triathlonhandbook.com

Autumn is here, the leaves are falling from the trees, the nights are drawing in and it’s definitely getting colder. Although if you live in the UK, the weather has probably been better than we had all summer. However, the point is that your racing for the summer is probably over.

And as such, it’s time to take a well-earned end-of-season break. But what should that break actually look like?

When I first started racing in Britain, I took the same breaks that everyone else did - 4 to 6 weeks of doing virtually nothing, no triathlon training at all. And every summer I emerged in roughly the same shape as I had before.

I noticed that when I started training again, usually in early November, it was as if I had never done any triathlon training in my life - my heart rate was high, my perception of effort was up, I weighed in a good few pounds heavier than six weeks previous and it took me until December to start to feel like an athlete again.

I’ve since discovered that when you take more than 2 weeks off training (and even that’s too much if you do nothing at all), you lose many of your hard earned physiological gains. And they take a lot longer to regain than they do to lose!

So why should you take time off at all?

The reason for an end-of-season break is usually much more psychological than it is physical. Taking some time away from structured training allows you to “reset” your mindset from one of racing to a training one. Most athletes I work with need to send this message to their nervous system in a more effective way than simply deciding that “from today we’re in training mode.” Taking a break accomplishes this very nicely.

And what should that break look like?

The key to an effective end-of-season break is not to do nothing. What works best is to remove the structured element from your workouts. So I’d suggest leaving your heart rate monitor, power meter, accelerometer, gps device and every other performance measurement gizmo at home and simply do what you feel like doing. Run somewhere different, go mountainbiking if you usually train on the road, swim because you can or even better, do somethng that requires fitness, but that you wouldn’t ordinarily do - perhaps try a new sport?

By taking this approach, you can extend your break to 6 weeks if you wish without losing significant parts of your fitness and while still giving your brain that all-important holiday. After all, if you live in Northern Europe, you’re going to need your mental strength to get out the door through the long dark months of the winter…