Master's Athletes: The 'Off Season' and Planning for Spring
Hopefully, you have been training consistently during the winter, ideally since November or early December. For most Northeast Ohio athletes, racing ends sometime between late summer and mid-fall, and after a short break (or a much-needed vacation!), you probably switched to “off-season” training. Cycling workouts are mostly done inside, on stationary or smart trainers, throughout the colder months.
“Off season” means different things to different athletes, but for most multisport athletes and cyclists, it means “what we do all winter long to preserve fitness and to prepare for next year." Training doesn’t stop, especially for us Masters athletes who understand the challenges that come with aging. For us, winter training means that we’re back in the gym 2 or 3 times a week, building muscle to maintain our strength and power for next year. We’re also spending a lot of time preserving - and increasing - our aerobic base, which is the focus for most of us during the non-racing months. And Masters can’t slack off on HIIT (high-intensity training) throughout the winter since we need to keep our VO2 Max ‘ceiling’ as high as possible.
As spring approaches and events and races are added to our calendars, it’s time to focus training on specific adaptations. You should be fine in the endurance department if you worked all winter to build your aerobic engine. Now’s the time to pivot toward other adaptations: your climbing power, for example, or your run speed. Your workouts might include longer efforts at higher intensity, or bricks that approach race pace. Take advantage of good weather days to get outside and go for a long ride or rolling run. Sign up for early spring races. Treated as training races, these early season efforts give you a good sense of where your fitness is and what you need to focus on before your first ‘A’ priority event. Masters athletes should still continue strength training all year long, but you may have to adjust the weight load and number of reps, so you have energy for the hard work of race training efforts.
By this time of the year, we’re all looking forward to spring; thankfully, it is right around the corner! Now is the time to adapt your workouts to match the adaptations and intensity you need for your upcoming races. Consider hiring a coach if you need help designing a training plan to meet your race and event goals.
About the Author
Pam Semanik is one of the coaches at Stelleri Performance Training. She has been a competitive cyclist and multisport athlete since 2007, currently racing as a Category 3 road cyclist with a focus on Time Trials. She is a USA Cycling Level 3 coach and rides at the Cleveland Velodrome. Pam coaches cyclists, triathletes, duathletes, and ultrarunners. She is dedicated to helping other Masters women athletes improve.
