Some Thoughts on the Off-season

By Mike:

With the marathon over and no plans for another race for the rest of the year, I've been getting a ton of questions about what I've been up to for the last few weeks. I've been taking it pretty easy and many folks have been surprised by that. Easy's a relative term however so to give you an idea about just how easy is easy I did a Turkey Trot 5K at a pace slower than my recent marathon.

The off-season (for me at least) is a time to recharge and to explore other things I like doing such as strength and conditioning work in the gym or snowboarding or just plain downtime. To make sure I don't lose too much fitness, I do some maintenance work such as easy runs or trainer rides with a good DVD or TV show. I know some people will preach that there is no off-season but if you're like me you may want to allocate time for other non running/cycling/triathlon things as well and this is a perfect time to do it... well at least for the folks on the northern hemisphere! Unless you're a professional though it's hard to imagine going through multiple back-to-back seasons without some sort of respite and even then most folks probably still need some sort of "vacation."

But anyway... there's no right or wrong answer... fundamentally I think it comes down to the priorities in life.