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6 Ways to Copy the Offseason Breaks of Elite Runners

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Taking a break from structured running is a fundamental aspect of sound annual training cycles for runners. A great article in the Wall Street Journal following the 2012 London Olympics shared how three of the best American male distance runners took complete time off after their last races. While this may sound unreasonable to those who are accustomed to working out every day, the following tips provide insight into how to take an offseason break, why it’s beneficial to your next training cycle, and why failing to take a break can lead to fatigue and potential injury if you immediately resume training after completing a goal race.

Run, Don’t Rest, The Day(s) After the Big Race
In the immediate days following your goal race, you should jog easy for at least one or two days. Why? When you run, you pump oxygen-rich blood to muscle tissue that has been damaged on the cellular level.

Running easy in the days after a big race can be hard to do, especially if your last race was a marathon, but it’s what is best for your body. Plus, you’ll get some information about what next steps you should take during the offseason. For instance, if your plantar fascia is sore during these easy runs, then you should visit a soft-tissue therapist (physical therapist, chiropractor, massage therapist or Active Release Therapy [ART] professional) as soon as possible so that when it’s the right time to resume serious training, you’ll be ready.

Then, Take Several Days of Complete Rest
When you tell recreational runners they should do nothing for a few days at the beginning of their offseason after one or two days of post-race jogging, some may respond: “There is no way I could do that. I have to work out.”

But if you pose the same question to an elite runner, he or she may simply ask, “How many days should I take off. A couple or a whole week?”

Rest and recovery are fundamental to sound training, yet so many runners think that if they take a day off they’ll lose fitness, or they’ll have a guilty conscience about not working out. Your body needs rest. It doesn’t need months of rest, but a few days of complete rest are extremely helpful when you transition from that racing season to the offseason. Again, the best runners in the world take complete rest between the end of their racing season and the start of their next build-up, so you should be willing to do the same.

If You Can, Invest Some Money in Yourself During the Offseason
The offseason is a great time to see a soft-tissue specialist—a physical therapist, chiropractor, massage therapist or ART specialist—who can not only give you an assessment of how strong or weak your body is, but can also work on any problem areas.

It’s rare that runners feel 100-percent healthy all of the time. Yet when you’re in the middle of training mode, it’s hard to rationalize taking a few days off to see someone and let the body heal itself. That’s why the offseason is such a great time to take care of aches, pains or imbalances.

If you don’t have someone to see, visit your local running shoe store, and someone there should have a couple of good recommendations for you. Finally, go out of your way to find an ART therapist. I’ve found that a good ART professional is worth his or her weight in gold.

Everyone’s Offseason Break Differs
There is nothing set in stone about what activities you should complete during your offseason break once you’ve taken a few days of complete rest. While this work could be considered cross-training, I prefer to call it aerobic work—workouts that are completely fueled by the aerobic metabolism.

I live in Colorado, and at every point in the year, hiking is an option (although you might need snow shoes in certain places in the winter); I encourage runners to take advantage of the trails. Walking up and down trails strengthens the muscles and tendons in the ankle, knee and hip joints, and can help improve “joint integrity,” which is beneficial for all runners.

If you live in the flatlands, try a brisk walk, swim laps, or try aqua jogging. The key here is to do it gently—the goal is to get a small aerobic stimulus that doesn’t put much stress on the ankles, knees and hips.

Options abound. Nordic skiing is easy on the joints and a great way to build aerobic fitness. Bikes and elliptical machines are available at most gyms, and are good options as well. Remember, when you first get back into the aerobic work, keep things gentle. You aren’t trying to gain fitness for your run training, but rather getting in a few weeks of aerobic stimuli before you resume running.

Make General Strength and Mobility Gains
There’s no better time to make gains in General Strength and Mobility (GSM) than during the offseason break. I prioritize this work over aerobic cross-training during the offseason. I would rather see a runner complete 30 to 40 minutes of GSM—this could include some Active Isolated Flexibility work, also known as “rope stretching”—for a few weeks, then start running, than see someone in the pool every day, do no GSM, and then jump into their run training.

The bottom line is that all runners—from the most elite athletes in the world to people just off the couch and training for a 5K—can get stronger and use GSM to prevent injuries. I’m a big believer in runners doing non-running work because it allows them to run more miles more intense workouts. GSM work greatly decreases the frequency of injuries for those runners who do it daily.

Can you run injury-free and not do GSM? Sure, but why risk it? Said another way, think of GSM work as an insurance policy against injury.

The problem with GSM work: Most people find it less enjoyable than running. You’re not moving from point A to point B, but rather doing work at the gym or at home before and after your run. I get that; I really do. But trust me on this—if you do GSM religiously for two or three weeks, you’re going to feel different in your hips, and your posture will improve. You’ll feel stronger and more powerful when you walk. Then, when you resume your run training, you’ll be ready to handle all of the running that you want to do safely.

Make Sure You’re Bored Before You Resume Running
There’s an interesting phenomenon that occurs among the best runners in the world. They don’t exactly know when they’re ready to come back from their offseason break, so they simply wait until they’re bored. Their breaks could be as short as 10 days, or as long as a month. For most elite athletes, the offseason break consists of one week of nothing, one to two weeks of cross-training and some light GSM (since they will usually complete a great deal of ancillary work once their training resumes), and then it’s time to get back to running.

My experience reveals that recreational athletes wait until they’re bored for an hour, and then decide to go for an hour-long run. Better to be bored for several days, then start with an easy 30-minute jog. Even then you might say, “I still want some more time off.” Remember, the body needs to rest and recover. If you don’t give your body a break now, you run the risk of becoming overly fatigued during your serious training, or getting injured because your bones, tendons, ligaments and muscles haven’t recovered from the last race—especially if that last race was a marathon.

