Running In The Off Season
Happy Wednesday friends! This week seems like it’s just flying by! I hope your week is going well too. Today I wanted to talk a bit about running in the off season. There may be times where you aren’t necessarily training for a race whether it’s due to time, injury, or just life in general. You still want to run but you’re not sure how to approach it.
The problem some people have while running during the off season is that they kind of just quit cold turkey. While it can be necessary to truly take a step back and not run for a while, you also need to be realistic. If life is just kicking your butt and you’re not even thinking about running a marathon later in the year, sure take as much time off running as you need. If you just aren’t feeling it but you want to chase a PR in a few months, stopping cold turkey is not advisable. I want you to keep this in the back of your mind during this post.
If you’re injured, of course stopping is what you need to do. Get rid of speed work, hill workouts, and all that jazz. If you can run, stick to just one foot in front of the other. Try not to get into your head about miles and time goals. If you’re not in the set time for training, just keep your legs moving as best as your recovery allows.
What if you don’t have a race planned for a long time? This is where I would say, keep moving. Find what your happy distance is and try to hit that weekly. I LOVE 10 mile runs so I tend to do those for fun even if I’m not “training” for anything. I also love knocking out boot camp classes which always have a running portion so I tend to get two or three easy miles with each class. My weekly mileage for the off season tends to be around 20 which is ideal for me.
You want to find the balance of doing it because you enjoy it and doing it because you feel forced to. The goal would be to stay moving. Don’t become a couch potato because you “need a break”. Maybe try out weight lifting or a different kind of exercise. So often I hear athletes lament that they did zero running in the off season and they are struggling at the beginning of their “official” training. Building the base is tough work so you want to make sure you don’t lose all the work you’ve done!
The off season is more of a mental obstacle for some runners. It’s finally the time you get to sleep in and rest when you weren’t able to during training. It’s great to enjoy that but also remember what got you started in the first place. You LOVE running. So get out there and do it just for fun again!
How do you feel about running in the off season?
