The Runner's Off-season: Taking a Break

by GRP runner Stephen Kerr

The author in warmer times.

How to have a successful off-season rest period

As your racing season concludes, it can be both exciting and nerve-wracking to transition into a rest period. Here are a few suggestions, along with a bit of analogy, to help you make that transition as smooth as possible. 

Review your past season 

After each day, there is a twilight period before nighttime brings rest. This is the nature of reflection after your race season. 

Be sure to set aside enough time to make a deep review of your season. Analyze your training log and look for trends, defining moments, race highlights, and moments to learn from. Many athletes benefit from creating a scrapbook-like summary of their season on social media; this may work well for you. On the other hand, you can reflect in your own personal journal or within your training log, or even review the season through conversations with friends or teammates. 

Whatever your chosen approach, be as thorough as possible. There are countless lessons to carry forward from our pasts, if we can find them. 

Let go of your sporting goals (temporarily) 

Just like falling asleep, the entrance into off-season requires a letting-go. Rest, like nighttime, is a time of allowing; it is achieved not through effort, but by giving in. 

Once you’re sure you’ve reflected thoroughly, it is time to truly take the plunge into off-season land. Athletes tend to be deeply goal-driven, so letting go of performance targets can be challenging. You may fear losing motivation, and you may be unsure of what your path will look like. 

Luckily, life goes on outside the sporting world. Now can be a great time to reinvest yourself in the other things you love that you may not otherwise get time for. Double down on your other big priorities, and enjoy the freed-up energy. The caveat here is: it may take more time before your energy levels rebound. The body and mind are bound to respond in unpredictable ways to this transition. 

Prepare for a bumpy ride 

Not all is quiet and calm in the night.

Hormone shifts, habit changes, the lifting of long-building fatigue, healing micro-injuries, and mental health fluctuations are but a few of the many possible effects from the dramatic reduction of workload from race season to offseason. It may be challenging to confront such changes during your off-time, but it is an important part of the process as you and your body rehabituate to the lower workload. 

Though you may not have to play an active role in these processes, you will almost certainly benefit from being more aware of their possibility. 

Trust your instincts 

“How do I know when I’m ready to start training again?” 

This can be a tricky question as you begin to contemplate your rebuilding phase, and the shape of your upcoming season. Most athletes have concrete dates to adhere to in terms of training, but it can be beneficial to allow as much flexibility as possible as you move through your recovery. You can check in regularly with yourself to test if it’s time to start ramping back up, but you may find you crave more rest time. In the same way that salt tastes good when your body needs it, recovery feels good when your body needs it. 

Demystify de-training fears 

It’s normal to be apprehensive of losing fitness during your rest period, but we know that rest is essential, so what can we do to get adequate rest without sacrificing too much of our hard earned fitness? One of the best tools is simply a rough guideline of inflection points for de-training in various parameters. There are a number of studies out there which point to the following principles: 

1. Muscle mass can be maintained for up to seven months with just a fraction (1/9th) of an athlete’s regular training load.

2. VO2 max drops approximately 7% after 21 days of rest. After 4 weeks, 4-14% of VO2 max may be lost. The higher one’s fitness, the steeper the loss. However, in all cases, it takes roughly half of the rest period’s duration to build back to the previous VO2 max level. 

The numbers churned out by studies will always fluctuate, but the underlying concept remains the same: fitness can be regained, often rather quickly, even after prolonged periods of rest. It is up to you to decide how much cross training (or even a reduction in volume but maintained intensity in primary sport) you would like to do, but take comfort in the fact that even at the more extreme end of the couch-potato-recovery approach, you can regain your prior level of fitness. 

Plan what’s next, and get motivated 

Twilight also occurs at dawn, before the sun breaches the horizon.

As your next season approaches, you may benefit from meditations on the following questions:

- When does my next season start? 
- What are my goals for the upcoming season and beyond?
- What is the “why” behind each of my goals?
- How can I kickstart the engine and motivate myself?

Be prepared to grapple with possible changes in goals and motivations. Change is natural, and motivation-shifts often can occur during the off-season. Allow these changes, as they are evidence of your maturation as an athlete and as a person. Be sure to embrace whatever tactics might be most effective at putting you in gear for the upcoming season. Sports mini-documentaries on YouTube? Scrolling through Strava? Daydreaming about massive feats of endurance, or formerly unapproached time-barriers? Whatever stokes the fire. 

In Summary 

I hope this framework provides some food for thought, no matter what part of the cycle you find yourself in. These lessons can be applied not only to off-season, but to daily or weekly rest times. The overarching message here is this: rest is a perfectly natural and necessary part of all cycles, sports-related or otherwise, and we can all benefit by embracing the journey.