day before race day

From: (K. J. Papai)

Nope -- just one of your more superb posts Andy!!

Your stuff is more understandable than trying to grok some
of Warren's stuff.

Keepin' it real, thanks, Ken.



Who have you been "sharing water" with Ken?
I agree though that Andy's information is great. Too bad I'm not motivated
enough anymore to chase all the newest information on training, or wade through
all the science required for verification. There's a ton of quackery out there.
Bill C

In article , K. J.
Papai wrote:

"Andy Coggan" wrote in message
ink.net...
Achieving the best performance requires having all physiological systems
operating at their optimum. Train too hard too close to an event, and
residual fatigue and/or inadequate glycogen stores may limit your
performance. Rest too much, and you'll start to lose those physiological
adaptations to training that have a very short half-life (e.g., plasma
volume expansion, neuromuscular recruitment). By resting two days out, then
doing a few "leg openers" the day before, you seem to be able to achieve the
best of both worlds. What I propose above reflects an attempt to optimize
this approach depending upon the demands of an event as well as overall
season-long goals (pattern #3).

Note that I assumed that because of his question, the OP was a relative
newcomer to competitive cycling, and thus probably maintains a moderate
training load (volume, intensity). The absolute quantity and perhaps quality
of training would be adjusted up or down depending on a given individual's
background (e.g., if you're training 25 hours/week, then your easy day 2
days out would be longer than for somebody who is only training 8
hours/week), ability to recover, etc. However, the overall pattern would
remain the same.

Anybody who feels that the proposed approaches are inappropriate?

Nope -- just one of your more superb posts Andy!!

Your stuff is more understandable than trying to grok some
of Warren's stuff.

So sorry. Here's the simple version. Rest one day before the race makes
me feel sharp for sprints and accelerations. Rest two days before makes
me feel more relaxed and better prepared for longer efforts.

-W

Any thoughts to why some days your legs are complete ****? I mean,
I've shown up to races fully rested and rode like garbage, then the
next day win. I don't think any study has ever looked at the question
of the "bad legs" day. Pretty difficult to do, but nonetheless
interesting.

Chris