<p>Today’s topic is about <strong>returning to running after a period of rest.</strong></p><p>It came up in conversation on Twitter and this individual had a cold and has taken some time off and my suggestion to him is when returning to running <strong>look at the two to four weeks before you are forced to rest,</strong> be it vacation, illness, laziness…. look at the four week period where you were training. Take the average from that and sort of meet it in the middle between what you have been doing and what you were doing.</p><p>Find the middle ground. Let’s say you got you got a cold, you were not running at all for two weeks. You take the average between zero and let’s say you were doing 20 miles a week on average before getting ill, maybe start back with just a ten-mile week. All running should be easy and after a week you can probably be back to where you are at a pre-break.</p><p>If you’re following a specific training schedule and you are forced to take a week or two off it’s usually best to continue on the training schedule as written because you probably have a goal race that the training is leading up to. However, it’s still important to not jump right back into the schedule with full volume & full workouts so in that case it might be wise to transition. Let’s say there’s a midweek tempo run, it might be wise to take that tempo run and shorten it a little bit if there’s a long run (let’s say it’s 15 miles) and you haven’t ran in two weeks and last long run you did was 12 or 10 maybe meet in the middle somewhere with that long run. After that you should be pretty good to go to continue on the schedule as written!</p>
Here is some great advice on how to return to running after a break! →
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