In this post I talked about my experiment to switch from a 7-day weekly cycle to a 10-day version. This is the follow-up post describing the results.
Background
So, I've now been on a 10-day cycle training plan for just over two months. I started with an initial plan of four cycles, covering a period of just under six weeks. I'm now about half way through a second four cycle block leading to a 10K running race at the end of May.
In September I'm competing in my first triathlong, so my plan as been about laying down the groundwork in swimming and cycling while building up to peak 10K running fitness.
In my previous post I described how I went about building the plan. In the remainder of this post I want to talk about how the plan actually worked out for me and changes that might be needed.
Sticking to the Plan
I actually found keeping to the plan was very easy in the most part. This was probably because I built the sessions around the periods that I knew I would have time to train. That made building the plan more challenging, but following it much easier. Had I built the perfect plan then tried to arrange my life around the training then I suspect it would have been much more challenging.
However, towards the end of the first block of cycles I picked up a small running niggle and at around the same time my work situation changed. This threw the plan into some chaos and required I make some fairly significant changes to the sessions.
Flexibility of the Plan
Given the challenges I faced building a 10-day plan in the first place, I expected that making session adjustments would be difficult. However, I was pleasently surprised how easy it was to change. Some running sessions had to switch to slow recovery runs and I had to dump some runs and put a bit more swimming in to replace them.
Adding swimming was the most challenging part of building the plan as there is a double constraint involved: the need to match both the time I can train and the times my local pool has lane sessions. However, the fact that a 10-day cycle is much more spread out than a 7-day one means moving slots around is much more achievable. I think this was a big win for the 10-day cycle approach and not something that I was expecting.
Frequency of Sessions
When I built the plan my goal was to include one swim session, one long bike session and one running interval session in each 10-day block. The rest would be filled with slower runs and strength sessions. Some blocks had an extra bike session if space was available.
What I discovered when executing the plan, however, was that only one swim session and one interval run session every 10+ days wasn't enough. The longer gap between the sessions was hampering my ability to improve consistently. I found that to get the improvement that I was expecting I had to swim at least once each week and interval sessions needed no more than 7 days gap between them.
In practice this means having 2 swims and 2 interval sessions in each 10-day cycle block, which then tends to crowd out other sessions. Or, having interdependencies between cycles, which makes planning way more difficult. I haven't managed to solve this challenge yet and if I stick with a 10-day cycle I will be trying to address this in my next planning block.
Fitting into My Work/Life Schedule
The other challenge that I found with a 10-day cycle is that my life is inherently structured around a weekly schedule: the swimming pool lane sessions that are compatible with my work schedule only happen on two days each week; various activities with the children happen at the same time each week; work follows a stict Monday to Friday schedule and so on.
What I therefore found as I adapted the first plan and started building the second plan is that certain sessions ending up having to be placed in exactly the same slot each week and then the remaining sessions positioned around them. The result is that I would often end up with two quite intense sessions very close together or two important sessions (like the long run) a wide distance apart. I found this very challenging for building consistency in my training.
Conclusion
I found the 10-day cycle training plan to work quite well and I was surprised that it was much more flexible than I was expecting. The less crowded plan was certainly welcome on busy weeks. However, the problem with getting the correct frequency of certain key sessions and fitting the plan around a life that is structured weekly are particular challenges for this approach.
For my next block of training I will be planning both 7-day and 10-day cycles and I will see which works out best with my new job. Given the need to swim more frequently, I think the 7-day approach may win purely down to the very restricted lane swimming times at my local pool.
