Righto runners

Paul F wrote:
A good training program balances out training stress with the recovery in a delicate balance. An even better program - and coach - will adapt the sessions from day-to-day according to the current state of an athlete.

Training stress needs to be monitored by the athlete. A coach can develop a good solid well founded training program but unless the coaches educates the athlete to monitor stress and fatigue and develop an internal awareness of the early warning signs of doing too much then the athlete themselves could place themselves at greater risks of over training.

To me the comment by Campbell is actually agreeing with Pauls thoughts, by saying that 'an even better program will adapt sessions from day to day', to me is exactly how I interpret Paul's theory. Feeling great today? Sweet, do the hard session, and do the recovery session tomorrow.. Feel like sh!t today? Take it off, or just go easy. Feel neither great nor crap? Do the session as prescribed.

Still being relatively new to endurance training, I am still very much learning to listen to what my body says. Actually, it’s probably more that I am trying to teach myself not to ignore what it says in favour of 'doing what's on the program'.

Learning to tell the difference between ‘I think I’m tired, but can push through’ and actual fatigue is a tough one. The last 4 weeks to me, I believe have given me a good view of this. I developed a swollen lymph node in my neck, and whilst it was a little tender, I thought I was physically fine. I raced the 3 Day Tour, followed a couple of days later with a massive intense day on the bike and was going great, but then needed a couple of days off because I was stuffed. What I didn’t realise was that the 2 cans of Coke and couple of cups of tea I needed each day to feel awake, was my body telling me it was ready for a bit of rest. Only later that week when I raced the club crit and really struggled, followed by my HR not going down after the race, did I accept that something was going on and I should see the doctor.. 2 rounds of antibiotics later and It meant over a week’s worth of missed sessions all up, whereas had I ‘listened’ and gone to the doc’s straight away, it might have only been a few days.

Anyway, leading back to this week, 3 big days and then this morning was planned to do a swim, but woke up and realised it wouldn’t be a good idea because it would most likely have been a hard session, and I’d benefit more from a couple of more hours in bed.
A day off or missing a session isn’t going to kill me.
I think once someone comes to this realisation (and no matter how many times you tell someone, they have to actually realise/believe it themselves), then that’s when you can start reviewing the session from day to day based on how ‘the athlete’ feels.

The main point I was responding to was this question/comment from Paul, about increasing a long run from 2hrs to 3hr (50% incr) or 4hr (100% incr) just because you're feeling good.

[quote="Paul F]...if you have planned you long run to be 2hrs and your absolutely having a great day, why stop at 2hrs, why not run 3, even 4hrs to a point where you reach your normal overload based on previous long runs? [/quote]

I think we all agree that a smart athlete will look inwards to read the signals their body is telling them about how it's feeling and, in turn, what to make of the day's session.

However I'll still bear out the point that a well structured program will be designed to balance out particular stress (ie, type of session) with recovery within a week / month / year. If you skip/down grade a session, then that's not a green light to increase/change a subsequent session(s)...(except on rare occasions).

If you skip/down grade a session, move on and. Trying to make up can be the source of endless problems by turning the planned stress / recover balance on it's head.

Similarly if you increase a single session just because you're feeling good...you change the whole balance of the stress / recover balance. You might feel great doing it, but there's hidden dangers. This was the main point of my earlier response.

It's in trying to achieve this balance in changing scenarios and circumstances that the objective opinion of a coach is most valuable.

You cannot over train, only under recover.

BTW...the quote "don't lose sight of the forest for sake of the trees" is another way of saying to look more at the balance of the overall workload across a week / month / year rather than focusing on what an individual session will achieve, and fixating on that. That session is just a single tree in the forest. The health of the forest is more important.

Cam took the time to explain it better than I wanted to, but I have recently been saying some of what he wrote to some friends of mine. Risk management: The upsides of changing a well thought out plan by increasing intensity or volume is limited but with significant downsides if you really get it wrong. Where the upsides of down scaling a program because you are not feeling up to it only has an unlimited upside. If you leave it the same you get to sit back all smug and enjoy the feeling of having executed it just the way you planned.

Now Amy was suggesting skipping a hard day for an easy one and doing the hard one another day. I often do this, but I write my own programs and understand the overall vision/intent. The weekly training stress needs to be taken into account and in many cases you may just have to drop the session because there is another key one later that needs to be done and having them closer together will affect one or the other. Less experienced athletes should just stick to the plan.

The thing is I would bet all but a few athletes are able to seperate their emotions and feelings from their decision making. Its more likely many would allow their fears of not cutting it or feeling of self worth to wether they do it or not affect their decision. Most can't take the time to recognise this in their day to day life let alone training. The greatest asset a self coached athlete can have is the ability to know how there feelings and emotions are affecting their decision making and by taking this into account be more objective. If you don't do this your decision is bound to be flawed from the start. I learnt this from a book called Psychology of Trading on how people make poor decisions in their share trading based on feelings that risking money has on them. I suppose it doesn't help that I live with a psychologist also.

If you are one of the majority of athletes who can't do this very well (chances are you don't even think you are one right now)this is where a coach is worth every $$$$$$$

Great topics guys and gals...I'm off to watch the crits:)

Interestingly was reading the TBB forum for the first time in quite a while today and stumbled up a similar discussion over there -

thats where judgement comes in .
1/ we change sessions all the time
we change em during workout out to get a better stimulus
2/ we have back bone sessions and we start them we do em
you should know if you should not start it but wait another day ,
but you put your head into that session we finnish no matter what
3/ yes i encourage people not to write down times
as
they tend to defeat themselves with such information when its not relevant to the sessions at hand .
training is for training .
to be ready for race day
ihave had people walking the last 10 reps on thursday training
and on sunday slaying giants of the sport .

as the saying goes
you got to know
when to hold em and
when to fold em .
but you decide to play em ,
then you play em all the way .