One common question that seems to come up this time of year has to do with taking downtime in the off-season. The off-season is a long ways away for me right now, since I’m headed off to Europe to start getting things rolling. I’m currently at that stage of the season where running feels good every single day, workouts are coming together, and when I look at my week in my running log, I laugh at how effortlessly things seem to be now, things that were so dang tough a few months ago. You know what I mean….take a week of training during your peak training season and imagine your coach giving you that exact same schedule for a week in August. Repeat 400’s in what?! No way! Man, but that time of year when you can just clip off those 400’s, miles, tempos, and just show up to practice with the attitude “Bring it on, Coach,” that’s the best feeling around. If only you could bottle it up and sell it.

The problem with that awesome feeling is that you don’t want it to stop. For many people, this time of year is followed by a peak and then a downward slide where you feel tired and burned out. This makes it easy to transition into a period of rest and regeneration. But for others, (and this is dangerous,) they are afraid to let go of their fitness at the end of the season. It is scary to think about starting over from scratch sometims. Letting your fitness go willingly can feel like watching money slip out of your wallet and blow away in the wind: you have to resist the urge to reach out and grab it because you worked hard to earn it. You have to sit back and let some of it blow away.

I was on a run yesterday and it felt completely effortless. I was listening to The Shins latest album on my ipod, running along the railroad tracks in Eugene, playing around with pace and changing speeds just because it felt so easy to do it. I was thinking about my upcoming workout for Saturday and how I can’t wait to do it, whereas a few months ago I would have cringed at the prospect of fast repeat 800’s. I relished in that feeling for a minute and then it popped into my head:

“I don’t think I should take a break this year; just imagine what I could do next year if I don’t lose any of the fitness I have gained so far. I could just build on this and build on this. All I need to do is not let myself get burned out and then I won’t need a break.”

The feeling I had was that I wanted to protect the money in my wallet and continue packing more in. But improvement isn’t as simple as that. The wallet gets full of small bills and you can’t fit any more in. Its literally bursting at the seams. By taking a break, I can sit down and sort through the ones and fives and tens in my wallet and think about the year and how I earned each one. A few blow away in the wind while I sort through them, but in the end, I can add most of it up, go to the bank, exchange them all in for a couple hundreds and slip those into my wallet for next year. They don’t take up much room in my wallet and they are filed away. This is called the cumulative effect of training. Now with my slim wallet with a couple big bills, I can spend some time planning how I want to fill up my wallet next time around. Every year, there are fewer one dollar bills and more fives and tens. By taking the time to rest and think about last season, I develop an action plan with my coach that is more effective, with less waste.

Time and time again, I see athletes give in to the elation of being on top of their game. Getting back into shape after a break is hard. It hurts. Bad. But the alternative is stuffing the wallet so full that the seams rip and money spills out everywhere, sending you scrambling for scraps.

Trust me, its worth the break. Take it before you need it. Otherwise you set yourself up for a couple really big highs, sandwiched between some terrible-aweful-no good-really bad lows. These lows could be serious injuries, emotional pits, or mental burnout. Take control by planning an ebb and flow into your seasons and into your years. You will work your way up the improvement ladder and enjoy the benefits of cumulative training.

How I take a break:

Time: 2-4 weeks of no running. For two weeks or so I just chill out. I watch TV, go on road trips, spend time with people, stay up late, sleep in, etc. I DO NOT RUN A STEP! The next two weeks I am more active, going on bike rides with friends, hiking, swimming, playing. I listen to my body and if I feel like going for a run, I’ll go. If I don’t, I don’t. The important thing is that I don’t have a plan that I have to follow…if a run works its way into the day, so be it. On average I end up running about 5 or 6 times total over two weeks. Preferably, I’d spend this two weeks water-skiing or hiking and do very little running, but sometimes I’m stuck at home and bored and crave a run. Sometimes its 20 minutes, sometimes its 60 minutes.

Weight:

I let my body recover by not trying to force it to stay at a certain weight. It is important to keep race weight for racing only. Just like training, body weight should ebb and flow some. For me, there is about a five pound swing between my highest and lowest weight.

Diet:

I eat pretty balanced most of the year, so I don’t feel this huge need to pig out all the time on my break. I learned that being crazy strict about things just makes you swing the other way in the off-season. Its not good for anyone to eat tons of junk in a two week period of time, whether you are an athlete or not, so it would be silly to go on a mission to get a heart attack. In the off-season, I eat more ice-cream and cookies than usual, (because they are sent from heaven directly,) but basically the biggest change is that I don’t worry about timing my meals to maximize my energy, and I just eat whatever is served. There are times during the season when I would turn down chocolate cake at a dinner party, but the off-season isn’t one of them.

Journaling:

Writing about last season while it is fresh in my mind has proven to be the most educational thing I could do for my running. The best person to learn from is yourself.

Best of luck with your off-season! I hope you enjoy your well-earned break!

Off to Europe for me…

-L