Welcome to a very special edition of Runner's High and welcome to Montreal, or should I say: Bienvenue à Montreal, et pour les gens qui habite ici, merci pour votre patience avec mon français.
I'm here on vacation or a short working vacation as at were.
As you can see, I'm still shooting video so I am here working. The question today is should you run on vacation? And that answer is going to be a lot of different things for a lot of different people.
For me, that means kind of because this is a working vacation, this is not the end of my season. It depends on what you are doing for your run where you are in your schedule. For me, we just started all of the speed work that I'm doing for the year. So I needed to do what we're considering maintenance week.
Where I'm running every other day, kind of middling runs, seven-ish miles for me and that means that I'm still getting some miles in. I'm still getting a little bit of touch base, but I am not doing my full schedule. So there's a few things that you want to consider if you're going to decide, should I or shouldn't I run while I'm on vacation?
Like I said in the intro. Welcome to Montreal, this is my particular working vacation, but we want to talk about you, things you want to consider if you're going to take a trip, should you continue running, should you do the normal things, should you do, like I mentioned in the intro, those maintenance miles, should you take time off? There's a lot of things to consider when you want to decide Should I run on a vacation.
Now I'm not talking about I'm taking a trip specifically to go run well, then obviously at that point, you're going to go run.
Also, just so you see, I'm now sitting. I was having a hard time walking, talking, using the camera, avoiding people. So we'll get some panoramic shots. Maybe I'll take some B-roll. You can see the various wonderful things about around Montreal. And if you want to come visit, please do. I'll make recommendations for my favorite poutine down in the comments below. You'll want to get that if you come to town.
So what do you want to consider if you're going to run on your vacation?
Well, if you're like me and my season, for all intents and purposes, is going to be spring track season, that's going to be kind of the height of what I want to be fast.
Right now, it's the middle of November, which means we're just starting speed. Well, just starting speed work. But we had this trip planned. That means I can't simply take time off and then have to build back because that takes a considerable amount of time. If that's you, then maintenance miles is going to be your friend because you don't want to take time off, lose fitness and then have to get back.
Also, if you think about something that I spoke about on the Smart Athlete Podcast or my guest, Mark Gallagher, who's a podiatrist in the UK, spoke about on the Smart Athlete Podcast, I'll link to that at the end of this video. He said if you take a considerable amount of time off, then you're more prone to injury if you come back and get back into your full schedule immediately.
And that's a problem, right? Especially for me, if I'm coming back and I want to get back into speed work, then I'm going to be especially prone to injury.
So we've been doing. Like I said, middling runs. These like six seven mile runs, not a whole lot of variation in distance is forty five minutes. So it's timed runs for me because you don't know exactly where you're going to go in the city. And then on top of that, we're doing long runs and we're doing mixed tempo.
When's a good time to not run on vacation?
Well, I used to do in one of the reasons I fell in love with the city. Why we're here for just a very short, casual vacation is at the end of my season, which would typically be August. There'd be, you know, USA Triathlon nationals in August, and then I would take three or four weeks off after that. That's the perfect time to take some time off after your A race, after you've done the big thing and you need time for rest.
It's the perfect time to recuperate and get ready to do, you know, base training again after you've taken that time off.
Now the other consideration is when do you want to take a vacation and do your entire normal schedule? And I would answer probably never, because trying to maintain your usual running schedule, especially if you're doing any kind of speed work is going to be difficult.
It's going to be very difficult because you're traveling, you're going to be tired from traveling. If you're with your family, you're going to be doing things with your family. It's going to be extra exhausting. There's an extra tax on your body when you are doing things out of the ordinary, right?
In my case, trying to speak French poorly, not understanding that's that's taxing on your brain. And of course, we do a lot of walking in this particular city that is more walking pedestrian friendly than where I live normally.
So I would argue, if you're going to take a vacation, you need to choose one of two things. Either you're taking that time off and you're going to simply say, Hey, this is a vacation and it is a vacation, or you're going to take maintenance miles. And that is, like I said, something where you're going to maybe run every other day.
It's kind of like a rest week in terms of mileage.
So say, like for me, I'm running 40 miles a week, my normal schedule thirty five to forty miles a week. And then right now we're doing like 20 miles on average. And you take that and then say, Hey, you know, I'm not going to do any more than that, but that's going to keep me in touch and keep me away from having injury when I come back to my full schedule.
The one last tip I want to give you is if you are going to run on vacation, like me with maintenance miles on this working vacation, take the opportunity to enjoy the things around you on vacation that you wouldn't normally be able to get at home. Like in my case here Parc La Fontaine; all the beautiful foliage in Montreal, the ducks here behind me, you know, take in this case coming to Montreal. Take a run up the mountain.
Where you're going to get the panoramic views at the top of the mountain of the city? Wherever you're going, find the landmarks, find the parks, find the things that are going to help you enjoy the place you are that you aren't normally and get your running at the same time.
So that's kind of my definitive on should you run on vacation? Do you have any questions for me leaving down the comments below, and I'll see you next time on the next episode of Runner's High.