After explaining the need to monitor your heart rate and blood pressure, and to keep a training diary as a useful tool to aid your training, now I would like to examine the training factor of restoration shown in detail. As you can see from the diagram below, restoration, or resting so as to recover between training sessions, is the key to your success in long distance running. However, a great many people who train for long distance running do not realise this, train too hard, do not allow enough rest, and leave their races behind in their training. So read on to find out how to recover, how to restore your body before training again, and particularly, before training hard again.
Exercise 1: Which parts of the process of training and super-compensation require that you rest and as a result your body receives restoration?
Post question: What training benefit do you gain during restoration? You need to know:
1. How to aid restoration of the skeletal-muscular system
2. How to aid restoration of the cardio-respiratory system
3. How to restore the exchange process
4. What to do if you have overtrained
5. Nutrition - what food you need
6. Nurture psychological restoration
7. Lifestyle - yours!
In this first part I examine the first of these seven items.
How to aid restoration of the skeletal-muscular system
The typical long distance runner's training year starts with an easy volume of work, then more intensive work is introduced after 2 to 3 months in which 2 to 3 easy days a week remain on the schedule. Then tempo runs are introduced, volume work continues, and then the speed work over shorter distances is introduced. But this alternates with easy days so that tempo runs and speed work do not follow one another, but are spaced apart with easier days of running.
Question: Should your body be feeling good and fully restored before you do your next 'hard' or 'intense' training session?
Exercise 2: Read through the two weeks' training schedule and label the hard days and the easy days. Check your answers with the author's labels at the end of this article.
Post question: In all periods of the year, how many easy days of work do you need to plan between each hard intense training day? See the third table at the end of the article.
Sketal-Muscular restorative measures can be divided into three types:
1. When preparing for a workout - for example, a light massage with heat and circulation improving ointments
