Off Season 2024

 It's been awhile since I've posted here, for just myself, but I thought I'd go ahead and get this down as it will help with my thought process as I move through this off season.  

But first lets look back on this season.  This was probably our most successful season.  The biggest takeaway was the half marathon PR of 1:59.04 in late September.  I'd like to say that I knocked off some stuff in regards to the 5K distance but it just didn't happen (only 1 5K race!).  I'm fairly certain that it would go down right now, without a lot of specific training, but we will leave it as it is.  I also set a new PR in the 8 mile Antelope Trail race distance.  Just by a few seconds but a PR is a PR and I'll take it. For whatever reason that course always gets me!

And now we begin the off season.  No races have been thought about or planned so I'm considering this the start of my off season and my big goal for this next year is to just get faster. And to do that I'm going to focus on improving my 5K time.  I hope (plan) to race a fair amount of 5K races next year and possibly finish the season off with a trail race half marathon.  

The thinking behind the focus on the 5K is to just get my power better.  A lot of what I'm planning is related to various posts that I've read about over the past 6 weeks from David Roche and his Leadville 100 win.  The bottom line is that to do better at every distance you need to improve your power, is what I've taken away.  So with that in mind here is kind of what I'm looking at with my training. 

I'm going to do 4 weeks block with that 4th week being a de-load and some sort of test at the end of it to see if we've made progress.  Maybe that's a bit much and we will test something every 8 weeks.  That might be better but I think a down week every 4th week will be good (maybe push this to 5 week blocks?).  It's worked well in the past and some training this summer really burned me out.  

Secondly I'll still be running 4 days a week (Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday).  Tuesday and Thursday during this off season will be dedicated to uphill incline walking and getting a good weight/abs/mobility routine going that I can do and not feel like is a major pain in the ass.  

Specifically with the running Monday and Wednesday will be easy days, low heart rate, finished by uphill strides for 20-25 seconds.  Work up to doing about 6 of these at the end of our run. This is a take away from David.  Lots of strides to increase that power.  Running uphill is supposed to decrease the chance of injury.  Wednesday will be a workout day.  For now that is going to look like 1 minute intervals with 1 minute break.  Working up to doing 15-20 minutes of these! I'll change this up every now and then but it will most likely be shorter, less than 3 minutes.  Again another David take away.  Saturday will of course be a long run, 90 minutes during this off season, and I'll add in some steady running which is slightly above zone 2 running.  Just little bits of it.  I'm not sure if I'll put it in the middle of the run or pack it all at the end.  I think putting it all at the end as a fast finish might be the best.  Get a lot of easy running and then finish off a bit faster and not make the run a faster run than what we need (aka: going out of zone 2)

As long as I'm making progress of some sort I'll continue to do this.  It's boring but it's repeatable I think!  Also hoping to drop a few pounds and get my blood pressure under control.  

My hope is that my times will come down in the 5K, more powerful, and I'll be able to turn this into a faster half marathon or more.  I think it's important to measure progress so I'll be doing that every 8 weeks I think.  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Easy running done!

 I've done the easy running before and it feels great for a few weeks but then there is no progress!  You have to have some sort of speed in there.  Just running slow and easy does not make you faster no matter what people say.  I do believe that 80%+ of your time/miles should be slow and easy but if you want to get faster, and who doesn't, you need to have that 20% where you are throwing in some extra stuff. So after 2 weeks of easy running, or doing nothing for the first week, I'm going to be starting a program tomorrow to maintain what I have.  I'll run that for about 10 weeks and see where were are at.   This last week was the first time I've ran 5 days in a week.  Everything went fine.  There were a couple of times where I wondered about getting up so early but I did manage to get it done.  My right calf, at times, when I run gives me a bit of issues but I can't put my finger on it. So for now I'm using the massage gun on it and hoping it will go away. 
Read more

Treadmill Season

 It's dark and cold outside. That's the reason why my running season has shifted to a treadmill season. And even that has had it's ups and downs...mostly downs.   I really don't mind running on the treadmill but for some reason this season it has been a lot harder to get into it.  I don't know what the issue is but I'm struggling.  I'm mainly down to 3 days a week of running...if I'm lucky!  Most of the time it's like 2 but I'm hopeful that I've found my motivation and I'll be back to at least 3 days with another 1 day dedicated to getting some strength work in.   There are 2 things that I hope will motivate me and keep me going thru these winter/colder/darker months.  That is spending a few weeks running at a lower heart rate and kind of ignoring power for the time being.  I think that may help me a lot.  Tomorrow that experiment begins.  I did that at the start of this year and I think aerobically I was in the best shape that I've e
Read more

Week 12 - Critical Power test in the books!

 Another critical power test is in the books!   Week 12, or every 4 weeks, is only 3 days of running vs the normal 4 that I run (or attempt to run!).  I think it's important to take a step back.  However at the end of these 4th weeks I do a critical power test.  The previous 2 CP tests that I've done I haven't been very nervous about but this one, for some reason, I was pretty nervous about.  I decided to do a 3 minutes - 12 minute CP test.  I had never done one of these before and maybe that's why my nerves were a bit high.   Yesterday (Saturday) I set out on my CP test.  It was earlier than I normally run on Saturday but I had other stuff that I needed to get done so I was up early and had fueled like I have been doing.  After 10 minutes of warming up I went into my 3 minute test.  My goal for each test, based on some reason, is to keep the first 75% of it at the modeled ability on Stryd and then after that I push...or attempt to.  The 3 minute test went well and at t
Read more