By Coach Adolfo Salgueiro

As the 2022-23 racing season move towards its end, with just a handful of goal competitions left in the calendar, the time to start planning for the 2023-24 season rapidly approaches. The running season usually goes from November-March, with adjustments depending on your latitude and location. This is time to reflect on what happened, what did not happen and why did or did not happen.

The first question that comes to mind after this intro is: Do runners really need time off?

Rediscover the pleasures of sleeping in on a weekend morning instead of going for a long run (Photo Pexels)

It has been discussed for decades, but based on my years of experience, my answer on the matter is a blunt and unequivocal YES!!!. In all caps and with three exclamation points.

Regardless of your age, level of fitness and commitment to the sport, your body cannot keep its peak level of fitness forever. There is such a thing as an upper limit which cannot be surpassed regardless of how much you run, lift or cross train. So, it is imperative that you provide your body with enough time to rest and relax. This will inevitably decrease your fitness, sure, but you must see it as an investment, a process to go through to continue your path of long-term progress.

The key concept is that once you have recovered and you are ready to restart, given that you haven’t overdone the junk food, alcohol and time off, you will be doing so at a higher level of fitness than where you started last season. This may allow you to achieve an even higher level for the upcoming season.

I will define the off-season as the period between your last race of one season and the first race of the following one. Within that period, I have identified four phases to devote individual attention so you can prepare properly for success.

1 – Rest and recovery – This doesn’t mean you stop all sports activities until next race. Some runners may need a week to a month off just to reset the body and have fun catching up on the pleasures of life that they’ve deprived themselves of during hard training, such as pizza, beer, binging on TV until late or sleeping in. Other runners will want to drastically cut their mileage, or their running days so their bodies can recover and prepare for what is coming up. You must enjoy the process and running’s gotta be fun. Otherwise, a burn out may be on its way and you will no longer run.

2 – Planning – This phase may overlap the previous one, or even with the previous racing season. The time has come to figure out what are your goals for next season. I am a firm believer that having multiple races in your schedule is what will allow you to remain focused so you don’t slack off until you realize the race you were shooting for is around the corner, or it is sold out. You don’t want to plan every workout for the next 6-8 months, but you just need to know when you need to be ready and for what goal.

This is the time to enjoy the pizza and the beer, but obviously, don’t overdo it (Photo Pexels)

3 – Build up – After your recovery time is taken care of, it is time to rebuild your endurance and your speed. This takes time, method and requires patience. Accept you will not start at the same point where you left off. The silver lining is that you will be able to get back there sooner and safer the longer you have been running. Getting back to 50-mile weeks is a quicker process for someone who has been doing it for 10 years than for a runner who just did it last year for the very first time. Put you plan on paper. Block and label the weeks and/months you will need to go through this process. Then, execute.

4 – Training – Everything you did between your last race of the season and the start of this phase is what will determine the success of your next season. A 16-week training plan, especially for a marathon, doesn’t mean you’ll start running again 16 weeks prior to race day. It means that 16 weeks before race day you must be ready to hit the ground running. By then, your aerobic capacity, your core, your strength program and your speed training should be a work in progress. So, in these 16 weeks you just dial in the variables to achieve your goal at the set date.

Other components such as nutrition, sleep, hydration and recovery are year around elements than need to be addressed continuously and are part of all four phases.

If you take the time to plan ahead, even small injuries, periods of sickness, vacation or any other unexpected surprises life will inevitably throw at you, may be fit into the off-season. Prepare yourself with plenty of time and enjoy reaping the benefits of a well-executed plan.