There’s a time to accumulate. And a time to perform.🎯

Even if you are an amateur athlete, you cannot be in peak form all year round. There is a time to work hard, to use your willpower, to push yourself to the limit. And there is a time to take it easy and work patiently on your weaknesses. Most of the races take place in the summer/autumn season, so winter is the time to build the foundation - long runs, strength, aerobic capacity - creating lots of new mytochondria working in low intensity HR zones.

In endurance sports this is called periodisation. A series of training cycles that correspond to our ultimate goal.

I just want to show you a graph of my training volume over the last 3 months. I am not at my peak - I am just laying the foundations for next year's season. This means that I am not spending much time on intensive running - most of my sessions are on the Z1-Z2 HR.

When I say most I mean 80-90% of running duration.

The statistics are great - I love them. Amazing tool available nowadays that allows to have a deeper understanding of the process. I can see how I am performing throughout the week and throughout the month. I can zoom out after the season and analyse the work I have done.

Here are November, December and January graph of intensity distribution according to time spent in HR zones

My Z1 is up to 138 bpm

I know you might have lots of questions and this topic is very complex- ask and I will try to explain😄

Run Smart not Hard 😊

6 comments