I mentioned in my last post that I took a planned week off of running while traveling to Italy. Within a couple of hours after we got back home, I went for a run. It felt terrible. I blamed it on having been up for most of 48 hours (travel quirks-long story) and figured a little rest would get me back moving. However, when I woke up the next morning, I had come down with some kind of bug and thus began a second straight week off of running.
The rule of thumb I’ve followed is that if you’re taking time off from training, you can hold fitness for 7-10 days. Following my 14 days off, I didn’t feel nearly as fast as I had been when we left for our travels.
So that I didn’t push myself back into being sick, when I was ready to start running again, while I wanted to jump right back in with the training miles I’d been doing this spring, I began mildly with 1.75 miles: .25 mile warm-up, 1 mile run, .25 all-out, .25 cool-down. The next day I went up to 4 miles at a slow pace, then 6 the following day. Part of what motivated me to push a little was that I had a 5K race on July 4th, Let Freedom Run, and I wanted to be as prepared as possible.
It takes at least a few months to properly get ready for a race and with the extra week off, I knew I wouldn’t be as fast as I had been in the spring. To get\u00a0some sense of what might happen, I did a solo 2-mile time trial a week before the 4th. I planned to run the first mile in 6:30, then see what I had left. I ended up running the first one in 6:27 and the second in 6:10. I didn’t think this pointed to a sub-20 minute finish for the race, but I felt reasonably good about how I would run.
At the end of the 5K, my time reflected someone who had taken two weeks off and was slowly building back. Yet, I finished 5th overall and 1st in my age group. As a bit of consolation, even if I had been closer to the times I’d been posting this past spring (mid-19s), I probably wouldn’t have finished any higher as the top four were all in the mid-18s and faster.
The above workouts aren’t a prescription for coming back from a longer-than-planned rest. But, it showed me that starting slower and shorter can help ease me back in. Throwing in the time trial indicated what kind of speed shape I was in and kept my expectations within reason.
Speaking of races, the Dry Creek Striders posted solid results over the holiday weekend. Collin Knaub got the overall win at the Stars and Stripes 5K in Brighton and Joel Kaar ran Let Freedom Run with me and we went 1-2 in our age group. We’re hoping that our schedules will all align later this month so the entire team can do a race together.
On to more training, and hopefully getting back to faster times…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I mentioned in my last post that I took a planned week off of running while traveling to Italy. Within a couple of hours after we got back home, I went for a run. It felt terrible. I blamed it on having been up for most of 48 hours (travel quirks-long story) and figured a … <\/p>\n