Easy Weeks and Hard Weeks

I don't know much about other sports but in Triathlon there's this concept of periodisation. The idea behind it is that to grow stronger you much push your body close to its limits and then have a period of time to recover. A normal cycle of this runs over four weeks. You spend the first two weeks building up to the third week which is the hard week. Then, you get the easy week.

Interesting things happen in the easy week. The first couple of days you normally feel like crap and get a little grumpy and you need to try super hard not to bite everyone's head off. Late in that week on the other hand you feel like you can take on the world at anything. Well, that's what's supposed to happen. It's also a week to get a few chores done.

Here's a week by week chart showing how, after a bit of shaky start to training, things have settled into this.

But then, just when you think your into a build week, bang! Here comes 22 hours of training in the coming week. Ahhh!!!! I'm guessing this is to align this periodisation so I'm getting this "taking on the world feeling" come the start of my next race 1st of November....K2 (187km + 2800m of hills!).

Another interesting thing happens in the easy weeks. You get to enjoy some time-out from training. But just when you begin to enjoy it, bang your holiday is over and it's back into it.

So, with 2.5 hours done today, just another 19.5 left for the week.....time for sleep I think.