How much fitness did l lose in almost 2 months of sickness with very light running

as a rule of thumb: if everything goes smoothly, the formula is double the amount of time taken off.

take your time and be conservative. a nice house takes a long time to be built, but is easily demolished.

all eyez on me wrote:

as a rule of thumb: if everything goes smoothly, the formula is double the amount of time taken off.

take your time and be conservative. a nice house takes a long time to be built, but is easily demolished.

But l ran everyday, some days just some light fartlek of 30 second pick-ups 10xs, or 200s and 100s at 75 second pace, or some short hill pick ups all out( 75 meter hill but steep x15s). I could do short stuff because I could take a recovery in between, but anything over 5 or so miles was exhausting like 3 weeks ago. A lot of days all l could do was a mile or two thought, but l ran everyday. Didn't it help that l still ran even though l couldn't do much? It's not like l did nothing. It's not like l sat on my butt, l ran everyday whatever I could get away with.

you probably hurt your body more than you helped it by running during that time. best case scenario is that you didnt set yourself further back.

One main difference between elite athletes and hobby joggers is, when elites get sick they REST. COMPLETELY. No jogging, no 10x100 during a 15 min run, nothing. They won't run with fever, or anything else that requires time off.

Hobby joggers are often extremely scared of losing fitness, and start running when they should be in bed instead recovering. That doesn't just unnecessarily prolong the recovery process, but might even lead to a return to the sickness that will be even more severe.

I often say - DON'T COPY ELITE TRAINING - but this is one of the few areas where hobby joggers SHOULD actually look up to elites and copy their routines. When sick, time off is almost always better than somehow trying to "brute force" it.

LateRunnerPhil wrote:

One main difference between elite athletes and hobby joggers is, when elites get sick they REST. COMPLETELY. No jogging, no 10x100 during a 15 min run, nothing. They won't run with fever, or anything else that requires time off.

Hobby joggers are often extremely scared of losing fitness, and start running when they should be in bed instead recovering. That doesn't just unnecessarily prolong the recovery process, but might even lead to a return to the sickness that will be even more severe.

I often say - DON'T COPY ELITE TRAINING - but this is one of the few areas where hobby joggers SHOULD actually look up to elites and copy their routines. When sick, time off is almost always better than somehow trying to "brute force" it.

I agree, but l have a running streak that dates back 35 plus years, so it's something that isn't easy.

Thanks for shearing this info.

comeback road wrote:

I agree, but l have a running streak that dates back 35 plus years, so it's something that isn't easy.

I think that if you try, you'll find that not running for 24 hours is, in fact, something that is easy.

I was sick for 5 weeks once and only did very light running (830 miles instead of 645s) and a third of the mileage I would have done healthy. Started off slow but dodnt try to do what I was not capable of and Surprisingly I ended up PRing later that summer with a 5k of 1433.

Sometimes the hardest thing one can do is listen to their body when it's literally screaming at them.