Season Planning - One or two macrocycles?

In endurance sports athletes generally elect to organise their season in 1 to 3 macrocycles.

In ultra-running it is recommended to organize a seasonal plan in 1 or 2 macro-cycles only.

Ultra-runners with 1 single goal have two options:

1. they can organize their season in 1 single macrocycle

2. or, and what we often recommend when the available training period is 40 weeks or longer , is to break the seasonal plan up in 2 macrocycles.

When electing for 1 macrocycle the athlete will have a long base phase period where the athlete will progressively build endurance and prepare for training phases with higher intensity.

Some athletes use the base phase period also integrate other sport activities (cross-ski, cycling, etc.) to develop the base endurance.

When the A-race is however more than 40 weeks ahead, it may be interesting to organize the season in 2 macrocycles.

By doing so the athlete will have the benefit of having more variety in the training plan, and from a form optimisation perspective the athlete will benefit also from going throug the different training cycles (the mesocycles) twice.   At some point a specific training stimulus will no longer yield significant benefit and that then is a good time to enter a new mesocyle with new training stimuli.

Often therefore we recommend an athlete to pick another (virtual) A-race first for the first macro-cycle and then enter the key macro-cycle (for app 22 weeks) preparing for the key A-race of the season.