Training with 8-months

Alright, it's mid-November, you've joined the 2020 Team Run 2 Empower and committed to running next year's Vermont 100!  Awesome.  Holy crap...now you have to run 100k or 100 miles in 8 months!  Best we not think about that too much...

The reality is - there are a few things you can be doing now to start thinking ahead, but most important is to not do too much.  Your first instinct might be to immediately start training, but it's much more important to recover from your 2019 adventures and to lay the foundation for next year's success.
And since I love me a good list, here's a few suggestions on where you should focus your efforts between now and January 1st:

1. Recover from 2019.  While it's counterintuitive, sometimes the best thing you can do is give yourself some down time.  We ask a lot of our bodies, month after month, and it needs time to recharge.  In November or December, I typically take at least 1 week with no training at all, and about a month with little structured training which results in running about half my typical volume.

2. Focus on other passions & sports.  Since there's little need to push the running volume, November and December provide the perfect time to opt for other sports or enjoy other hobbies.  Maybe that means taking the time to sit at home a knit a hat or do a puzzle rather than do a long run.  Perhaps that means jumping into a cyclocross race, or heading to the gym for some rock climbing.  Bonus points for folks who use this time to do some yoga!

3. Work on strength.  I find that winter is the perfect time to build strength for next year's season.  It's something I can do inside (yay!), and it's something that I don't often find the time to do once my training volume increases in the spring.  You can start to build the foundation of a good strength program in November and December.

4. Find a challenge.  I like to find a challenge to motivate me during my downtime, such as the '5-minute plank challenge' or the '30-days to 30-pullups' challenge.  While these are athletically-based challenges (so they still have benefits to my future training), they are just a fun way to use my competitive drive without, say, jumping into a race.  (Who's with me...and willing to take on one of these with me over the next month?!?)

5. Plan the year ahead.  In case you can't tell, I'm someone who likes to organize and plan things.  Therefore, taking the time to lay out my training schedule or to scope out races is a great way to calm myself and feel productive (towards my running goals) without putting in the miles.  Might not work for everyone, but it's a trick that works for me.

It's not a long list of what you can do now...but that's part of the point here.  Now is a time to relax, take stock in what lays ahead and rejoice in what we accomplished in 2019...while perhaps enjoying other pleasures that we don't often have time to enjoy.