I ended my running offseason today with a 10 mile run. After each training/racing cycle, I take 6-8 weeks “off” to allow my body/mind to recover. I don’t stop running, however I do cut down my weekly mileage to the 10-25 range. Most of the reduction comes out of my long runs. It’s been 2 months since I finished Oil Creek and my longest run has been 5 miles.
The run today wasn’t too bad. The weather was just about perfect (45-53 degrees) with no wind and sunshine. I had some new tunes to listen to and the time seemed to fly by. And it didn’t hurt that I was able to crank out a sub-10 minute pace without too much effort. Speaking of which, I had my heart rate alarm set on my watch to 155 bpm to make sure I didn’t run too hard. I used this as my racing limit last fall and I believe it worked well for me.
Normally I don’t start my spring training cycle until after the holidays, however I have a 50K scheduled for January 16th. Now there’s a chance I could roll out of bed and crank out a 50K without any training, but the likelihood of me enjoying such an endeavor is slim to none (and guess who just left town?). I’m already having second thoughts about the race because it’ll probably be Antarctic cold out by that point. I don’t want to be completely undertrained and spend even more time than necessary running it. I’m currently planning on doing 3 double digit runs before the race which means I’ll only be mostly undertrained at that point.
I hope your season – off, on, or holiday – is going great.