Back to my schedule

[CBMom01]

Hi all. I’m getting back on the road after being off most of three weeks to give my back a rest and do some strength work (hips and core). As a woman in my 40s, bouncing back from minor injury and time off like that is tough. Real tough.

I love running communities. So, any good advice and encouragement would be much appreciated

 

[DopeyBadger]

Hi all. I’m getting back on the road after being off most of three weeks to give my back a rest and do some strength work (hips and core). As a woman in my 40s, bouncing back from minor injury and time off like that is tough. Real tough.

I love running communities. So, any good advice and encouragement would be much appreciated

My advice is to ease back into the training slowly. Three weeks off means three weeks return. So you shouldn't do any hard paced workouts for at least the next three weeks. And the mileage during those three weeks shouldn't be jumping into whatever plan you were using where you would have been 3 weeks ahead (like if you stopped running at Week 12 of your plan, you shouldn't plan on restarting at Week 15 this week). Instead do something like 60% of your recent peak (like if 20 miles in a week was recent peak, then do no more than 12 total miles) in the first week and then maybe 70-75% peak for the two weeks after that. Again, all at paces far far far slower than your estimated Marathon Tempo pace.

When you return to running this week, you're going to feel like you lost all your fitness. You didn't. According to Jack Daniels calculation, you can estimate you lost about 5% of your fitness level during these three weeks (with a 20% loss being a complete detraining). It just takes time for your body to reacclimatize to the training. So be patient and don't force it. That will pay off in the long term.

 

[CBMom01]

My advice is to ease back into the training slowly. Three weeks off means three weeks return. So you shouldn't do any hard paced workouts for at least the next three weeks. And the mileage during those three weeks shouldn't be jumping into whatever plan you were using where you would have been 3 weeks ahead (like if you stopped running at Week 12 of your plan, you shouldn't plan on restarting at Week 15 this week). Instead do something like 60% of your recent peak (like if 20 miles in a week was recent peak, then do no more than 12 total miles) in the first week and then maybe 70-75% peak for the two weeks after that. Again, all at paces far far far slower than your estimated Marathon Tempo pace.

When you return to running this week, you're going to feel like you lost all your fitness. You didn't. According to Jack Daniels calculation, you can estimate you lost about 5% of your fitness level during these three weeks (with a 20% loss being a complete detraining). It just takes time for your body to reacclimatize to the training. So be patient and don't force it. That will pay off in the long term.

Thank you! That fact about fitness lost was really helpful. I got back from my run (where I really, really reaaaaally did not push myself) discouraged about how long it's going to take to get back to where I was. Your post made me feel better. I have to say even as hard as it was, the tiny high I feel for having run outweighs my disappointment.

 

[HangWithMerida]

I can vouch for the return to fitness! I took June off running and coming back in July I felt like I had forgotten how to run. I felt slow and my gait felt weird. But even after a month off, things fell into place after about 3 weeks.

 

[Marebear_runs]

I was off running for over a month thanks to a twisted ankle in August. I did a lot of walking and gradually increasing running intervals to ramp back up slowly. I personally don’t enjoy the stop and start of interval running, but it really helped me ease back into running while still getting some miles in. It took me about a month for things to be back to normal completely, but every week was an improvement. It will get easier!