How the season load is chosen
The “Lay the volume across the weeks” wizard in the season plan calculates the planned volume of each week. How to open the wizard and what to set in it - see “Season plan”. Here is how it calculates.
Only weeks with a mesocycle assigned are laid out. The volume of a week is a share of the season's peak week:
Week volume = Peak week volume × Phase share × Wave or taper factor
Phase share
The share depends on the mesocycle the week is in and changes smoothly from the first week of the mesocycle to the last one:
| Phase | First week | Last week |
|---|---|---|
| Preparation | 65% | 70% |
| Base | 90% | 100% |
| Build | 96% | 92% |
| Peak | 80% | 65% |
| Race | 54% | 54% |
| Transition | 30% | 30% |
The shares are derived from Joe Friel's “Weekly Training Hours” table. The volume peaks at the end of base; through build it eases off slightly while intensity rises. For mesocycles of other schemes that are not in this table, the share is the same for the whole phase - 85%.
Friel himself calls his figures a ballpark to be fitted to the athlete. Treat the wizard's result as a draft: once applied, any week can be corrected right in the plan table.
Load wave
- 3:1 - three loading weeks (90%, 95% and 100% of the phase share) and the fourth a recovery week - 55%;
- 2:1 - two loading weeks (90% and 100%) and the third a recovery week - 55%;
- No wave - all weeks by the phase share.
The wave count starts over in each mesocycle. 55% comes from Friel's table; his own recovery lasts 3-5 days rather than a whole week - if that is your plan, correct the week by hand.
Taper before a race
If “Taper before a race” is on, the volume goes down before every competition in the plan, whatever its priority:
- race week - 45%;
- the week before the race - 60%;
- two weeks before - 85%.
The shares exclude the race itself. If a week falls under both the wave's recovery and the taper, the smaller factor is taken, not their product.
60% for the week before the race comes from Pete Pfitzinger's “Advanced Marathoning”; the two-week total lands inside the 41-60% that Bosquet's meta-analysis of 27 studies calls optimal.
A taper cuts duration while intensity and frequency are held. If the season plan is measured in training load, the taper cuts that too.
What to count from
- From the peak week - you set the peak week volume, and the other weeks get its shares;
- From the season total - the wizard picks the peak week so that the weeks add up to the given total. If “Leave filled weeks alone” is on, their volume is subtracted from the total, and the weeks themselves stay as they are.
Hours are rounded to tenths, kilometers and load points to whole numbers. Before saving, the wizard shows which weeks change and how.