A Day Off Now and Then

Is it time for a day off?

I did race yesterday but I don't like taking days off after races. For one thing, I think my body needs gentle running after a hard effort more than it needs complete rest. For another, my attitude after a race is usually much more relaxed, much less anxious than in the days leading up to the event. After all the worry that goes into preparations for a big race, it's nice to go out with no expectations and just enjoy running for its own sake.

It never ceases to amaze me how I turn into a complete hypochondriac in the days leading up to an important race. Yesterday was the New England Cross-Country Championships, and during an easy run on Saturday every minor ache and pain became magnified and I began to doubt whether I would even make it to the starting line. All those aches and pains are still with me Monday morning, but seem laughably inconsequential now that the race is over. Why would I need a day off now?

Still, I guess I support the idea of a day off now and then for the runners under my care -- I don't want to traumatize the poor dears by asking them to run every day without hope of a break -- but in my own training, I much prefer to engineer my rest days to involve at least a little running. This is kind of a survival strategy that has three parts: 1) Avoid stupid killer workouts that leave you unable to run the next day, 2) Plan an easy, refreshing run every week and stick to the plan, 3) Eliminate as much thinking/mental anxiety as possible from your daily plan. this last has been the key for me; once I figure out a level of training I can keep up indefinitely, sticking to it is a lot easier than playing around with days off. If I need to run a little easier some days, I'll do that, but not running at all? That introduces fear, uncertainty, and doubt into my training and I don't like it.

But what about burnout? What about staleness? What about injury prevention?

Well, yes, I agree if a day off helps dispel the clouds and helps avoid staleness, then it's a good idea to take a day off. I actually think it's fairly logical to take a day off from running once a week. Some college programs use pool running, rather than complete inactivity, as their day-off methodology. I've always found that running with someone a lot slower than you is a great way to take a day off both physically and mentally. Actually, if we're talking about mental breaks, the best day off in the world is sometimes doing something different -- running in a different place, with different people. For me personally, what I would really like is a day off from work so that I can do my run without the time pressure of squeezing it in to a too-busy day. That goes for injuries, too. For me, injuries are almost always a direct consequnce of running when I am either a) sleep-deprived, or b) improperly warmed up because I'm rushing to fit it into a day that is already too crowded.

I could use a day off from work, but work, too, is a routine and in general I hate to mess with routines. In my job, taking a day off doesn't change the amount of work to do, it just means that the day after the day off there is twice as much to do. Who needs that? I think the same principle might apply to training. In other words, it is a mistake to take a day off if you only turn around and try to "make up for it" the next day. When it is most effective, training is a gradual accommodation to a routine, and not a random series of heroically hard efforts interspersed with downtime.

Actaully, if rest is truly what I need, then I'd prefer to take complete rest for an extended period of time rather than a day off. Taking a season off makes more sense to me than taking a day.

As for advising others, it still strikes me as being one of the most difficult tasks of coaching to know when a day off is the right thing for an athlete. It's one of many areas where it might be dangerous to generalize from personal experience.