since ive started endurance sports, ive always had something to train for, a marathon, collegiate cycling, triathlon… Now for the first time in a while, im taking an offseason (mainly so i can train strong next year, and because Tom convinced me not to race the day after Block 1 exams, leaving no race in my immediate future). Here’s my problem, what the hell do you do? Do you still ride and run and swim, just at lower volumes, whenever you want? Ive wanted to break a 16:30 5k for a while now, but have always focused on endurance, is this the time to try? Now, heres the psychological part; i in high school used to not do any physical activity, and during college i started. Now, i have the highest self image and and physical fitness ive ever had, and im deathly afraid of losing it. My biggest fear is gaining all the weight back, how do i balance that and having an actual offseason.
What do I do or what should YOU do?
I try to do a couple laps of the earth chasing triathlon’s endless summer. This year I am going to France (Nice) in September, either Hainan or Thailand to race in November, Curacao for a training camp in January and hopefully Moorea, French Polynesia in February.
It is always summer somewhere.
Here’s a better answer:
I think the off season is the time you get most of work done and do most of your training. If you are racing a busy “in-season” then your training is compromised by travel, recovery and racing every weekend. Racing is training but you make your biggest gains in the winter.
I think working on your weakness (for me, swimming) is key as well as incorporating strength and flexibility training into your routine.
Off season is a building time. Ideally, you go back into the following season with substantially greater fitness and strength. It is critical to maintain and even improve you eating habits, especially through the holidays. It is also super important to stay focused on the long term goal of improving your racing by setting intermediate goals thoughout the off season.
As with any training the first step is to have a plan. Determine your specific goals (you mentioned several already) and plan backwards from those. Plan your work and work your plan. You’ll kick butt.
Good luck on your test man, you rule.
I think the Off Season is defined by several things:
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Where you live can have a big impact. Do you get a real winter - snow cold weather etc . .
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What your goals are
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What your weaknesses are
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How the previous In Season went
Maybe think of it like this: there is no “off-season”. BUT, there probably should be periods of ramping up volume or intensity, followed by periods of not-so-structured activity. It’s a lot like “diet”. Everyone has a diet, it doesn’t mean everyone is trying to lose weight. YOUR diet is whatever it is you are eating. There is no off season in nutrition, either. People ask me why I don’t eat more at Thanksgiving/Christmas/Holiday parties…it’s simple…I don’t need the calories or the junk, so, I don’t eat any differently then. But, these same people are amazed that I usually eat cookies/ice cream/pound cake/whatever every day of my life. I don’t deny myself these things for a while in order to gorge on them at other times. It’s simply a balance of DAILY activity and DAILY intake. The older you get, the more important this becomes.
Maybe off season would seem easier to accept if you set goals such as running 30 miles one week, or 40, or whatever is longer than you ever have. Then, the next week, swimming further, etc. Maybe a goal of running every day, but very short runs. Mix it up. Goals like this can help your overall fitness for next year without unduly stressing you…giving you a break from your in-season goals of constantly trying to go faster in a race.
Tom, your life is a living HELL…
My life rules. Absolutely rules.
Take a two or three week break and don’t do anything you don’t want to do (training-wise at least; it is kinda hard to stop working or going to school.) If you want to do an easy workout 'cause you feel like breaking a sweat or getting out of the house, that is fine. If you don’t feel like getting up at the crack of dawn for a swim session then just sleep in. Try to avoid the “this easy run after a week off feels pretty good - I think I will drop the hammer and see how fast I can run my favorite 10k loop” thought - you will need to start over with your resting again. The point of a break like this is to allow your body to really absorb all of the hard work you have put in and recover so you can be fresh enough to start building up again. At this time you can start in on another long base training phase to give yourself a solid foundation for both better speed and endurance next year.
As far as your concerns related to losing fitness - if you are close enough to 16:30 to want to break it then you are in great shape. You will not pack on 300 pounds in a few weeks of limited activity. It sounds like you are planning for long term success, so even if you have a few more beers and donuts during your break it should not significantly impact your fitness or body composition.
If you do have an offseason, remember to include the OFF part. As to wondering what you should do, think of a few things that you have not had much chance to do lately because of training/racing schedules and do it. See a movie. Go hiking with your dog. Play a little golf. Just have fun (of a different type than training provides.)
Good luck, and have fun.
Todd Pilger - Albuquerque, NM
P.S. - It seems odd that Tom is convincing you to take some time off while he is chasing the sun around the world. You need to tell him to take his own advice and you can both go golfing.
i’ve often thought about the “offseason” and how it pertains to the average age group athlete. coach after coach advocates taking a period of time away from the sport after “race” season where you do little, if any, running, swimming, or riding. for a pro this makes sense as once the rest period is over, he/she will start training 3-6+ hours a day and will regain that lost fitness in no time. moreover, their bodies get pretty beaten up do to the heavy training volume and actually “racing” most events. on the other hand, i don’t think it makes as much sense for age groupers. the typical ag’er won’t have the time to train that much on a daily basis for a variety of reasons nor is their body usually as beaten down by a race season as the average pro. consequently, there is the real possibility that he/she might not ever regain the fitness lost from a somewhat lengthy period of relative inactivity. moreover, i believe a lot of ag’ers get faster as a result of the cumulative effects of training over the long haul(i.e. year to year), rather than increasing training volume over a shorter span(a single race season). for instance, i have had some really good races this year. my training volume has increased to some degree, but mostly i attribute my improved results to having trained pretty consistently and continuously for the past 3 years. i look at a guy like ray britt from xtri.com as another example of the cumulative training effect over years contributing to progressively faster results.
