Offseason Training Update

The good thing about the offseason is that it’s a little looser and less regulated than my in-season triathlon training schedule tends to be.  Without any races on the schedule, I’ve got time to work on pretty much whatever I want, and I usually use that time to either rest up after a long season of racing or to focus on one discipline of tri, pretty much to the exclusion or near-exclusion of the others.  The downside of that, however, is that there’s less rigor in my training plan design.  As I’ve written here before, I usually work on a four-week schedule, going hard for three weeks and then cutting back in the fourth week, my so-called “Rest Week”.  However, during the offseason I’m much more inclined to just do whatever feels right on any given day, up to and including skipping workouts when I just don’t feel like working out.  This offseason, however, I’ve been feeling pretty good and pushing pretty hard, both because I’d gained weight during my involuntary layoff and because, bottom line, it’s still summer.  I’m into offseason training early this year exactly because I had to take a five-week break right in the middle of the year’s racing season.  That leaves me with plenty of daylight and good weather for training.

All of which is a long way of saying that I’m getting tired. 

That's me on my way into the finish of the
Milford, CT, Y-Tri.

It’s a problem I’ve never had before in the offseason.  But having jettisoned my regular four-week routine, it makes perfect sense.  I’m still working hard, I’m just not working with much of a plan.  So I’ve not built in any rest, and the result is predictable.

The solution, of course, is to develop a plan.  Basically, I just need to find a way to add some rest and some rest days into my basic offseason concept.  Unfortunately, the offseason concept is to ride as much as possible, add in running intervals, and do plenty of weights.  That’s a Hell of an ambitious program, and it doesn’t leave a lot of time for rest days.

* * *

I’m pretty much off my diet.  I got down to a low of 192 lbs, but having now been back in the gym for four full weeks now, I’m not losing weight any more.  I’m adding muscle mass.  I look trimmer, and my body fat percentage is still going down (I think), and that’s all good, but I happen to know that my cycling and running form is eventually going to suffer, at least marginally, especially when I’m climbing.  For the time being, that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make.  That said, this spring is gonna be a bitch.  Getting to a leaner figure without sacrificing more strength than necessary is not easy.  On the other hand, building muscle mass now has the virtue of strengthening joints and ligaments, and that kind of thing pays HUGE dividends when the heavy demands of spring base training roll around.  Plus, I feel like I can climb with better pop right now than I could earlier in the season, and that’s awesome.  It’s not so good for sustained efforts, but I can explode out of the saddle right now like nobody’s business on a short, sharp climb.

While we’re talking about the diet thing, it’s also worth noting that my constant calorie counting was driving my wife Sally crazy.  On top of that, I started getting hunger headaches pretty consistently last weekend, so that, bottom line, it just wasn’t working for me any more.  I mean, I’m still trying hard to watch what I eat (and how much beer I drink, especially on the weekends), but I’ve had to reconsider the hard line approach I was using via Lose It!.  Instead, I’m trying to go more by feel and appetite.  It’s a more intuitive approach, obviously, but I think it can work, basically in the same way that going by feel also works in lieu of using a heart rate monitor.