“The magic is in the man, not in the miles per week” - Bill Bowerman
One of the keys to building a successful training program is to monitor progress. Unfortunately, we often go about this in a way that isn’t aligned with our long term goals.
The two most common errors I see are athletes that over emphasize either:
Progressive Volume
or
Progressive Speed
Both are important.
Yet, focusing solely on these misses the point of training.
Races aren’t measured by how much training we do. Large volumes typically support strong races, but only if we are adapting to the training. If we’re fatigued, injured, or sick on the start line we probably over cooked ourselves.
Races are ultimately measured by speed, but PRs are earned through efficiency. If we only emphasize speed, we might be training too hard. Keep the cost of the effort in mind. The cost of the speed might be too high in a number of ways:
Mechanical Load
Heart Rate Elevation
Carbohydrate Burn
Nervous System Fatigue
Delayed Recovery
We want to make sure that we are going at the right effort!
Establish Your Benchmarks
We can do this by establishing Key Performance Indicators or “Benchmark” workouts.
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