this isn’t to say that a person should go full tilt all the time. periods where there is less structure and lower volume are very useful. but i don’t think taking complete is beneficial to a lot of ag’ers. rather, reducing volume while maintaining consistency would be a better “offseason”.
i guess this is a long winded way of saying i agree with much of what you said…
You make a salient point concerning AGer’s (the vast majority of us) and Pro athletes…we really don’t have the same requirements in our off-season activities. This sort of goes back to the idea that, if Lance Armstrong does X, it may mean I should do Y, because I’m certainly no LA!
** believe a lot of ag’ers get faster as a result of the cumulative effects of training over the long haul(i.e. year to year), rather than increasing training volume over a shorter span(a single race season). for instance, i have had some really good races this year. my training volume has increased to some degree, but mostly i attribute my improved results to having trained pretty consistently and continuously for the past 3 years. **
Absolutely agree … It seems like you can build up to a certain point (over a few months or even a couple years) then maintain or even decrease your training and not really lose much fitness at all.
Losing fitness is also cumulative … It happens quicker than gaining fitness, but it takes months to lose fitness gained over years, I reckon.
unfortunately, i don’t think that’s true. there was a poster on gordo’s board that talked about him losing 15% of his bike power in a few months(he arrived at this statement based on powermeter readings and 2x20 hard intervals–he couldn’t sustain anywhere near the same power after taking a couple months off/easy that he could when he was peaking for a half ironman). similarly, i believe i heard that people start losing fitness after a couple weeks of non-activity. maybe with a substantial base before that, the rate of decline is less, but there is a fitness loss nonetheless. this is one of the reasons i feel that year round consistency is important for an ag’er because fitness loss can occur quickly and there is no guarantee that a person can train enough to regain that lost fitness…
there was a poster on gordo’s board that talked about him losing 15% of his bike power in a few months
How quickly was he able to gain that 15% back? I bet it was a lot faster than it took him to gain it initially.
he was/is still in the process of doing that, so i couldn’t say for sure. my hunch is that you are probably right. i know when i was into lifting weights, i could take time away and come back. i would be behind where i was at first, but within a month or so, most of it would come back. it’s like there was “latent” strength for lack of any scientific term still left over in my various muscle groups.
Seems to me that lots of people who are into training and Tri’s (me included) have this huge fear of taking too much time off and never regaining their fitness. I think it’s a pity that sometimes we let all this training and racing rule our lives a little too much (yes, people have discussed this subject, “balance” etc. ad naseum on this forum) … Concentrating on the quick 5K this fall sounds like a good goal, and your other events won’t suffer much …
I’m in my 30s, have run and raced most of the last 10 years and I am just getting into Tri’s (finishing my 2nd serious season) … My plan is to mix it up over the next few years: Train really hard some years (15-20 hour weeks) and train less others in order to travel, backpack, hike, etc.
Personally, I think it will make me better, just like mixing it up job-wise makes me a better employee (Can’t imagine working the same job in the same place for decades) … Just my emerging philosophy.
Anecdote: My 67-yr old dad was doing 250-mile weeks March through May (he’s retired) … In May he was feeling super fit and was apprehensive about taking a month-long trip to Italy that would start with 2 weeks with ZERO opportunity to ride, then a week worth of riding (all these great bike tours out of Rimini on the Adriatic) then another week of ZERO cycling … Trip was 6 days of biking and 22 days of no biking.
After he got home in June he said it took him less than a month to get fitter than he was before. The rest did him some good.
thats rediculous, if one can never get back to the level they were once at if they take some time off, then how did they get to that level in the first place? The most accepted veiwpoint is that when you have a relatively recent history (within the past few months) in a sport, such as triathlon, when you come out of unstructured workouts, you reattain your previous level faster than before, and many times surpass your previous fitness.
LOL.
Tom, if you’re done rubbing salt in the wound, pass me the shaker … my fries are a little bland.
I concur.
I figure training 9-10 months of the year is plenty for everyone but the pros, then do other active stuff during that time off.
If I’ve been running hard for 6 months, 10 days off usually does a body good and you barely lose any fitness. If you do lose fitness, my opinion is its psychological … Now 3 months off? It may take a few months to get back to where you were before.
Fitzgerald’s book (which I think is pretty good) suggests 14 days off, once or twice a year.
several factors: one is the assumption that when you return to training, you will have the exact same amount of time to train. that’s not always a safe bet. life gets in the way. for a pro, it’s your job, so you know that you will get back into the same levels of training. for the ag’er, life can get in the way and suddenly you don’t have the same time to train as you did before. you might be able to train and regain some fitness, but not have the time to return to the same level.
second is aging. i’d have to imagine that the average triathlete is in his/her mid to late 30’s. at some point, age is going to factor into one’s ability to bounce back from extended time away from the sport. i understand that even with consistent training, age will eventually catch up, but it will be a much slower process than after a period of relative inactivity.
i am not saying that every ag’er that takes a month or two off after racing won’t be able to get as fit or fitter than before, but i do think there is a risk involved in that approach given age, outside forces, and time constraints on training.