How many days can you take off before losing noticeable fitness?

I've been off for 4 months and recovery will be another 6 months. How much will I loose ? 😥

14 days

Science of Sport podcast had a spot on this topic a while back. I think they said true detraining doesn't start until after 3 weeks or so. The initial "loss of fitness" feeling folks get comes from disrupted neuromuscular connections. The good news is that once you're trained you'll gain whatever you lose back in half the time.

Yeah I agree with Guesstimate. As my own experience from doing a casual race for fun after a week off showed that my mile fitness was probably 10 seconds off my PR so the sharp race edge was off but all the fitness was still there and probably could've ran near PR just by jumping back into training for a week, whereas starting back up after my normal 2 week rest after every season I was always starting from scratch with even just slow jogging 30 minute runs feeling rough. After two weeks off it would typically take me a month of buildup to even feel like a runner again and start feeling good just doing distance runs. Somewhere from 1 week to 2 weeks I go from 95% top shape to starting back at square one.

So yeah probably somewhere around 7-10 days is where it seems fitness drops off very fast every day and within just a few days of that you're (or at least I would be) at a total fitness reset.

Based on that I'd say for someone finishing a season with no injuries or nagging pains, 7-10 days is probably ideal rest so you can jump right into solid building base rather than having to take time to regain basic running fitness all over again, but still have those few days to let the legs recover from a season. I knew someone who wouldn't take any break at the end of a season, he'd just go into base building a day or two after the final race of his season. That's a bit extreme and definitely not possible for anyone who gets injured occasionally, but it very much worked for him.

After seven days, it’s gonna take two weeks to get back to where you were.

Agreed with both. After a long season of hard racing and training, 5-7 days always felt too short to fully recover, 2 weeks turned my easy pace into threshold pace the first week back. 10 days is the sweetspot for recovery and retaining fitness.

I say it depends. Depends on your age, level of fitness, and your goals.

At 25 I could take off 5 or six days and still feel fit at workouts. But now, much older, I take off 2 days and I feel like I am back at square one.

If you are someone just looking to finish a race, then you will not feel the difference after 4 or 5 days.