I'm currently coming off of a stress fracture. i plan to return to running by the first of April after a 2 week lay off. I had a pretty solid base prior to my injury and have been riding stationary bike and pool runnning occasionally. My question is can I still run a fast 800/mile by the end of May? And if so, what kind of training would I have to do?
You can, make sure you are 100% healthy, hit some hills 300-400m and some hard tempo runs!
My friend ran a 1:52 in college, and after taking a long time off, he trained for about 2 months and ran 1:57.
Dear comeback..
I took 6 weeks off and did strictly pool running (to heal an achilles), then about 2 months later after a gradual progression with about 1 month of speedwork found I was almost exactly 5% slower at both mile and 800 than previous top efforts. I figure about another month of quality training would have gotten me back to 100%.
After a stress fracture you probably want to ease into things, so might find yourself somewhat like me (not quite at your best by end of May). If you push too hard too early, you'll be back in the pool!
Good luck, be patient.
I have no idea what you mean by 'fast' but regardless, you can probably come to within 10-12 seconds of your 800m PR with such short training. I have a PR of 1:48.1(DMR relay split, NCAAs) and I am coming back after a long layoff. In my first 800m race on April 2, I expect somewhere between 1:56-2:00 considering that I have done nothing! good luck.
Its possible. I remember Nathan Brannen taking six weeks off from early March to mid April. He was in the pool with a stress fracture. At the time his 800m pr was 1:46.60 After a month of training, he ran 1:47 and after a total of 6 1/2 weeks of running, he ran a pr of 1:46.00 at NCAAs. He kept the volume down in his workouts, but kept the pace very fast. Short distance (4 miles or so) on recovery days. Since you have the base and cross trained when injured, you might be able to race pretty fast in a month.
Along the same line, I'm trying to race fast in 5 weeks after pretty much an entire season of cross training. Through cross training I have developed the best cardio base I've ever had, but have done little to no speedwork. Assuming by the time I get around to running I can have 4 weeks before the race, what are the best workouts to develop speed in a hurry? For reference I'll be coming off an IT band injury.