By Peter Najem
When there is space, there is room for doubt. I am a big believer in keeping that space at a minimum. You often hear, “No gaps!” or “Run together!” at track and cross country meets. There is a reason for this, it is easier to run with others. It doesn’t matter if it’s a competitor or teammate. You will run faster if there is someone beside you. This is also true for the time between seasons.
For the majority of athletes, the indoor track season has come to an end and now there is time to relax. Wrong…well sort of. The outdoor season doesn’t start till late March. That is a month and a half from the end of the State Meets. That is a solid month of training to build upon the success you had from indoor. It is a chance to make gains while others are relaxing. If you are not consistent in your training over the next month, you will find yourself behind where you should be and in the battlenotes this spring.
New Hampshire athletes have been mixing it up with New England’s best recently and experiencing success. We’ve had high placers and champions at the New England meets and athletes who travel to regional meets to run fast times. The top athletes in the state know that the space between matters. The month and a half you have till outdoor begins is important that you do something consistently with your training.
Taking time off is important and you need some time to rest. Too much rest however will devastate the adaptations you have worked so hard for this winter. Let’s say you take a month off before you start training again. After a week off your body starts to make changes. You start losing your blood volume, your body has no use for it anymore, it is the first thing to go. It takes four to eight weeks to get it back. After two weeks off your body starts to close off capillaries.
Capillary density increases with training. The less capillaries you have, the less efficient your body is. This also requires a month or so to generate more capillaries. Those capillaries work both ways. Just like they bring blood to muscles, they remove the lactate. We all know how important your lactate threshold is. Your all-important VO2 max will decrease up to 10% in the first 2 weeks as well.
Luckily, all these things can be avoided with consistent training between seasons, no workouts are needed. Talk with your coach. Come up with some goals; short term and long term. Make a plan on how to accomplish your goals and keep yourself accountable. There is no use in losing a season’s worth of hard work in two weeks. Take your rest week and get back out there.
