Cupcakes

For those following along, you may recall that I mentioned that I purchased Joe Friel's Power-Based: Olympic Build-Peak-Race plan a month ago. The plan is carefully calculated, following periodic training pioneered successfully by the Soviet decades ago. How this translates to me is that I have a daily workout delivered by email or smartphone that progressively takes me from base training (volume) to race form (intensity) over four months.

There have been a few surprises along the way. BikeSnob once said a power meter is like paying an accountant to tell you how poor you are.

But as brother Murphini suggested, I've found that the felicitous use of the device is like paying an accountant to make the best of your available funds.

The other thing I've discovered is that that hardest week of training has not been the one with 15 hours of grueling workouts. Sure, that's exhausting work. But it's nothing compared to what I'm going through this week.

This week is called the rest week. And it's awful.

In periodization, rest weeks are built in to allow the body to recover. Rest weeks have light workouts with very low volume. So for five days, you're supposed to do almost nothing. For me, this includes 20 minute swims (hardly worth getting in), 20 minute "embarrassingly slow" runs, and a couple 45 minute sessions on the bike spinning easy in zone 1 HR.

That's pretty basic. Thankfully, today is the final day of rest week. I'm ready for it to be done. Of course Today's workout is another cupcake:

Resting drives me nuts. I'm surprised at how difficult it's been for me to sit on my hands and do practically nothing.

I've discovered that I need to be active. I need to blow off lots of steam. I don't need to do this so I can flex and point at the mirror and stuff. I mean, I do that too, but that's besides the point. I think I need/like working out because of the way my body feels when it's over. It must be the beta endorphins released in the process. Of course, I recognize that this means some amount of rest is necessary to repair the body. But one day, two tops, is all the recovery I care for.

But if I subscribe to this plan, I need to comply to what coach Joe says, even if that means five days off. So if you'll please excuse me now so I can attend to the cupcake with my name on it.

Happy Friday. Thanks for reading.