We train hard all year and only vary our training a little to fit with the upcoming big race . . . . Many of us are unwilling to take the recovery time and thus we are not doing anything to break our training into seasons/cycles/pheses/etc.
Such a pattern also fails to lead to adaptation. The single most important word that should be on every runner tongue is
adaptation. We do the same thing over and over again, week after week, month after month, year after year. And we think that if we just keep doing this, eventually, our bodies will become accustom to it and adapt. Maybe that's true, but its not the most efficient way to get adaptations. An optimal training cycle begins with base mileage that increases to a peak and then begins a slight decline through to the end of the cycle. As the cycle goes on the intensity (speed if you will) follows an opposing pattern to the mileage (volume), to some degree. If the two were graphed together you would see a somewhat sharp up graph in volume and then a slow steady decline, and the intensity would do the opposite. A slow steady up graph, then a steep upclimb before it dropped off a bit before the peak race. When we talk about adaptations there are 2 places we tend to see them within a training cycle. We see adaptation occurring about 7-10 days after particular sessions and we can also see adpatations occurring around 28 days. For these reasons, Macro Cycles (the entire training period) is broken down in into meso-cycles (4 week cycles) and micro-cycles (7 days-10 day cycles).
