what accomplishes a bigger OS: rest up, or minimum downtime?
Set aside the mental rejuvinating aspect for a minute on this one.
Just curious about what people think leads to a bigger, better OS: have multi-year EN members found that taking a real break after a season, (and gradualy building up over the OS to a final number), or taking a minimal break, and starting OS from a pretty high level of fitness (but experiencing small sticky gains), is preferable?
Gotta admit ... i've done the latter for the last 3-4 years, and this year, i'm experiencing the first real rebuild after the first real post-season break. Still on the fence as to which is better as it applies to the end of the OS (and eventual race outcomes, I suppose).
Thoughts?
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@ Dave - I'm in your boat - I won't know the answer for another 6.5 months, but it sure has felt frustrating having to climb back so far after taking 3 months off. My long-range plan for the next two years is to keep rolling my fitness forward the next two fall/winters as I aim towards aging up in 2014.
A word of caution - I worry about the too much too soon issue of ramping up run volume too early or too fast, and precipitating an injury. Likewise, I worry about not getting enough bike volume, so I have structured about 4-5 weeks of big bike&tri weeks in the final 15 weeks before my IM.
And don't get me started about swimming.
That said, I also don't think that a zero down time, keep rolling the fitness process is healthy, as it will likely lead to burnout or stagnation at some point.
I'm starting to believe that, at least for me, the key will be taking September - November/December, and keeping the focus on unstructured training, but keeping up 1x/week work, even if somewhat unstructured, in order to start the OS at a higher level of preparedness.