For myself, I find I can only thrive on a two week build, then a recovery week. If I try to go three weeks before a down week, I'm over the edge.

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Twitter: @jayasports
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in relation to swmming in particular, you should try to avoid decreasing your swim volume so dramatically as swimming is different from running and cycling insofar as the vast majority of speed in swimming is derived from technique.

what you may want to do instead is back down the high intensity portion of your swim workouts to something like drills.

I just got off a rest week after a big 4 week build. By the end of the 4th week I wanted to die. I am training for Lake Placid. I struggled through my 1 hr 45 minute long run on Sunday. I went into my rest week thanking god that it was there. However now I am in week 1 of a new 4 week period and I feel like balls. My arms felt like jello in the pool yesterday, my legs felt powerless on the bike today, and I won't even get into my run today. However it was 91 degrees outside which is like a 20 degree increase from last week. That may have ruined the run for me. So I have trouble with rest weeks also!

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IM Coeur D'Alene 2011
IM Wisconsin 2011
http://alexaharding.blogspot.com

I seem to be having that same problem this week. I competed in a Half Ironman on Sunday as a warm up to Lake Placid. I took 2 days off, and then expected to get back to it. Well my swim yesterday was exhausting, arms felt heavy, breathing was labored. I did not even finish it. I am giving myself another day today of rest and hopefully I can bounce back tomorrow with my swim/run and then enjoy a long weekend of training, including a 100 mile ride.

Well I'm certainly glad that I'm not the only one visited by the invisible lactic acid elf. It is so unnerving to feel so shitty before a big, big race like IM Placid. There has to be a physiological explanation as to why we feel like this. I have tried taking my resting HR in the mornings- if it is significantly above normal I'll take another rest day. However, this cannot be the fall back for everything- at one point you have to get back on the horse and get through the fog! I struggle with knowing when that should be. Now we just have to wait until someone with a medical or PT background comments...

jj17- A 20 degree increase in temp is definitely not something your body is used to--but good prep in case your race is hot.

If it takes 5 days to get back to normal PACE, I'd say your periodization plan isn't working well at all.*

If you just FEEL off but pace is ok, well, you don't have to feel good to go fast.

*there is no physiological basis for "rest weeks" and as we've discussed on here before, it may work best for LIFE reasons (a week to catch up chores or whatever) but if you NEED a rest week then your first 3 weeks are TOO HARD or too volumunious.

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maybe she's born with it, maybe it's chlorine
If you're injured and need some sympathy, PM me and I'm very happy to write back.
disclaimer: PhD not MD

2 days off may not be enough. We do a week easy after a 1/2 IM. 70 miles is a long race!

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IM Coeur D'Alene 2011
IM Wisconsin 2011
http://alexaharding.blogspot.com

you definitely need a week or more after a HIM!

difference between race day and training recovery

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maybe she's born with it, maybe it's chlorine
If you're injured and need some sympathy, PM me and I'm very happy to write back.
disclaimer: PhD not MD

TC - you are making no sense to me. You say there is no physiological basis for rest weeks but you advise rest after a half IM? I would also be really interested in hearing the science of your claim that rest weeks aren't physically beneficial. . .

A HIM is a long race and it is very high stress, so you need time to recover from it (and the less fit you are, the faster you will recover). Riding that far + running that far *all in one day* = lots of muscle microtrauma and it takes some time for that to heal.

This explains the rest week thing well:

http://thetriathlonbook.blogspot.com/...d-no-rest-weeks.html

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maybe she's born with it, maybe it's chlorine
If you're injured and need some sympathy, PM me and I'm very happy to write back.
disclaimer: PhD not MD

I think there is a tendency to follow a periodization program that Friel outlined in the training bible and others have coached off of. While this system can be quite effective it is not for everyone, and in fact there are better ways of maximizing performance for the "everyday athlete". While I don't know your training history, your strength/weakness, or athletic goals, at first blush it would appear that you are not adequately resting. This is one of the most common mistakes we see among age group athletes; fear of being under prepared leads to over training.

It is quite common to feel poor and underperform during rest weeks as your body absorbs the training stimulus from the prior periods, if you are adequately rested you should get your mojo back quickly. The execption for some is their swim stroke comes back more slowly as they have not touched the water with the same rate of frequency. If you are really struggling, I might try and work with other forms of periodization. As examples, I see a lot of excellent AG athletes working on a 10 on / 2 off proto. I've also had good success with "crash resting". In CR we basically build for two weeks and then take 3 days of total rest, 2 days of recovery training and then repeat. If you talk to the coaches on this board most of them are not working with a 3 on 1 off system. There is just not enough rest in their for your MOP athlete with other stressors in your life.

I'll close by saying, rest is your best friend. It keeps you training day in and day out, it minimizes your injury risk and it enables you to turn gains into new baselines more quickly. In general age groupers need to get better acquainted with this concept.

Periodization was more more or less created by the Russian/Eastern European system. Take the kids away, drill them for three weeks, send them home for a week. There is zero science behind periodization. There is science backing up a 6 week system, based on the half life of training adaptations.

TC is not saying rest weeks are not necessary, but she is right that if you *need* one after 2-3 weeks then your training load (or increase rate thereof) is too steep. Typically I do (and assign) more or less the same load for 4-6 weeks at a time. Your volume actually does increase over that time period (CTL, if anyone uses power).

Thanks for the feedback everyone, especially the coaches.

For clarification, I use the term "periodization" very loosely, not exclusively in the Friel way, where you can have microperiodization, for example, within a week, where some days are heavier and more intense than others, and in the macro sense, where you have an "off season." So I am surprised to hear that there is "no science" behind periodization, but perhaps I didn't make myself clear.

I DON'T notice a major decrease in pace or power when I feel "out of it" on my ramp back up. So, what I was after in this original post is: we all have ebbs and flows to our training, whether it be the 3:1 friel way or not, and when you are in fact ramping up after recovering from a race, or taking a lower volume week, A) is it normal to feel like crap for a few days? (am I doing something really wrong) and B) what is the physiological explanation for feeling "out of it" but no significant decrease in power or pace; more specifically, is this actually physical or is it mental?

Side note* As a competitive cyclist during college, with a very decorated Olympic coach, we used Friel, and it has been beaten into my head for sure. Now training for triathlons, it is really interesting to hear the different coaching perspectives (2 weeks on 5 days off vs. 4-6 weeks of similar volume). I'm not on here soliciting coaching advice or anything, and I'm not going to go on and on about my background, but DAMN, while this forum is such a great resource, it's almost too much info! Thanks again everyone

Maybe maybe not, everyone is different.


You could feel out of it bc you are more rested and not carrying around such a large load of cumulative fatigue. Could be mental.

Read this from the WF http://forum.slowtwitch.com/...;;page=unread#unread

But if you are shelled after 3 weeks of training, something (probably a lot of things) in those 3 weeks are wrong. I'd look at volume first, duration second then intensity.

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Brian Stover USAT LII
Accelerate3 Coaching
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