Planning recovery weeks

Mike,

I graduated to Masters Athlete two years ago and have been looking at information on how to age grace as an athlete but all that I have personally experienced as an aging athlete is that the body is less forgiving as you age.  When I was in my early 20's I might sign up for a race three weeks before the event with no real training then come up with some time of survival training plan for three weeks and go race and think nothing of it.  Now if I were to do that I would hurt for 2 weeks following the race. 

Two years ago I was not writing my own training plans.  The plan was personalized so rest weeks were not set cycles but used as needed. I had a goal every week to do all the prescribed workouts in the plan but then life would get in the way and I would have to miss or do a modified shortened version of 1-2 sessions a week.  I was always excited then rest weeks were scheduled, but they usually just consisted of dropping the 2nd workout on 2-3 days.  So my rest weeks I typically hit 100% of the workouts and I often completed more work in the Rest Week than I did on the full weeks and felt more tiered going out of a rest week than I did going into a rest week. 

So...one option for you since you have been consistent for the past few months would be to drop the doubles on Monday and Friday and drop everything else during the week by 10%.  Or...you could keep the doubles and just drop everything by 25-30%.  The main thing is to make sure that your rest weeks feel easy and that you finish the week feeling good.  Don't do what I did leaving your rest weeks dragging more than you did going into it. 

It also might be good during the rest week to take a full day off.   Pick something and see how it feels.  If you don't feel you cut back enough at the end of the week you can always adjust and cut back more on the next rest week.