Back to Back sessions

ocnoc

As the title says, back to back session, good idea, bad idea or just asking for trouble?

As an example, say do a track session Tuesday followed by a tempo on Wednesday?

donothoponpop

ocnoc wrote: »

As the title says, back to back session, good idea, bad idea or just asking for trouble?

As an example, say do a track session Tuesday followed by a tempo on Wednesday?

"Onset of DOMS" school of thought is its a good idea. (DOMS kicks in 24-36 hours after a hard session). cf P&D Advanced Marathoning

Practically, running after a really hard downhill session can do damage, so it would depend on your session. A hard tempo, following your track intervals <24hrs apart, you could try.

village runner

ocnoc wrote: »

As the title says, back to back session, good idea, bad idea or just asking for trouble?

As an example, say do a track session Tuesday followed by a tempo on Wednesday?

Depends on the week. If you are doing it for the sake of it no. If you have a race sunday say and you normally do fast monday and thursday i would do it mon and tuesday.
But i would do the temo monday and interval tuesday. Starting a tempo tired is a disaster.

ocnoc

First rule in Mountain Running

donothoponpop wrote: »

after a really hard downhill

You rest :P

BeepBeep67

Daniels has it in some of his plans will check later how he recommends to do them.

TFBubendorfer

I did back-to-back sessions during the build phase of my last marathon. The idea was to start Sunday's long run on already slightly fatigued legs, to make the run more marathon specific.

Saturday was a marathon pace or tempo session, Sunday a long run with a few miles of marathon pace at the end.

This was roughly every 2 weeks, but the coach kept a close eye on my numbers. When I needed more rest, he adapted the schedule.

It was very tough at times but it sure worked for me.

ecoli

Training comes under 3 stages - stress, recover, adapt. Basically the body is constantly trying to maintain a general "level state" (homeostasis if you remember your leaving cert biology)

When we train hard we break the the muscles down. This means that the body has to work harder to repair itself and make the body work harder/more efficiently in the future to prevent this breakdown occuring again. This is the adaptive stage and is why training gets easier as we progress which usually means we have to either increase the intensity or the volume.

So if you apply this idea to consecutive hard days training it should mean that break the body down twice as much to encourage double the effort on recovery? Unfortunately this is not the case. In order for an athlete to stimulate adaptation they must get back to original baseline of perfomance and energy stores before the adaptation occurs.

If we train the intensity or volume are incorrect then it can hamper returning to the orginal base line (creatine phosphate levels (few minutes to recover) and glycogen reloading (can take 24 hours to longer after a hard session). This means that it can take up to a day before the beneficial work of improving begins to happen in the body. If you then jump straight back into another session though you may have returned to your baseline you have not allowed enough time to initiate adaptation.

Best case scenario you recover but dont benefit from the first session. Worst case you increase the injury and illness risk and break down.

Tempos arent as intense on the body so you might see a little more benefit from these in comparisons to back to back Vo2 sessions etc but again you are walking a fine line

Personally i am of the belief that you should have up to 48 hourse between sessions (atleast 1 day easy running day between sessions) at the very least and if possible 1-2 days