Departure from The List: Monday's Theme was 20

I posted some time ago...probably a year or more...about donating my body to science for a Pomegranate juice cycling study at UT. I actually think that the POM drink made cycling performance worse. Keep that in mind if you are looking for a silver bullet in the form of an energy drink or vitamin...that's legal!

Anyway, I have donated my body again to science and am doing a repeat of a study that I did 6-8 years ago at UT. It is evaluating the effects of different carb/protein ratios in sports drinks during exercise. I don't know which drink I get on which day though. It is once a week. I have to exercise the same each week for 3 days before and eat the same each week for 2 days before. So, my first real test is tomorrow. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday of this week and the next 2 I have to do the same workouts...and Tuesday and Wednesday I have to eat the same foods!

Monday's theme was 20. 20x100m in the pool, long course meters. I pulled them all. 20x400m on the track. 400m is 400m so there doesn't need to be any clarification as to whether or it was a long or short track if that makes sense. They only vairable for the track and pool should be the temperature, but I will be doing the same workout the next 2 Monday's. Tuesday was another solid swim and a VO2 bike workout. Same drill the next 2 Tuesday's. Today was an easy run with PK, and will be an easy swim of 3k or so. Same drill the next 2 Wednesday's.

Kind of brings me to another point. What if you just repeated a week over and over for a training cycle? I see the benefit in being progressive in training, but can't progressive also mean that you better adjust to a workload over the course of several weeks of doing the same workouts over and over? If you foul up, but complete, the workout one week and nail it the next 2...will you confidence be better? I've heard that there is a very successful group of athletes who do this exact thing. We'll see how it goes. I'm going to repeat this week for about 4 weeks in a row and finish with The Austin Triathlon. No trip to altitude, just heat training in Austin.

Next Post: something related to the BSS night again. Stay tuned.