I have a question for anyone who does multiple races throughout the year.
I am currently doing the JEFF Galloway half plan and started a few weeks ago because I signed up for a local half Sept. 14.
What should my training look like between Sept- Jan? I don’t want to really drop back down to begin all over again. I am doing the half In Jan.
This is a great question. The goal of a training cycle is to prepare you for the "A" race at the end. It's also an added desire for most that you get better with consecutive training cycles. A common concern with an ending training cycle leading into the next one is a loss of fitness. But the research available shows that the recovery coming after a training cycle is important, and that your loss of fitness is little to nothing if you do it right. You also want to consider that you want the peak to occur in January and not Nov/Dec if you jump into training too quickly.
Here are the key considerations:
1) Possible loss of fitness. According to Jack Daniels research, the decay rate of VO2max fitness is 0.003% per day starting after 5 days. So let's say you could run a 30 min 5k. If you took off for 5 days, you'd still have the "VO2max fitness equivalent" of a 30 min 5k. A 6th day off would mean you could run a 30:05. So you lost about 5 seconds of fitness from taking 6 days completely off from running. So generally, my recommendation is to take off about 1 day for every 3k of "A" racing (or the end of a training cycle). This means after a HM (21k) you'd take off for 7 days (no running). This allows the body to recover and prepare for the next training cycle. Additionally, the loss of fitness is minimal as seen in the example above. Here's the Daniels graph for reference:
So of course, there is a difference between a "loss of fitness" and the "ability to race". While you might have minimally lost fitness, you will likely have lost your peak. So you may take 7 days off from running, but you might need about 7-14 days to get back to where you were physically. But since the gap in time is from Sept to Jan, that's no big deal at all. As you don't need to be ready to "A" race the next HM in October, but rather January. So don't worry about taking some time off after the training cycle. It's actually more beneficial to the overall journey to do so.
2) Avoiding stagnation and aiming the peak correctly towards January. The second key consideration is that it's important to allow the training load to drop. Doing so allows you to be in a stage of building key fitness late in the training cycle and not peaking too quickly. If you choose not to take time off and jump right back into training in September, then you'll want to be sure that you're prepared to take the training load higher in the second training cycle (Sept-Jan) than you did in the first. Otherwise, you'll find that towards the end of the second training cycle you may just be grinding yourself down (some people refer to this as a feeling of burnout).
I think this post I made earlier might be helpful as it discusses what happens when you stack training cycles when considering load and peaking:
Training Load Calculations (What happens when the next cycle starts?): Part 3
So my suggestion is to take some time off after the HM in Sept (you won't lose as much fitness as you think), and second to allow the training load to drop after the first training cycle. If you plan to go back into the exact same training plan, then you'll want to allow that drop so you don't peak too soon. If you plan to do a new training plan that has slightly more miles added to it, then you can reduce the amount you need to pull back because you intend to push the training cycle higher. Something like this:
This is my 2019 training cycle graph. The first section is training cycle #1. Then starting in mid-June, I'm taking time off to allow my body to recover. Then, I jump back into training for my January marathon. If I did the same training cycle, then you can see I'd hit the same max training load somewhere in October. Then October through January would be me just grinding the gears. But in training cycle #2, I'm attempting to take the overall training load slightly higher. Which means the peak is now aimed for January even with taking those 2-3 weeks off in June.
Hope that helps and let me know if anything needs an additional explanation.
. We have never had a problem.
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ives me a pre-race boost to get my picture made with them.
