Many bikepackers worry about taking an off-season or a real break after a tough year of adventure and racing. If you stop training for a few weeks, or even months, will you lose all your hard-earned fitness? The good news there is some research that showed otherwise and that you should probably take an off-season break to restore the body, both mentally and physically.

A new study published in 2024 followed a highly trained master’s athlete—someone in their early fifties—who stopped all structured training for 12 weeks – that’s 3 months. As you’d expect, his VO2max, a key measure of aerobic power, dropped by about 7%. When he started retraining, slowly ramping up the volume and intensity, his VO2max returned to previous levels and improved slightly. The researchers found that his muscles and cardiovascular system adapted well to the training “reset,” they bounced back well.

Strategic downtime, or real detraining, isn’t something to fear. Think of it as vital maintenance for your body and motivation. If you’ve banked months of steady training, an end-of-season break lets your system heal, adapt, and—if you build back in a progressive way—even come back stronger, mentally and physically. This is key to getting back to a full training scheduled for the bigger efforts needed for bikepacking races.

When you return, ease in gently, trust the process, and keep guilt at bay. Supercompensation—where your body rebounds beyond its old best—is possible even for master’s athletes where the saying ‘use it or lose it’ is commonly banded around.

Off‑season for bikepackers

Post-race phase

It can take anywhere between 2–12 weeks of reduced or unstructured training to reset after a hard year. If you do something like Tour Divide, it can take a while to process and recover from what you did and 6 months could be normal to drift away from structured training and making new race plans. My advice is to take off the time you need, don’t rush back and you’ll know when you’re ready to get back to the discipline of following a training plan. It was one of the key reasons I developed Race Plans for these big races on the bikepacking calendar. When your race is done so is your capacity to keep training with a coach or even to give energy to analysing how the race went. If it takes you 3 months to process the race, then that’s went we do a post-race debrief, even if you’ve stopped paying me as a coach. These things can’t be rushed or pushed. Just go with the flow and things will fall into place when you are ready.

If you want to do a bit of maintenance during your ‘off-season’, an optional 1 short intensity session every 7–10 days if feeling fresh, which some evidence suggests can help retain performance while volume stays low. Or just go out and do other things, like running, hiking or take up skipping – it’s short and sweet but gets the HR right up there is you’ve not done it before.

Rebuild phase

The general rule of thumb is that it takes you around half the number of week you took as an off-season to get back where you left off. If you took 4 weeks, then expect 2 weeks of rebuilding. If you took 3 months, then aim for 6 weeks of rebuilding. But as always, keep monitoring your response and adjust accordingly.

The rebuild phase is a great time to start core work and tissue care if you don’t normally do this and it’s a phase where pedalling efficiency and skills can be built into the plan.

Tips to stay guilt-free

• It’s a dip, not a disaster—VO2max and other fitness markers like durability may fall in the off‑season, it’s normal but you’ve seen it can rebound.
• Be sensible with your comeback—use patient progression to restore and build on the past season’s progress.
• Keep one toe in the water—occasional short HIT can keep you sharp but not prolonging your fatigue. I love riding the rollers in the off-season, it works on balance, pedalling skills and I get to chase my maximum cadence goal, it’s crept up over the years and I’m one revolution short of 170rpm, with a goal of hitting 180rpm by year end.
• Do the things you scarified during training in the last season – see friends, catch up at home, do other sports and sleep. You've earned it and the people around you have been their to support you, so you can give back a little too.

Mark a real off‑season in your calendar, you don’t need to say how long it is, then plan for a reasonable rebuild window (depending on how long your break was).

A smarter break today can mean a stronger next season.

Study citation to read:

“Effect of 12 weeks of detraining and retraining on the cardiorespiratory fitness in a competitive master athlete: a case study.
Authors: N. Zanou, V. Gremeaux, N. Place, R. Lepers.
Published in JCSM Communications, February 2024.
DOI: 10.36950/2024.2ciss084
URL: https://ciss-journal.org/article/view/10926”.ciss-journal

* Directly from the research paper:

• “After 12 weeks of detraining, VO₂max decreased by 9% during cycling (from 55.1 to 50.2 ml/min/kg) and 11% during running (from 52.7 to 46.7 ml/min/kg).”
• “Following 12 weeks of retraining, VO₂max returned to baseline values in both cycling and running, with running performance even exceeding initial measures.”
• “Lean body mass increased by 1.4 kg compared to detraining, and time to exhaustion showed a slight improvement after retraining.”