I had the opporitunity this summer to race in the post season, and my track season was long and ended a week ago when I raced three consecutive days in a row. The club I'm about to join for XC told its athletes who also raced in the post season to take 2 weeks off. Now, I've never taken an extended break off running so I asked other members of the club what they were going to do. Some are not running at all, some are jogging.
For the past 7 days I've done nothing but take my dog for 30-60min walks per day and work on ITB exercises (it started bothering me 3 weeks ago). I'm feeling pretty tired but I suspect some diet related deficiency (seeing a dr tomorrow). I'm thinking of starting easy jogging and some lifting, because I feel like I'm getting out of shape and the XC season is short (a road race in September for training and three XC races in October). Plus, I had to take 6 days before the race weekend very easy (2 days completely off and four days of 20-30min of running) due to my ITB issues which didn't end up effecting my races.
Is this an advisable thing to do, or should I take more time off running considering that my season was extended and risk being slightly out of shape for XC (which is not as big of a deal as track around here)?