course PR. By having a race every 7-10 weeks, one automatically adds tapering and recovery after the race and one ends up having a training cycle - which is another form of periodization.

So, it turns out that periodization creeps in, even when you try to avoid it.

Periodization #3

Undaunted by the lack of comments, I continue...

In the 1960's, it was discovered that it was possible to increase the amount of glycogen stored in muscles by first depleting it (and this led to about a 5% improvement in marathon times among the sub-3 crowd). The lower one could get one's glycogen stores, the better, and holding it low for a few days helped even more; this supercompensation doesn't last forever, however, as it's been shown at least anecdotally that those who maintain a Zone or Atkins diet accustom to the lower glycogen levels.

In the early 1970's, Dr. David Costill was doing studies on glycogen storage and he did an experiment on himself. Normally a 5 mile a day runner, he ran 10 miles on three consecutive days and then measured the glycogen level in his muscles. He found that it took 10 days to recover ("up to two weeks" some report it) and felt that he must be unusual. It was an experiment of one person done once and he didn't say what exercise he did or what he ate during recovery, so it's not exactly a scientific study, but I think it's the first recorded example of what's become known as the crash training phenomenon.

In the early 1990's, there were 3 studies, one each among cyclists, swimmers and runners, which had athletes dramatically increase the volume or intensity of their training for two weeks. After this, they were completely spent and it took two weeks to recover, but after this recovery, they were able to perform at a higher level in a test. The number of variables involved and the small sample sizes make these studies questionable, but the possibility of significant improvement on two weeks of training was intriguing.

The next question to be asked was: is it a one-time thing, or can one repeat the two weeks on, two weeks off pattern and build upon the previous improvement? This appears to be what was done by the top Chinese women runners Wang Junxia and Qu Yunxia, who set world records in 1993 (which still stand), who reportedly ran as much as 25 miles (40K) every day at times during their training. Because their teammates and coach later received bans for use of illegal substances, because their careers were meteoric (rapid success and then oblivion) and because there were no others who followed in their footsteps, it's generally believed that their efforts were because of illegal drugs, but the training is still valid.

Attempts to increase the length of the hard periods to three weeks in length have generally resulted in injury. Shortening the "load" phase to only a few days has become customary in what has become known as crash training, though there is little science to support it. At the most basic level, almost all of us have had some experience with this; the day after a hard run, one often feels surprisingly good (the fatigue sometimes sets in only the next day) and one is tempted to run hard again; actually running hard again often causes fatigue that takes a very long time from which to recover. These back-to-back hard workouts are the hallmark of weekend warriors, who race Saturday and Sunday and then recover the rest of the week.

Next up: periodization history

Periodization #2

First, I have to do a little review of some previous posts.

I did a long series explaining different types of training and how, when fitting them into a standard 7 day week, I ended up recreating a fairly standard schedule. In brief, once you remove all the jargon, there are four things one trains for in running: 1) How fast you can run a given distance (the goal of races), 2) How far you can run at a given pace, 3) How far you can run, regardless of pace and 4) How fast you can run when you run your fastest. This leads to a week that looks like: Intervals on Tuesday (one can run further at a given pace if there are breaks), a fast continuous run on Saturday (race, time-trial, "tempo" run, etc.), a long run on Sunday and a grab-bag day on Thursday, depending upon one's goal race (sprints for short races, strides for longer, hill repeats for very long or hilly races). Generally, the Tuesday and Saturday runs are the hardest days.

I wrote about the different methods of carbohydrate loading and came up with a taper schedule based upon combining them. This was ignored by most, as carboloading is only important for a small number of runners in a limited category of races, but I think it's important to understand, as the level of stored glycogen is one of the few measurable things that can be followed in training. Neglecting the dietary aspects, a one week depletion/loading cycle looks like: Very long run on Sunday, moderately long runs on Monday and Tuesday with speedwork on Tuesday, then easy days until the Saturday race.

If one takes the standard training week schedule above and shifts the Thursday run to Monday, one has four hard days in a row (fast continuous run, long run, sprints and hills, intervals) followed by three easy days and this looks just like the carboloading week schedule. It also looks just like what's become known as "crash training," where one runs hard several days in a row, followed by several easy days.

Next up: a brief review of crash training.

Training Periodization, Part 1

It's been said that my training is all-or-nothing and that I leave my best efforts in training only to get injured before racing. There's some truth to that, because I do subscribe to a high risk/ high return model of training. Recently, I heard someone refer to my training as "Crash Training," a term that seems to have arisen about 1990 and which has never been adequately described. I'm going to try to explain some more of my training ideas in this series, involving how to decide how to divide one's training into hard and easy days or weeks and I also hope to explain crash training and how it differs from my own ideas.

Three kinds of lazy

The first are runners who are of the "I'll run all day, as long as I don't have to run hard" variety. This is common among ultrarunners and more common among women then men. It is still possible to finish well in small races, especially in age and gender divisions, this way, so there are many who swear by it. These runners never plan their runs, but just go out at a comfortable pace until they feel they've done enough. They tend to do their races the same way.

The most extreme case of this first type is probably a woman I know who ran 70-100 miles every week at 9 minutes per mile and raced marathons also at 9 minutes per mile. She ran 10 miles the day before the marathon and 10 the day after. Told that those finishing around her ran only half as much, she insisted that she had to work harder than everyone else. When it was suggested that she take a day or two off before the marathon, she wouldn't. When she got convinced to try a 10K race, she let those she raced against in the marathon leave her in their dust and she ran 9 minute miles (and then ran a 10 mile cool-down). When she was told that she could win a 50 mile race just by running 9 minute miles, she refused to try because she felt it would keep her from being able to run 10 miles the next day. She'd be appalled that I think of that as lazy.

The second type is the opposite of the first. These are the "I want to get in great shape, but I only have 10 minutes" athletes. There's an entire industry that's developed around selling these people gadgets that claim will get them instant results. They like to think of themselves as efficient, rather than lazy, wanting to do the absolute minimum, because more is wasteful. Occasionally fad training plans for runners appear that are based on this, the most common at the moment being the Tabata method, which involves running extremely hard for 20 seconds, followed by 10 seconds rest, done 8 times; while adherents will point to (questionable) scientific literature that purports that this leads to great and fast results, it is quite telling that no world class athlete does it.

Some of each of these two types will see that others are having success following a different plan and they try to combine the long-and-slow and the fast-and-short methods. Immediately, this raises the question of how much of each to do and how to balance them. That is the essence of  the idea of periodization. Unfortunately, this usually leads to the third type of lazy: the mentally lazy athlete. Rather than understand what they're trying to do, they rely on others to do the work for them; they hire coaches, trainers and physical therapists, they take exercise classes to have an instructor tell them what to do (rather than learn what to do) and they do all their workouts with others who decide where to go and how far and how fast to run.

You can't run long and fast every day, but if you plan to race, you have to be able to run both long and fast. The challenge, then, is to figure out how to train both long and fast without doing too much of either. That's what I hope I'll explain how to do.