So be smart about your offseason break. Make sure to start a daily GSM routine, and then wait until you’re really bored before you resume serious training.

Q&A: Easy Run and Pace

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These are a couple of questions from a Q&A I hosted some time ago. As they are questions that I know many others would benefit from hearing the answer to, I felt sharing them would be beneficial.

Hi Coach Jay,

I have a hard time telling how easy my easy run should actually be. If I run 7:30 miles for an 8k (sorry I don’t have a better gauge than this), would an easy run be 8:30 or 9:00 minute miles?

Thanks so much for your help,
Paulette

Great question Paulette, and no doubt many other readers have wondered the same thing. To answer your question, I would like to share a story about how the term “easy” fits into elite athlete’s training.

I work with an athlete who has a 5,000m PR of 15:15…which is especially impressive considering that she is hoping to run faster this spring. She’s recovering from an injury and has read the term “easy” on her training documents five to six days a week for the past two months. For an elite athlete, seeing that term—especially in the month of January, when she typically is running “hard” or “steady” 4 times a week—is somewhat disconcerting. How can I make sure that she will truly run easy so that her injury can fully heals? I simply ask her the same thing my college coach asked my teammates and I, “Can you talk in full paragraphs when you’re running easy?” If the answer is no, then it’s not easy; if the answer is yes then you are running easy.

The great thing about this definition of easy running is that it allows for the pace of your easy days to speed up when you gain fitness. That’s probably the biggest reason I can get an elite athlete to buy into this. They inevitably check their watches, even on the easy days, and after 2-3 weeks of this approach, especially when coming off an injury or resuming training after a break, the pace for their easy day is 5-10 seconds a mile faster than before.

Back to your specific question. My advice? Just run with a partner and carry on a conversation, then end the run with a timed mile, still at the conversational pace, to see where you are at. Also, be willing to run this pace several times a week, or be willing to run a progression run where you start at this pace, then accelerate throughout the run. But regardless of your 5k PR, the simple fact is that you should be able to converse freely when you’re running easy.

Thanks!

 

Coach Jay,

Runner’s World praises the glories of the Pacing Run and its effect on raising the lactic acid threshold. However, I’m not really clear about how to do this.

 I’m a runner that only rarely runs for an hour at a time. From what I understand, the Pacing Run is supposed to be run at a pace I would feel comfortable running for an hour. How can running at a pace that I would be comfortable at for an hour (in my case around 9 minutes/mile) for 15-20 minutes help to enhance any kind of endurance? Usually I have an average pace of about 8:20/per mile, so a pace of 9:00/per mile really isn’t “comfortably hard.” However, I couldn’t keep a pace of 7:45 for an hour and I’m having trouble keeping it for the recommended twenty minutes. What am I not understanding? How can I increase my lactic acid threshold? What does running a Pacing Run really mean for me? Is it the 15-20 minute at 7:45 pace, or 20 minute at a pace that is slower than what I usually run when I run an easy five miles?

Thanks for the help,
Aaron

Aaron-

I’m going to answer your question, yet I’m not going to try to figure out what Runner’s World means by Pacing Runs for the simple reason that we can all “feel” our lactate threshold if we just take the time to learn.

First point, which you are the expert on, is the pace you the feel comfortable at for an hour of running. In relation to the question above on running easy, if you’re certain that you’re running easy when you run 9:00 pace for an hour then 20 minutes at 7:45 pace is probably realistic. However, my guess is that your true easy pace—a pace you could comfortably run for 60 minutes—is closer to 10:00. I could be wrong, yet it really doesn’t matter if you’ll follow the plan below, which will get you within 10 seconds a mile of what your true threshold pace is. 

I don’t have space here to go into threshold running in detail, but quickly, threshold running is the best long term tool a runner has to improve their aerobic metabolism and improve their PRs year after year.

Okay, so what do you need to do? Simple, run a 5k race and run even splits or slightly negative splits (i.e. run the last mile slightly faster than the first two). If you go out too hard and your first mile is your fastest mile of the 5k then the data from this experiment—your race time—is basically worthless. But once you run a 5k race with even splits or slightly negative splits then you have a baseline. Your lactate threshold is going to be slower than your 5k race pace…but the tricky question is how much slower? To find out, you could spend $150-$300 to get tested on a treadmill, with cool gas analyzers and uncool finger or ear lobe pricks to draw blood to test your lactate levels, yet my $0 version will get you close and the only cost is being patient enough to give this 4-6 weeks. 

Alright, so let’s say you run 25:00 for your 5k, which would be 8:00 per 1,600m. Roughly a week after the race, once your feeling well, you would simply run a 5k time trial on a 400m track, which will be 12.5 laps, and run 1:30 slower per 1,600m, or 9:30 pace (2:22-2:23 per lap). This pace is slower than your lactate threshold, yet it’s likely not “easy.” Simply repeat this workout every week and speed up 5-10 second a mile until you get to a point where you’re really working to run the pace, yet you’re also running controlled. The key is to be mindful of your breathing: are you breathing as hard as you can or are you breathing heavily, but not uncontrollably? Dr. David Martin has a fantastic graph in his book “Better Training for Distance Runners” (with Peter Coe) where he shows how the breathing pattern for an athlete changes at lactate threshold pace; the problem is that it takes most athletes a couple of years of training to learn this sensation – you have to feel it and it takes a lot of trial and error (with most of the errors occurring on the side of running too hard, running past your lactate threshold). However, if you can stand doing a weekly 5k time trial you will eventually find a pace that is slightly easier than your 5k race pace, yet much more challenging than your normal easy day pace.

I hope this is helpful Aaron and feel free to write in again as this issue of threshold training is difficult to explain, but you only need to feel a bona fide threshold run once to properly run that pace for the rest of your training days.

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