chubby worker wrote:
Former D3 athlete, ran even faster post grad unattached than when I was in school. I got one of those 80 hour a week jobs and 3 years later found I'd done about as many workouts as months on the calendar had passed in that time, mileage went from over 100 to 40-50 with lots of days off and I had only raced 2 or 3 times in those 3 years.
I've recently made a commitment to getting back into pr shape - running nights, cutting sleep, finding a job with fewer hours, but after a few months of serious training and racing, I'm only just getting to the point I was at as a senior in high school. Frustrating. Anyone else been here?
Yep. It sounds like you're over the initial hurdles. Here are a few tidbits from my experience getting back to after several years on not running.
You can't train any more than you can recover.
Speed disappears quickly. You need to work on it regularly to keep it. Be willing to replace that last long repeat with 5 x 200 cutdown.
Accept that you will have busy weeks where you cannot run as much. As long as you get out and do something every day, you won't lose any fitness, and may well benefit from the short week. Obviously you don't want this to happen every week.
When you have the time, get in a big week.
Be careful about wanting to do college workouts, You're not in college now, older. You need to find the right workouts for you now.