With so many winter bugs circulating it feels like everyone has been affected by illness to some extent recently. And injuries? They happen too, however much we try to plan our training to reduce the risk. So what to do post injury or illness? To what extent should we adjust our activity levels or training plan when we return? Here are some guidelines to consider.
1-3 days off
You shouldn’t need to adjust your training plan provided you feel back to 100%.
If you’re feeling completely back to normal and just had a minor niggle or felt a little under the weather and missed one workout or two, you can resume your training cycle exactly where you were.
If your return-to-running day falls on a hard workout day, however, you might want to shift the workout a day or so and swap it with an easy one that day.
You have not lost any fitness but if you had an illness with a fever, vomiting, or respiratory symptoms listen to your body and expect yourself to feel somewhat weaker.
Wait at least 24 hours (ideally 48-72) after a fever to go for a run. Ensure you’ve rehydrated fully before you try running.
4-7 days off
You can resume your training plan where you left off, as with taking just a few days off.
Taking less than a week off from running will have no impact on your aerobic fitness or your muscular strength and endurance. In other words, you’re just as fit as you were before you stopped training, whether it’s cardio or strength training.
Follow the same advice regarding returning carefully after fevers, respiratory illnesses, and vomiting illnesses.
Make sure you give yourself enough time to recover.
8 - 10 days off
This is when it’s natural to start to worry that you’ve lost some fitness but studies show that you don’t lose any fitness until the time off lasts for 2 weeks or more. However if you had an illness or injury that had you resting for up to 10 days it’s likely you can expect that you might not be feeling your best the first run back so take at least your first 1-2 days back easier than you normally would.
Slow your pace or just run by effort and time rather than distance. Shorten the distance of your run. Don’t do a speed workout such as an interval workout or long run—just stick with an easy base run.
Stop and walk if you feel tired or notice symptoms like dizziness, breathlessness, or pain. Focus on recovery by hydrating and getting a high-protein snack or a nutritious meal.
Start small and try again the next day, adapting to how your body feels, you’ll return faster this way.
2 weeks off
Only now are you starting lose some amount of aerobic fitness, probably about 5-7 percent of your VO2 max after two weeks of inactivity.
Not a lot but it can affect how you feel when running. Your heart rate and respiration rate will be higher than previously. As a result, you’ll need to adjust your training load after two weeks off.
Take a full week to get back up to speed, depending on why you took time off from running, you may even need a full two weeks.
As a general rule of thumb, run about one to two minutes per mile (45-90 seconds per kilometer) slower than your usual pace.
Moreover, run about 50-75% of the distance or time you would have run before your time off, gradually increasing this percentage over the course of that first week back as tolerated. This will help prevent muscle soreness and get your legs accustomed to running again.
If you are following a training plan for a specific event then considerations for how to proceed will include how much time remains before the event, how important it is, what arrangements have already been made, costs incurred etc.
Options to consider are continuing to target the same event, but perhaps with amended pace goals, or choosing a reduced distance option if that is possibility or to change focus to a different event further away.
3-4 weeks off
You start to lose aerobic fitness fairly rapidly after two weeks and muscular strength after three weeks of inactivity. The muscles, tendons, ligaments, joints, and bones in your feet, legs, arms, and core will need to adjust back to the forces and stresses of running since some of the adaptations in these tissues are lost after 3-4 weeks of disuse.
When you’re thinking about how to adjust your training plan after time off due to injury or illness, it’s around this time—3-4 weeks off—that significant changes need to be made.
Expect it to take at least two weeks to get back up to your prior volume and intensity if you took three weeks off of exercise and three weeks to come back to full training after a month off.
Coming back too aggressively to your prior workout routine is likely to result in injury.
The guidance regarding adapting a training plan for a specific event becomes even more important with this duration of training being missed.
1-3 months off
Restart your structured training plan by rebuilding your base. Expect to start back slowly.
Take about three weeks for a month off and 4-5 weeks for 2 or 3 months off to regain your fitness and build back up to training.
Leave at least a one day gap between runs to start with. The first two weeks should be just base-building, aerobic runs. Run at least 1-2 minutes per mile slower than your previous pace, and keep the weekly volume to 50% or less of your lower weeks in your prior training schedule.
Follow the 10% rule (don’t increase your mileage by more than 10% weekly) if you’re tired or breathless on your runs. Otherwise, you can potentially scale up 15% or so.
In the third training week, you can work back into more intense runs such as fartleks, tempo runs, hills, and intervals, gradually returning to your prior paces and intensities as tolerated.
More than 3 months off
Restart your training as if you are a beginner, following “Couch to 5k” would be one structure to use
Run no more than every other day, keeping your mileage low and effort level easy. Run/walking is a great way to start. The initial day could be something like 1 minute walking, 1 minute running repeated 5 times. Slowly build up the run periods.
Above all, any time you’re trying to adjust your training plan after illness or injury, make sure you listen to your body and use your physical cues to gauge how much you can run and when you need to dial it back.
Err on the side of caution, be patient, and enjoy the journey.
For personalised advice or more information, please get in touch by calling Mary on 07909 551191, emailing on mary@marybrooking.co.uk or clicking on the link below.
Reference: Marathon Handbook Amber Sayer
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