What exactly are the benefits of taking down weeks and days off during heavy base training?
How essential is it to take them? How much do I increase my chances of injury if I forgo using down weeks and continue pounding out the mileage?
What exactly are the benefits of taking down weeks and days off during heavy base training?
How essential is it to take them? How much do I increase my chances of injury if I forgo using down weeks and continue pounding out the mileage?
I'll give you my experience using them...
All throughout college, I was not really injury prone (1 serious injury, 2 minor ones in four years) but I had a huge issue of "burning out" towards the end of every season. I had never even heard of the idea of down weeks while in college. I thought that this was normal to feel dead at the end of a long season, hell, all my teammates felt the same way. After a summer of XC base, week after week of 8k/10k races, come Regionals every November, I was toast. I had zero motivation, and inevitably, ended up taking 3-4 weeks completely off after every season, forcing me to start from scratch every time I came back. I experienced the same thing with track season, I always peaked in the middle of the season, and could never hold it together all the way through. I was never an NCAA qualifier (Division I), so I never felt as if this was an issue as long as I ran well during the season. It was still frustrating though to run PR’s in the middle of the season, and never see those until next season.
After college, like a lot of kids, I decided to move up to the marathon. It is here where I learned of the “down” week. After running modest mileage in college (70-80 mpw) and feeling completely drained, I was wary about moving up to 100-110 mpw for the marathon, but gave it a shot anyway. I found that by taking a down week every 4th week (70-75% of mileage) including a day off, I was able to string together months of 100-110 mpw (including workouts) without feeling burned out. I also found it easier mentally to break up training cycles in terms of 3 week cycles. Even if I didn’t feel I truly needed one, I took the down week every 4th week, like clockwork. It kind of gave me something to look forward to.
In the two years since collegiate running ended for me, I have not had any injury problems. You will find some people on here saying: “If you need down weeks, you’re not training properly”. I found that it is much easier for me (physically and mentally) to take down weeks while training, it has made running far more enjoyable than in the past.
If you are injury prone, or have burnout problems…give the down weeks a shot. They worked for me.