In transition.  The times and months that you are between big goals.  How do you spend your workout time? Do you continue to run big miles even though there isn’t another race on the horizon for months?  Or do you take a break from running to find a new passion to occupy your workout time?  Take me for example, I ran the St. George Marathon last October and have spent the last four months not really running.  And now that I can run a little but still not ready to commit to any big races, I wondered how I should spend my running time?  Is there such a thing as maintenance in a running program?  

So, I asked Coach Al, to drop me a note on maintenance (thank you, Coach Al!!) and his answer was surprising…and YET so wise.  

Maintenance fitness in running, or in any endeavor, is really a myth, don’t you think?   I mean, years ago when I made my living as a professional musician, I always looked practice time on some level as always essential, because I believed that I was either “moving forward or moving backward- I was never staying still in one place.”

Today my feeling as it relates to fitness, is pretty much the same.  I feel that while we THINK we can stay in one place, the reality is that we are always either getting better or getting “worse”.  I don’t think I mean worse in a literal sense- what I mean is, losing some ground in our fitness, whether it be flexibility, strength or cardio.

Looking at it from a different perspective, when I think of “maintaining” fitness, what I really think I mean is CHANGE.  That is, when we don’t have a specific race or event to train for, what we need to do is CHANGE something in our routine.  Change could mean jumping into another sport and beginning again, to learn some new skills that will help us grow.  It could mean drastically altering our “traditional” approach to the same sport, whatever that might be.  The key thing is, I think when we lack that one goal event, we need to change something to keep our body’s and our mind’s fresh and interested.

More specifically, to answer your question directly, any kind of maintenance mode in run training should include regular bouts of short, fast running, and it must include regular flexibility and mobility sessions,to alleviate any gradual increase in tightness or loss of mobility and elasticity, which may end up increasing risk of injury when more ‘serious’ training ensues.  As you can imagine, I also believe regular strength training (perhaps quite different than what you may have done in the past) is also essential!

Lastly, don’t be afraid to drop total run volumne during any maintenance period. In the end, you should always come out of this kind of a period more rested, refreshed and ready, physically and mentally, to begin your quest toward a new goal race or distance!  Very often, the best way to do this is to simply take more days off from pure running, and integrate other cross training activities into the mix.

So, what do you all think?  I’ve read this three times and I am in total agreement and am now understanding that you can’t have it all.  I might get really strong in one area but lose ground in the others.