GUIDELINES FOR
YOUR TRAINING BREAK
ÓPeak Running Performance,
November-December 2003
By Skip Stolley, Director/Assistant Coach, VS
ATHLETICS Track Club
If you just finished running a marathon, or completing
an extended road racing, cross country, or track season, you are probably ready
for a 3-4 week
training break
before piling on the miles in preparation for your next target race or racing
season. Here are some ideas to help
guide your training break.
1. A training
break doesn't necessarily have to mean a break from running. Most likely, what you need most is a mental break
from several months of highly-structured training and/or intense racing. Consider this to be an opportunity to
break-away from your daily training routine for a while and run When you feel like running, Where you feel like running, and How you feel like
running.
2. If your
body is telling you that you need a complete break from running....take it! Decompress,
relax, and work on your tan or your jump-shot. Don’t feel guilty about taking a
break after an extended period of training and racing. Rejuvenating your body and re-energizing your
spirits between seasons or periods of dedicated race preparation is all part of
the training cycle. Trust your body and
psyche to tell you when you’re ready to run again.
3. When you do run, run easy, run long. Run some
different loops and enjoy some different scenery. Forget about your pace and focus on your
enjoying your environment and just being outdoors.
4. If your training break is during the summer, run early, run late. Avoid the heat and peak air-pollution periods
and maximize your comfort and recovery by running early in the morning or late in the afternoon.
5. Jog with
your friends. If
you are a serious runner, you probably train with other serious runners. Your
training break is an opportunity to jog with friends who normally would not, or
could not, train with you. Take this
time to enjoy running with your friends as a social activity.
6. Sleep,
sleep, sleep...Eat, eat, eat...Drink, drink, drink (Water, that is!) Nothing will
accelerate your restoration, recovery, and rejuvenation more than giving your
body the sleep and good nutrition it needs.
7. Do some cross-training. Swimming,
biking, hiking, and roller-blading are all great aerobic, big muscle
cross-training activities. If you’ve
never done any pool-training (running in the water), your training break is a
great time to start. Less vigorous
recreational exercise or sports activities (frizbee, golf, softball, etc.) are
also good cross-training during this period.
8. Get a
check-up and a tune-up. Your training break is the time to get some
sports massage and have any nagging injuries or persistent foot/leg problems
checked-out. Make an appointment to see
a recommended sports doctor or chiropractor, or go to a sports medicine center,
to get an assessment of your persistent aches and pains and review your
treatment options. An important part any
prescribed therapy should be strengthening exercises to incorporate into your
training regime and strategies to eliminate your injuries and reduce your
training-induced discomforts in the future.
Planning for Your Next Target
Race OR RACING SEASON
After a few weeks when your batteries are beginning to recharge, you should take some time to recap your season or assess the race that was the target of your last extended period of training and use that evaluation to remodel your training for the upcoming season or your next target race. What you learn from that appraisal, and the changes you make to your training and racing as a result, can be the most valuable outcomes of your training break.
For
instance, if you were just beginning to hit your stride when the season ended,
you may want to consider racing earlier, or more frequently, next season. If, however, your performances declined at
the end of the season, you need to determine whether over-training or too many
races was to blame for your burn-out.
Most
of the elite-level, post collegiate distance runners I’ve coached over the past
20-years want to train moderately hard EVERY DAY….and often twice a day. In my opinion, this is the very definition of
over-training. But, alas, it is the
easiest way to maintain a regime of high training mileage….and some runners
treasure the numbers logged in their training diaries as if they are
best-selling novels. The problem with
training moderately hard every day is embodied within the “SAID” Principle (Systematic
Adaptation to Increased Demands). This principle describes both the “process”
of training (the gradual increase of training load) and how that process
results in improved running performance (adaptation.) That adaptation occurs only during recovery
when the body responds to the micro-trauma introduced to the neuromuscular and
respiratory systems in training by repairing and rebuilding those systems to
make them stronger. If recovery is
incomplete or insufficient, adaptation is incomplete and improvement is
compromised. The other problem with
training moderately hard every day is that it makes it virtually impossible to
insert spikes of harder, more intense training into one’s program. That is because said runner will find himself
incapable of following it with yet another moderately hard training day. The bottom line is, the Number
of miles you run in training isn’t nearly important as How
those miles are run and what pieces they contribute to the puzzle of preparing
you to run faster when you step to the starting line to race.
It must also be said that every distance runner has a finite number of
race-type efforts that he or she can summon over the course of a racing
season. That number varies according to
the individual, how they have prepared in training, and how those races are
spaced within a racing calendar. While
increasing the quality of your “hard” training days is essential to improving
the overall quality of your training, that concept can be sabotaged by the fact
that highly-motivated distance runners are often tempted to push themselves to
their uppermost limits during a hard training session. While that might seem like a good thing, the
reality is, that training session ends up counting against the finite number of
race efforts those athletes are capable of producing over the course of the
season. There is a reason why we call
training “practice.” It is a sad fact
that some very gifted athletes never seem to learn how to train to produce
their best performances in their most important competitions, rather than in
training. The coaches of such athletes
often find their biggest challenge is holding them a step back from the brink
in training. You should always finish
even your most intense training sessions feeling as if you could have run a
little faster, run a little further, or done a few more repetitions had it been
necessary. That will assure the easy
days built into your training will fulfill their intended purpose of providing
the recovery you need to maximize your improvement.
That said, there may be nothing you need to do to optimize your
training other than, 1) take the easier training days you need to provide
sufficient recovery from your hard training days (even if it keeps you from
achieving some artificial weekly training mileage goal), and 2) avoid turning a
hard training day into a race day.
Should your evaluation focus on the target race you had been training for, rather than a season of competition, there
are other things to consider. If you
were running to achieve a specific time and think you started too fast because
you were unable to maintain that pace over the 2nd half of the race,
perhaps you need to do more tempo runs and/or training at goal pace. If you ran relatively even pace, but finished
well off your goal, either your goal, or the amount and quality of training you
dedicated to achieving it, was unrealistic.
If your performance exceeded your expectations, it sends a message that
you are ready to increase your current level training…judiciously. If you had one of those awful days where you
never felt comfortable, strong, and in-control, a lack of preparatory races
could be responsible. For some reason,
many distance runners seem to believe they can train, and train, and train, and
train…then step to the starting line and produce a peak performance. I know of no other individual sport whose
participants share that belief, for it ignores the seminal training principle
of “specificity”. This principle states
that to be effective, training must be “specific” to the demands of the
activity. Simply put, it is why
sprinters don’t train like marathon runners, and marathon runners don’t
training like sprinters. The specificity
of training is important and the most specific training you can do is run your race. Some
preparatory races are essential for specialists at any distance to achieve a
peak performance.
_____________________________________
Skip
Stolley has been a highly successful high school, collegiate, and national club
coach. From 1989-99, he was Director of
Coaching Education for the Amateur Athletic Foundation of
