Hello, I’m currently a rising college sophomore who has run 1:58 in the 800. I had to end my outdoor season early and take 4 weeks off with no x training due to a stress fracture. I was wondering how much fitness I have lost due to this time off. Additionally as I start my summer training next week with the majority of miles spent on the bike rather than running, will I be able to gain fitness through these x training workouts? Thanks.
You’ll be fine, I spent about 2 months of this season inured, did my lifting and elliptical, I did 20-30 minute elliptical tempos every other day by gauging HR.
The first 3 weeks back sucked. I was struggling a lot with base runs and tempos, but week 4 felt more natural and now this week I ran a workout that tells me I might be able to break 1:50 again if I can find a couple races this summer.
Heres how I did it
-3-6 Strides every day
-running every day, even if it’s just a 5k, drop a slow as dirt double 2-3 times a week. I was doing 9:00+ at first for 2-4 mile runs.
-spending as much time cross training at low to med intensity if not more
- find a way to sleep 8-10 hours a day, it was harder for me during finals prep but now that you’re free you can get it done
- just assume tempo or Vo2Max pace is going to be a good 30-40 seconds slower for now. I opened my first tempo back in 5:10-5:15 and didn’t make past mile 2. Hopped back up to 6:00 pace on the next one and worked down to 5:40 by the end. Then 5:50-5:30 and so on.
One day earlier this week I was just suddenly able to train like normal again. It was like a weird flip of a switch in my fitness.
You’d probably have to be doing pretty long sessions on the bike to keep your fitness.. even then it’s not the exact same as running obviously, but the longer you can spend on the bike the better. I’ve heard 1 mile running = 3 miles on bike.