Periodisation during lockdown?

I'm following Jack Daniels' well known training book and working through the 6 week phases. It's fairly standard stuff: phase 1 is aerobic base building with some hills, phase 2 is short intervals and tempo, phase three longer intervals and tempo, then phase four is km reps at race pace. I'm now in the last week phase 2 and due to reach phase 4 in the middle of September, which was originally designed to get me in peak shape for some autumn and winter races, where I've got some goal PBs to shoot for. The problem is that the Great North Run in September has now been cancelled, and there's a lot of uncertainty about when we can race again.

How do the phases work in this limbo situation where we don't know when we'll be racing? I don't want to go back to phase 1 (easy aerobic base building) and then find races are starting up and I'm not up to speed. Equally though I don't want to get stuck in autumn repeating phase 4 (no intervals, just 1km reps at race pace) and lose the strength and speed built in phases 2 and 3. Is there an accepted approach to this? I've searched all over the web and read through Jack's book and can't find anything of help. My only guess really is to finish phases 2 and 3 in August and then go back to 2 again, then if racing starts try and rush through a mini phase 3 to get to 4.

Yes, I know I might be over-thinking this, but I just want to be the best runner I can be.

Any thoughts? :smile:

Comments

  • DT19DT19 ✭✭✭
    unfortunately following a system doesn't always work exactly in unanticipated times. 

    Uk Athletics released it's pathway to racing recentky and that indicated racing in some forms from late summer. 

    Most that i see are training with easy and steady running so not hammering themselves but well placed to pick it up. 
  • RobM77RobM77 ✭✭
    Thanks.

    Yes, when lockdown initially started I dropped everything right back to easy running with some hills and weights - "phase 1" as Jack Daniels would describe it (and others). Annoyingly, the incessant easy running meant I picked up an injury, but that's another story.

    The trouble is, if I follow JD's plan it takes 12 weeks (3 months) to go from the end of phase 1 to the start of phase 4 and be race ready, and ideally another month to get well into phase 4 and be properly race ready. My question was based around the fact that I doubt we're going to get a 4 month warning of whether races are happening, so I wondered what stage people were stalling at. JD covers in detail how to shorten phases, but not how to lengthen them.
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