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How to Think About Short, “In Between” Seasons

Most runners intuitively understand how to train for race because they’ve followed a training plan before. But what if you don’t have that much time? What are you to do with a short training cycle?

Mental Strength

The most confusing time for runners is arguably the off-season. That time in between major seasons or training cycles when you’re not sure how to structure your running.

You might have 8 weeks in between a marathon and the next season. What do you do with those 8 weeks?

It’s a reasonable question! We runners understand how to follow a training plan, take a week off from running, or start tapering for a race. These are defined, specific time periods for endurance runners. And there’s a lot of guidance on how to approach these time periods.

But there’s very little for shorter blocks of just a few weeks or a month or two.

For example, let’s imagine that you’re running the Boston and New York City Marathons. After you finish Boston in April, you plan on starting your marathon training in July. You’re left with less than 10 weeks in between a marathon and training for the next race.

Of course, you need recovery after Boston. That cuts down the time you have available even more.

And it’s at this step that most runners falter.

But the latest episode of the Strength Running Podcast is here to help.

How to Plan Your Off-Season

Episode 172 of the podcast focuses on this very important question.

I’m using the example above and several more to give you concrete, specific examples of how to plan your training around different lengths of time.

But it’s not just about how much time that you have! It’s also important to consider your upcoming goals and what kind of races and training you just completed. After all, we don’t want to do the same thing over and over again.

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