Cottonwood Trail wrote:anyone else willing to share strategies for building back after a long break, as in several years?
It's now been seven years since I started back to running after my 25+ year hiatus (was a few months shy of 46 at the time). I didn't follow any kind of plan at all when I started; I just played it by ear. I first just tried to see if I could run around the block without stopping. At 200 lbs, it was a challenge, so I also started trying to lose some weight by proportion control. Once I could run the block, I tried to run a mile without stopping, I'd run the whole mile (so when I stopped, I stopped), but at first I would have to take breaks. I'd do this everyday until I could run the whole thing. Once I could do that, I moved to a goal to trying to run 3 miles without stopping (note: all this time, I didn't consider it "running" unless I was under a 10-minute pace...usually, it was under 9-minute) After my first 3-mile run with breaks, I was very sore, so I reduced to running only every other day. I think it took me about 3-1/2 weeks from the day I first started running to be able to run 3-miles straight at a sub-10 pace. Since I could run 5k without stopping, I figured it would be motivating to run a 5k race....there was a big one in a month (this would be 7 weeks in from the beginning), so I stayed in the 2-4 mile range running 3-4 times/week and worked on increasing my turnover once or twice a week (the 2-mile runs would be hard) in the process. When race-day came, I ran a 24:20 (still about 185 lbs), at which point I thought, I can do this. For the next 1/2-year, I varied my distances from 3 to 5...longest maybe in the 6.5 range, and stuck to running 4 or 5 times per week at most, somedays harder than others (I didn't start averaging over 20 mpw until about a year into it). My ultimate goal was now to break 20 minutes for 5k. In the spring, about 7 month's in, I ran a 5k race just under 21 minutes, but then the ugly truth that I was too focused on my pace and wasn't paying attention to the other stuff caught up with me. After the race, I went for a run when I was still quite sore, and ended up badly pulling a groin muscle, it took about 2-months to heal. When I went to PT for that injury, I added doing some ancillary strength exercises and started back slowly again, it took me another 2 months just to get back to 15 mpw. A few months later, I finally broke 20-minutes, one year and one month after I started.
That's how I got started, in fits and starts. Since then, I've tried to slowly move the goal post (although it's been moved backwards for the past year or so.) In the process, I've found that I can't do things the way I did in my younger days and I also definitely remain leery about tendinitis, which wiped me out back when I was 19. So getting back into training I've wanted to push myself, but also I've tried to look out for signs of injury (especially tendons and ligaments); that's not always gone so well. To this day, I find that when I slack off from doing the ancillary things, that's when I tend to hurt myself.
So if I had any advice to someone that's been out of running a while, these three things I would have done differently:
1) Don't overlook the value of strength and core exercises; start doing them now, before you end up hurting yourself. Jay Johnson's myrtl routine is a good one, IMO.
http://runningtimes.com/Article.aspx?ArticleID=16625The myrtl is in video #1, which is mostly all I do.
2) Don't concern yourself with pace for your easy runs.
3) Be willing to take a few days off and don't pressure yourself into running when you don't feel right. Injuring yourself will take away more time than allowing yourself the extra day or two to heal properly.
I know that was long-winded, but I hope it provides some useful perspective.
Good Luck!