Winter.

Now coming up on the end of my third year of running, I've not yet resolved the question of how to best use the winter months.

The cold weather puts me off, I'll admit. For that reason I've not had great ambitions for maintaining my running schedule during these months, and found it easy to allow other activities to distract me. This past season, for instance, I used much of my off-work time in non-profit work. Pushing too hard in that direction, I compromised my immune system pretty badly and wound up with an encounter with a mean-spirited food poison of some kind. Running was nowhere to be found in my schedule for several months.

In early May my running conditioning was essentially at ground zero. I'd come full circle from where I'd been two years earlier.

Not wanting to lose the progress I've made this season, I'm wondering about exactly how to manage my routine in the next few months. I put the question to Coach, and here are the comments I got back:

It's just another phase.

You have your daily rest, 8-9 hrs of sleep;
your weekly rest, a day or two off;
your monthly rest, one easy week every four;
and your yearly rest, an easy two weeks to a month of lots of rest, little or no running, and incorporating some other activities.

Rejuvenate so you stay excited about running.

Then you plan your events for next year, and build your training peaks around those.

So I guess I maintain the routine I've been on, going out three to four times a week including one long run, and during the coldest, darkest time of the season I take some time off.

Home with my Red Zinger and a good Robert B Parker story?

I can live with that.

For me it also means looking for a some fun events, and I've got my eye on a couple of them already.