A Season of Parts:
Taking a mid-season break

By Chris Harnish, M.S

  For many of us, June and July are often the culmination of months of hard work and hopefully the realization of many of our goals. As the racing season peaks during these months, most racers are eager to make the most of their hard-earned fitness, but few consider this time of year as good time to take a break. Whether you are riding a fitness high or struggling to hang with the bunch, a mid-season break could be the difference between a season of success and one that grinds into obscurity or disappointment.

  It is common for both beginning and seasoned riders to overlook a nice break during the season. While it may seem counterintuitive, the ideal time to break is after you peak, while you are still riding well, rather than when you are already on a downward slide. The typical rider will often try to milk everything they can out of their good form, often leaving them physically and/or psychologically drained and unable to achieve late season goals. However, goals are the key to planning an ideal break time, as is a detailed Periodization plan. Whether you have both, either, or neither the following article will help you establish what type of “break” works best for you. To understand why you should take a break, we first need to revisit some basic training tenets, like Periodization, and some principles of training.

The Science behind taking a “Break”

  The idea of down time during the season is rooted within the principles of Periodization. Continual long-term performance improvement only comes about when the athlete uses the appropriate training at the appropriate time with a progressive and varying training load – volume & intensity, and an optimal relationship between training and recovery. The longer the build-up period, the longer and more stable the peak. By repeatedly building-up AND recovering we can achieve a continual super compensation effect. However, months of physical preparation and competition, along with the psychological stress that comes with it, can leave even the most seasoned racer struggling to finish races. Constantly fighting against this tide can lead to some level of overtraining. Rather than fighting in vain, make a strategic withdrawal and then assess your season.

Step 1: Take stock of your current situation

  You cannot determine where you are going until you know where you are. To do this:

• Write down what you hoped to accomplish up until today – e.g., I wanted to win the Podunk Championships.
• Assess how successful you were in those endeavors AND why – e.g., you achieved it all, you achieved nothing, you achieved some goals and are happy/sad, you have no idea why you even bothered throwing your leg over the bike, etc…
• Assess how you feel physically and mentally now and over the past couple weeks – e.g., you feel super/terrible, you love the bike and cannot imagine doing anything else, you despise all things cycling, or something in between.
• Write down specific goals for the remaining season – e.g., I want to win the XYZ criterium, I want to finish top 3 at cyclocross nationals, I want to cut 30 seconds off my 10 mile TT time, etc…

Step 2: Determine if you can achieve those goals

  Obviously, if you are flying high with great achievements it is easy to take a little break and then build back up to great achievements. If, however, you are falling short to some degree, or simply trying to finish, then a more significant break may be needed. Figure 1 offers a simplistic graphic model to rate yourself. Depending on where you are on the spectrum, will determine what kind of break you need (i.e., easy week or more extensive rest), as well as whether you can make good on the rest of your goals or if you will need to scale back your objectives.

Figure 1. A simple paradigm for assessing your current physical and psychological state. Our best results usually come when we are physically fit/strong and highly motivated. In contrast, it is highly unlikely to achieve anything meaningful when both of low. However, this is a simplistic model (with numerous intricacies within each rating) and each athlete must assess why they rank where they do. In addition, some of the worst cases of overtraining occur with those who are struggling physically but continue to have high motivation; these athletes can find themselves on a long road to recovery.

Step 3: REST

  The above quote is ideal for this discussion, because rest is a relative term. Certainly, if you are severely over-trained, sick, or just plain sick of riding, doing nothing might be a good thing. For most of us, though, unstructured alternatives to riding are what we need, along with some fun and maybe even a little bad food. The idea is to forget the training plan and racing tactics and just enjoy yourself. Hiking, mountain biking, work around the house, whatever it takes to get your mind away from the sport, as well as some definite rest time, will leave you feeling “hungry” to return to training. Each athlete is different, so finding the ideal “break strategy” can take some time. Below are a few common practices:

• Plan for a SINGLE major peak for the middle or late season and spend most of the year building towards that goal. You then hold on to your form as long as possible or even until the end of the season and then take a month or two doing some other activity or perhaps nothing.
• Schedule a weeklong break after each major goal race, REGARDLESS of whether you were successful, or after each major race block. Year’s ago Velonews ran a piece on the current U.S. Pro Champion Chris Wherry. In it, Wherry talked about how he would take periodic weeklong hiking trips with friends. More recently, he mentioned that he spent a fair amount of time mountain biking during the season to break up the monotony of training and racing. These are both excellent ways to stay fresh and motivated throughout the season. However, this approach would probably work best if you have an extremely long racing season (like many pro’s) or a few peaks planned throughout the year.
• Schedule a long (2 – 4 week) transition period that separates your season into TWO parts. This approach is common among European Pro’s, like classics riders, but can work well for U.S. based riders too, particularly those who live out West or in the Southeast. A good example for this method is Danilo Diluca, who reported taking a good month off after the Giro, only riding the occasional post-Giro criterium.

  While the first approach can work – I can think of a few Masters riders who use it, I recommend and use the latter two, because riders simply respond better to the change in pace. As with anything else related to racing, planning your rest as well as your training give you a clear picture of the road ahead.

Step 4: Starting up again

• Depending on what type of break you took, remember to use a progressive build-up to form again. Rather than jumping right back into racing, take some time building up endurance and other critical areas. REMEMBER, the longer the build-up the longer and more stable the peak. Diluca again offers us a good model, starting an intensive six-week block of training before returning to racing without much expectation initially; a great plan in my opinion.

Troubleshooting

  What do you do if your season has gone awry? Despite all your hard work, what if you are in that select group who can barely finish? The short answer is that it depends. However, if you have trained well, raced plenty but still cannot get out of your own way, then the best thing to do is REST. Forget the bike and go to the beach, or to local coffee shop. The bottom line is to forget training because more training will not help and could make things markedly worse. Enjoy the time off, its summer after all! With any luck, you will start to come around in a week or two and you can start over; salvage what you can. No matter what, use the time to make yourself a better rider by planning for the late season and beyond. In my next article, I will discuss some real world strategies for preventing and overcoming OVERTRAINING.

Chris Harnish, M.S. is an Exercise Physiologist and Coach living, writing and training on Cape Cod. In addition to his coaching work with The Peaks Coaching Group, Harnish runs Tradewind Sports, which offers a variety of services including performance testing, training products and international racing opportunities. In 2004, Harnish ran New England’s top Junior Team, which included the top ranked New England Junior and qualified a rider for Junior Worlds. He is a Category 1 road cyclist competing across the U.S. and abroad.