by nick de meyer » Tue Jan 18, 2011 12:22 am
i would recommend a reduction in volume and intensity in the 3rd or 4th week, with hours down to 60%, depending on the athlete and amount of volume their currently doing, and what phase of training they are in, with some testing towards the end of the recovery week, and no strength training during a recovery week. this is the time that your body gets stronger and needs down time to recover from the previous 2-3 weeks if you've trained properly, ie increasing volume and / or intensity over the 2-3 weeks
if you don't have recovery weeks you will burnout, get injured, hit a plateau, become one paced, maybe become ill, maybe overtrained, and worse still end up with chronic fatigue, and then pneumonia, so its a good idea in my book..
hope that helps