For the "off season," I mean.
Long track skaters typically use the month of March, and perhaps part of April, as their "off" or "recovery" season, before starting up the training again with dryland and endurance. It's a time to let the body recover from the stress of 10+ months of training and an intense competition season; a time to sleep more and eat worse and stress less. It's a necessary part of the yearly skating cycle.
For me, it's a necessary evil.
For a recap of how I usually feel during the off season, check out my whining from March 2012. Typically in the off season I'm feeling fat, unmotivated, bored, and frustrated. I miss my skating routine, I miss exercise, I have lots of free time but no motivation to do anything with it, and I have no hesitation in whining about all of the above to anyone who will listen. In short, I'm just a joy to be around.
This year is different...and I'm hoping it doesn't come back to bite me in the butt later in the season.
My usual off season workouts are easy Dome or trail skates, maybe a little biking, and not much else. Coach TieGuy's instructions for March used to consist of "keep moving a couple days a week." Some years I would skate the Dome marathon in March, but that was typically one of the few "real" workouts during the off season. The only exception to this was 2008, when an Achilles injury prevented me from skating. Since I could do dryland (in backless shoes) without aggravating my Achilles, TieGuy had me do a couple dryland workouts a week that year. Looking at my handy "workouts per month since 2006" chart that I made back in January, I can see that my average number of "real" workouts in March since 2006 has been 5, with a high of 10 and a low of 0. March also typically includes about 5 "easy" workouts. Most years with a higher number of "real" workouts were Dome marathon years.
This year, though, things are different. The Dome is gone and the "Epic Winter of 2013-14," while technically over, in actuality still has Minnesota in its grip. It's 9 degrees as I type this, and there is still about 12 inches of snowpack in the back yard. Clearly there will be no inlining for a while. I have a nice spinning bike and a nice rower that I could use for easy recovery workouts...but who am I kidding, I hate spinning and rowing, so that isn't happening.
Instead, I'm doing CrossFit twice a week. Oh, yeah, and there was that 5K last weekend. Neither CrossFit nor a 5K race can be considered "recovery" workouts, so my workout count for March so far consists of 10 "real" workouts and 0 "recovery" workouts. The plus side of this has been that I'm really enjoying the off season. I've got enough exercise to keep me happy mentally, but with only 2-3 workouts (even though they're hard ones) a week, I have a lot more recovery time than usual, which is keeping my legs happy. I'm heading into the final week of my CrossFit gym's nutrition/fitness challenge, which has kept me from the usual "off season sugar binge." In short, March has been a lot of fun.
Hopefully not too much fun. Recovery time is important for anyone, but especially for those of us who now qualify for an AARP card. As I said to another older athlete at CrossFit yesterday, when you're over 50 the line between "training" and "overtraining;" between "warmed up" and "tired out;" between "intense" and "too hard," becomes razor thin. I'm hoping my "fun March" doesn't put me over that line for the start of the 2014-15 season.
In the meantime, though, I'll just continue to enjoy one of the most pleasant "off seasons" I've had in a long time.
No comments:
Post a Comment