injury- how much fitness will i lose?

You will start to notice a loss of fitness in about 2-3 weeks, different for everyone though..... I ran my 3km pb of 2 weeks no training, try not running properly for 2 years then see how much you will lose.

should i take some days completely off? the hamstring does not seem to get better as the days go on. i dont know how much biking or swimming aggravates it

i was always told ' every day you miss takes away two days of training'...i missed 2+ months. ouchhhh

-themack

My experience is that a week or less does nothing bad (especially if you've been training hard in which case the rest could be good). Beyond that your fitness starts to decline. Crosstraining can reduce the detraining effect, particularly if it mimics running. I advocate water running if possible. I tore a calf muscle a few years back and spent three weeks in the pool. After about three more weeks of transition back to land running I popped an 8k road PR. Intense and long pool workouts can keep you in very good shape. I simply transferred my workouts to the pool, still doing a long run and tempo or intervals each week.

How do you know if the crosstraining is making a bad situation worse? Well, if you get out of the pool and for the next hour or more your injury feels worse than if you did something else, the xt should probably be altered or curtailed. My personal experience is that once the initial trauma subsides, doing nothing is NOT the best prescription (but remember to take it easy, no heroics).

thanks for your advice. sometimes i find that i can't get my heart rate that high in the pool- but on the bike and ellipitcal it soars.

i guess i am just bad at deciding what xt activity is hurting my hamstring more or if doing the xt is going to help maintain my fitness. i probably should have taken the first week completely off but i really can't stand being idle