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Planning Your Running Off-Season

by Adolfo Salgueiro | Mar 7, 2023 | Article, Reflection

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.

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Running Resolutions for 2023

by Adolfo Salgueiro | Jan 3, 2023 | Article, List, Reflection

By Coach Adolfo Salgueiro

Happy New Year!!! May 2023 bring you countless, injury-free miles and PRs in all your distances.

As we turn the page onto a brand-new notebook, one where all the pages are still to be written, we set up our running hopes and goals for this new trip around de sun and we must start dialing in and focusing on what we want to accomplish when it comes to our physical activity. This way we can have a roadmap and not improvise along the way. So, come December, we are not regretting a lost opportunity to accomplish something big.

A brand new year to fill in with hopes and goals so, come December, we don’t realize we have wasted 12 good months (Photo: Bich Tran, Pexels)

As we analyze our goals for 2023 and we ponder our fears about coming short, we start by making sure we are well prepared and focused by setting goals that require effort and challenge you to be active for 12 months. Below find six guidelines to set up realistic running goals.

1 – Set up a bold yet attainable goal: Easy goals that can be achieved with little effort don’t mean much. Unfeasible goals that will not be realized, will leave you in frustration. So, be reasonable. Goals can be accumulative, like running 1000 miles in the year, or 200 kilometers per month, or five times a week. You can also strive towards running a particular distance or have a goal time for a distance. The key is to make it a real challenge, one that will leave you elated when you achieve it.

2 – Choose your goal race or races for the year, now: Set up a road map so you know how to get from where you are to where you want to go. Select the races where you want to excel and/or set up your PRs and then work toward is with plenty of time. If you want to set up a marathon PR, you must set up enough time aside so to include all the elements of a training plan. If your goal is a 5K or 10K PR, then you need to plan enough speed work, which also requires time. Make sure you are not surprised when your goal race is 4 weeks away and you are not ready.

3 – Set up a reasonable training schedule that will fit your life: Once you have figured out what you want to accomplish for the year, it is time to get it all into your schedule. Don’t wait until you have time to fit in your training. If you do, you will never train. Write in your running and your cross-training activities into your schedule (actually, write it in, yes!) so, when something comes up, you’ll know you are not available, since there’s a previous appointment in your agenda. This simple technique has worked very well for me, so I highly recommend it.

Block off your exercise time in your daily planner, so you won’t double book it (Photo: Bich Tran, Pexels)

4 – Don’t just run: Sure, running is what we want to do. Yet, the constant percussion this sport places on our bodies requires us scheduling time for repair and restoration. Incorporating one or two days a week of yoga, swimming, Pilates, elliptical or any other non-impact exercise will go a long way to make you a more resilient runner. And if you don’t have time to ad that to your schedule, then trade in a run for one of them. In the long run, your body will thank you and your racing times will reflect the benefits.

5 – Include strength training: I procrastinated about this one the entire 2022. Weight work specifically designed for runners and core exercises to help your body withstand the pounding of the long miles are no longer optional. If we don’t prepare our bodies and make them stronger, it is a matter of time before we will have to stop and recover from an injury. My #1 goal for this year is to restart my strength training.

6 – Upgrade your sleeping habits: If you put all the recovery tools together; the massage guns, the protein shakes, the compression gear, the amino acids and the write-in-your-favorite-here, the sum of them won’t be as restorative to your body as a good, full night of sleep. Skipping sleep is not a badge of honor, it is a mistake that will not allow your body to recover and with luck, you will end up underperforming. Without luck, you will end up injured.

If you liked this blog post, please give it a like, below; or leave a comment if you want to contribute to the discussion.

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5 New Year Running Resolutions

by Adolfo Salgueiro | Jan 5, 2021 | Article, List, Reflection

By Coach Adolfo Salgueiro

Based on where you are in your running life, your goals for a new year will vary. While for some people, making it to 1000 miles may seem like an insurmountable goal, others have been accomplishing this distance year in and year out. Some athletes break 1:30 in the half marathon on a bad day, others struggle to go sub-3.

Making achievable New Year resolutions is the key to keep your athletic goals relevant.

The point here is that to set up your running goal, or goals, for this brand-new year, it must be done in an individual and feasible fashion. These goals can’t be compared with what your friends are doing or what you were able to do when you were a young runner; and they can’t be so out-of-touch that you will be off track at the first sign of trouble or the first day when life gets on the way. Also, you don’t want to get injured because of overstress.

If you haven’t etched in stone your running goals for 2021, or if you haven’t thought about them yet, do so, now. This is what will keep you focused, especially while it is uncertain if and when normal racing will return.

The following goals ideas you may consider:

1 – 1000 Miles – Depending on where you are in your running life, one thousand miles could be a challenging yet achievable Goal. You can also set your eyes on 1500, 2000 or 3000. The key is to break it down in small chunks so you can visualize it. I.E. For 1000 miles, this is just 83.33 miles per month, or 4.8 a day if you run 4 times a week (way less if you include a long run one of those days). Last year, over 1000 members of the 1K Club made it to the 1000 mark. If you have never done it, this may be a great goal for the year.

2 – One more day of activity per week – If you don’t want to focus your running year on counting mileage, adding another day to your training is a good way to increase your activity. If you run only 3 times a week, that 4th day becomes feasible. If you run 5 or 6, this may not be a goal for you, but you can always add a yoga class, a cross training session or an easy, long recovery walk to your week. The key is to increase your activity if you feel you can fit it in without sacrificing your recovery.

3 – Strength training – It is the most neglected part of every training cycle. When we are focused in our training and our work or personal life gets on the way, strength training is the first aspect of the program to be sacrificed. As runners, we pound on our musculoskeletal system on a daily basis. Consider that every in mile you dump 3-4 times your weight into each leg, about 800 times. This is about 2500 times per leg, per 5K. If we don’t prepare our bones, muscles, tendons and ligaments to take on the workload, they will break down, and you will be rehabbing instead of running.

Sleeping 7-8 hours a night will improve both your athletic and your personal life (Photo: Pexels.com)

4 – Specific Distance PR – This goal can be handled in two ways. A) You can set up your sights and training on one specific distance where you feel confident performing and go for your best time, ever; or B) you can get out of your comfort zone and pick up a distance where you don’t feel confident and go for it. If you’ve been chasing the elusive Sub-2 half marathon or sub-3:30 marathon, you have a full year to make it happen. Or, if you dislike the 5K because it is too short or too fast; or if you are afraid of what lies beyond the mythical 13.1, then you have a few challenges right there.

5 – Sleep more – It may sound odd that sleeping more is part of a running goals list for a new year, but sleep is one of the most overlooked aspects of recovery, and thus, training. It is also the one that may take you down, if not with an injury, at least by robbing you of your chance of peak performance. In our society, lack of sleep has become a worthless badge of honor, while in reality (and science), our sleeping time is key to our recovery both as athletes and as functional human beings. The benefits of a hard workout are not seen once you finished, the body needs to repair itself and adapt to the stress we just put it through. This doesn’t happen with an easy 5-miler on 5 hours of sleep. The body heals itself and flushes the day’s metabolic waste while we sleep. So, 7-8 hours a night is part of your daily training and a worthwhile running goal for 2021.

Of course, these are not the only athletic goals you may set up for 2021. They are just ideas to help you define what you would like to achieve this year.

What are your running goals for 2021?

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