Here’s the text of a speech that I delivered to the Portland Triathlon Club on August 6th 2007.
I was asked to come to a Portland Triathlon Club meeting to talk about the problem of dealing with the “mid-season blues.” Just the fact that the membership is asking for this topic to be discussed confirms something that we see all the time: although triathlon is a sport with a lot of variety, the long season and almost constant workouts can lead to a sort of boredom or burn-out somewhere in the middle of the season.
Handling the mid-season blues is important for you as triathletes. Triathlon is exciting and fun – and racing triathlon is really fun. That’s why you do it after all! But there’s a downside to all of these short sprint races that are offered every weekend during the Summer – you’ve always got a choice of somewhere to race. And this creates a problem. You’re body gets into a bit of a grind, working out all week and then racing on the weekends – with all of the stresses that go with racing – packing up your stuff, getting up early, traveling to new places, and competing with people that want to kick your butt!
And even if you don’t race that frequently, a long season can feel LONG. If you started training in January or February and your last race is in September or October that could mean nine or ten months of training. That’s a lot for your body and mind to handle.
This may seem a little counter-intuitive. You might be thinking, “doesn’t all this working out make me in great shape” and that would mean that after months of working out you can handle it? Yes, that’s sort of true. But it’s the repetition over the course of the long season that burns you out eventually – both mentally and physically. I’ve read accounts of professional cyclists, who are in the best possible physical shape, whose performances suffer late in the season. This is simply due to the cumulative effects of the training, racing and stress over the course of the season that starts to show itself months into the year.
Dealing with the mid-season blues is really about planning your season – making sure that you divide the season into chunks of time in which you are in different phases of preparation or recovery. There should be times when you’re training, other times when you’re preparing to race, and other times when you’re recovering. You also need to build variety into what you do. And finally, you need goals that allow you to focus on something specific at certain points in time – such as a key race or a key area of your training.
Here are some things that will help you get over these humps:
Pick-out a couple of key races each year (2-3 max) and make sure that you ramp-up, train, taper for, and recover from each of them.
Triathletes often race nearly every weekend during the Summer and this contributes to burn-out, both of the mental and physical variety. An effective way to structure your season is to have just a few key events that really matter to you. Pick out one mid-season race and one late season race, then focus your preparation on those races. This will help you feel like your building up toward a “bigger” goal and then will give you a mental and physical release once you’ve made it there.
With marathon runners, I usually like to see them pick out just two races a year to keep them fresh. They may race other times throughout the year (especially at shorter distances), but these are the corner-stone races in which they take new pace goals and for which they really work hard preparing themselves to race.
Use other races during the season as workouts and time-trials, but place less emphasis on them to make sure that you don’t mentally burn you out when racing frequently. Triathlons are fun and we love to race. But consider these other races as “fun”. Also make sure to tell your friends which races you consider really important and which ones are for fun or training. This will help lift some of the pressure that you’ll put on yourself for these intervening races.
Have specific goals for your major races and understand that you won’t see improvement at every single race.
I talk to so many people that want to see an improvement every time that they race. This is a good path toward burn-out. Expecting improvement every week, or even every month, will drain you mentally and physically. You need to understand that improvement happens over longer periods of time, especially once you’ve reached a higher level of fitness. Make sure that you have reasonable goals about performance improvements over short periods of time.
Take a mid-season rest break of 1-2 weeks, especially after a major race.
Your body needs a break during a long season. Sometimes this will come naturally if you have prepared for, tapered and recovered from a major race. But if you don’t have these breaks built in to your season, you should take a one to two week break to recover and allow all the effects of the training to sink in. Take a vacation mid-season or just take some time off. It will do you good mentally to take a break.
Make sure to vary your training schedule throughout the season.
If you do the same things over and over all season long, you will get bored and the effectiveness of your training will suffer. Try to mix things up by doing things like juggling the days of the week around or spend periods of time focusing on one specific weakness in your abilities. Make sure that you vary (or periodize) you weights workouts and other “drills” as well.
It’s very easy to set yourself into a routine in January and just be on auto-pilot for nine months. This will is both a great way for you to get bored and a good way to find the effectiveness of your training suffering.
Take the off-season to do something else with your body
It is so important both mentally and physically to take a break when the season is over. If you run the seasons together and keep working out like a crazy monkey for years on end, you’re eventually going to run into walls.
Try to do something really different in the off-season for two to three months. Try cross-country skiing, rock climbing, or maybe take the time to focus on core exercises. Just get yourself out of your training habits for awhile to take a mental and physical break.
A mental exercise
Try to picture the season this way: I’ve had a nice break during the Winter. I’m going to spend my first three months preparing for a race. Then I’ll take two weeks off. Finally, I’ll spend the last part of the season preparing for my big race of the year – my big blow out when I leave it all on the table. Then I get to take a break again.
Ahh, doesn’t that sound nice. Doesn’t that sound better than doing the same things for nine months straight. Yes, the mind and body want some variety and they need some breaks.
Keep it fresh. Take breaks. That will help keep it fun.
Coach Joe
Running Wild with Coach Joe – a blog focused on marathon, triathlon and ultra-endurance racing, training and motivation. Bookmark us at http://coachjoeenglish.wordpress.com or use your favorite RSS feed reader to get the latest news and articles. Running Wild is also now available on Facebook and My Space.
