Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Off Season

The off season can be a scary time for many type-A, go-getter tri-athletes. You just spent the better part of a year training really hard, doing your best to get fast, fast, fast and now you are supposed to just sit around and let all that hard work slip away?! Yup!

But here's the thing - it isn't really slipping away. Allowing your body to truly rest and recover for a day here or there mid-season is quite different than giving it a solid break in the off season. I'm not suggesting you should eat donuts daily and don 57 pounds this winter. But chances are you asked a lot of your body over the past months. Give it a break. Add some variety (gasp!) to your life. There are in fact quite a few other things to occupy your time other than swim-bike-run. And if you do this, when it comes time to mentally push your body through barriers next summer - it will be much easier to do so.

Here are a few of my favorite off-season activites:
  • Sleeping in - no alarm clocks!
  • Making my only workout of the day a walk to get coffee.
  • Re-watching holiday movies (A Christmas Story), funny movies (Beverly Hills Ninja), or just trying to catch up on all those movies I have not yet seen.
  • Hiking, snowboarding (I have trouble doing this where I currently live!), beach-sitting.
  • Attempting to cook new things. Attempt is the key word here.
  • Lazing around the house on the weekend doing nothing productive.
  • Surfing - I've actually yet to do this because every time it sounds like a good idea my warm bed is more appealing than the early morning chilly ocean water. But I'm working on it.
  • House projects, all those things I put off for the past 10 months.
  • Replacing my time-suck activities of surfing triathlon web stuff, with art & illustration sites.
  • Sitting on a park bench and just watching people.
 What's your favorite off-season activity?