I was wondering if anyone had recommendations for adapting the Pfizer base building plan for someone who is looking to return to racing again after a period of downtime. The last race I ran was in Fall 2021, which was a half marathon in 1:09. I train for another half marathon in the Fall of 2022, but pulled the plug two weeks before the race after coming down with a bad case of Covid. Since then, I haven’t really done any fast running at all. I haven’t stopped running though, and have been running 8-9 miles a day consistently at 7:00 pace, and rarely miss a day.
I’m looking to start getting back into racing shape again and am targeting a half in October. However I was wondering what the best way to go about it would be. I haven’t stopped running, but I’m not really sure how my fitness has held up only running 7 min pace everyday. I purchased Pfitz’s Faster Road Racing book and planned to use the schedule in there as a starting point, however I’m not sure what to use as a starting point for the paces. It looks like I could adapt his 10 week base building phase and target something like starting at my current 60 miles a week and building to 80-85 miles a week. But once I get into the 12 week half marathon specific portion of the plan, I’m worried if I use my previous race times to set the paces of that would risk injury/ overtraining.
If anyone has gone through a similar comeback and has recommendations that would be great.