Great Scott! It's November. Which means it's Off Season Time.

Now be so for real with me, how would you describe your off season in 3 words?

Because most of what I see on the internet is "clamshells, calf raises, and chaos"

yeah, that was definitely more than 3 words. I can't follow the rules to my own game.

But I had this really nitty-gritty conversation with a bunch of runners entering their off season about a year ago now and I'm just realizing another HUGE pattern that emerged:

The runners with the biggest, most specific goals (run a specific marathon, setting themselves up for a specific PR, running a new 100k race)

...had the most planned out, strategized off season plan.

It wasn't "color coded -highlighter" organized down to the last minute.

But it was "I'm working on X distance" or "I'm maintaining 35 mpw and working in Y" or "I'm focusing on strength for 8 weeks before I move onto..."

They clearly had a calendar, a pen, and a plan.

This was compared to maybe runners with more fluid goals of "I want to a run marathon next year, so I guess I'll aim for 20-30 mpw right now and try to focus on calf strength because my foot hurt this last training cycle"

Are we seeing the loosey-goosey difference?

This is NOT to shame the loosey-goosy runner. (that is me right now. I am in my goose era.)

But this is to point out what I've learned from YOU! From what I observed from other runners with big goals.

This is to give you a heads up: hey, if you've got big goals too...

You should probably start making a plan, and not a suggestion, on how to prepare and make those happen.

So what I did this week was I put together a list of the 7 very specific mistakes I see marathoners make on REPEAT during the off season.

Because I remember about 5 years ago trying to put together my own off season plan. The rabbit hole google sent me down wasted 45 minutes of my life and left me more frustrated than I care to admit.

So I took all that silliness, but it in one FAST, easy read checklist with my own personal solutions to counter them. This way you don't fall for the generic "advice" out there. You can check it out here:

See you over there!

Dare to Train Differently,

Marie Whitt, PT, DPT //@dr.whitt.fit

P.S. Just saying, your next PR is built during your off season. Go check out the most common mistakes I see marathoners making so you don't fall into those traps.

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