Chapter 5: Specialization - Fine tuning your fitness for a fast race.

In this chapter, we will dive into the third principle: Specialization. Specifically, taking a look at how to achieve "race fitness" for a specific event. This includes understanding what it means to be "race fit," how to measure it, the physiological qualities it encompasses, and how to improve it.

Additionally, we will explore the timing of when to shift from general training to specific preparation, when it’s the right time to trade some “base fitness” for “race fitness”.

That is, when do we make the move from what we were talking about in the last chapter, the base task of lifting the whole curve…

Figure 5.1: “Lifting the curve”

…on to the specific task of banging a particular point on the curve into shape?

Figure 5.2: “Shaping the curve”

In the previous chapter, we talked about the difference between having a “big engine” and a smaller engine that is finely tuned to run at 100% capacity for a given event. In this one, we will take a deeper dive into the second part - fine-tuning your engine to run at 100% capacity for a given event.