9 months ago I was running consistently most days. A few hard sessions a week with intervals/tempos, a long run and some other daily runs thrown into the week. My easy pace was 7:15 per mile. Then I had to stop running for a while because of other things. I was perfectly healthy when I stopped. I then ended up only getting around do doing an average of 1 run per month from end of April to end year. Yesterday was my first run of the year actually and I ran 10.75 miles and averaged 8:10 pace. I wanted to just run easy but it was basically a race effort for me. I felt like collapsing afterwards and am incredibly sore today. When I was a regular runner I often ran hard training sessions and races and had no issues to go out the next day and run as normal and most of the time had no pain. I don't think I've put on much weight, maybe a few kilos, although most of my muscle mass has probably been swapped with fat mass now. Feel terrible. I will try to run more often but at the moment I can't run as often as I would like anyway, even if there was no pain. Maybe when I'm a master in a few years. Anyone else in my boat? Anyone else like this manage to come back eventually and become a better runner than they were in the past?