Africa soon will be very refreshing for tired running legs. The three weeks home before leaving again has been a formula I have used for many years now and it works well within the overall periodization.
I will go to Pootchefstroom and Dullstrom in South Africa, to the altitude down there. It has been a while since my last altitude stay now, so a good chance of great effect 🙂 Last year I stayed for three weeks up in Dullstrom and I liked both the training conditions plus the altitude it is located at. Combined with a period a bit lower altitude first will give me a nice step-up-effect in both stress load and blood effect. Not that the blood effect is of any real concern now (I am much more into the whole respiratory,muscular + intracellular effect this time a year – that will be more long lasting), but it will help me some in the training the first weeks when I get home. So I sort of both use the altitude training for the direct stimulus once there, and the booster effect down at sea level. In that way you sort of get a domino-effect – and continue lift in performance through back to back training camps and pushing at home. It is so easy to just “go through the motions” once you are home and comfortable without really realizing that the winter is passing by as you are “just training” (and not putting in full gear) Therefore, going away now will be quite helpful.
Henrik is back again from a cross country race down in Europe so probably an easy run with him once of the next days. Good to have a marathon trained athlete around – they always look for a good,long run :))
All well!
Marius