"Break" (Read 614 times)

Hello everyone, new to the forum--it looks like a great site! My question is that over the past months I had started running because I wanted to lose some weight and because I had a friend who often ran marathons and he was convincing me to get out. Well, I'm in college, and midterms rolled around, and then finals, and needless to say I slipped until I stopped running. I was "too busy" or "no longer in the mood." This started about a month and a half ago. I felt like getting back into it, though, and this morning put on my shoes and went out for a 3 mile run. Two months ago I could run 3 miles fairly easily, but today I had a lot of trouble. It was a run around the neighborhood, and I found myself having to stop a few times and walk because I felt out of breath. Is it normal to slip that much over a period of a little over a month (I'm practically back to square one)? It was kind of embarassing walking with cars passing by. Thanks for any help/advice you can provide. -BC

BC, my Nov. was a mess due mostly to the death of my FIL. And early this month I developed some pains after running on snow that have slowed me down, too. 2 months ago I ran a half-marathon without any trouble, but it didn't take much time for my fitness levels to plummet as my runs were cut to about half the weekly distances that I had been doing before the big race. Bas is right, without consistent work it seems our bodies want to go back to being pretty couch potato-y. Maybe this is different for those who have been running consistently for many years, but as a newbie (running since this past Spring) I find it's a constant struggle to keep up my fitness base. So the only solution seems to be not giving up or allowing ourselves to slack if it's at all avoidable. I couldn't do much about Nov., as I spent about half of that month in the car or otherwise busy with family events when I would have otherwise been running. So I have been doing my best to make up for it this past month. I am SLOWLY, but surely getting back where I was, but it's going to take some time to simply get back to where I was, much less improve upon my fitness from late Oct. k

Thanks all for the advice/support. ...guess I better get back to it. Happy 2007! BC

I start noticing a decrease in fitness if I don't run for two weeks. Everyone is right about the need to keep working at it, and perhaps that might explain why runners keep going out despite the aches and pains. We don't want to lose that fitness. On the bright side, it's not completely like you're starting from scratch. You'll regain that fitness a lot quicker than the first time you ran. You just have to ease back into it. Good luck!

I just jumped on my 'rents dreadmill today for the first time since Dec 23rd - which makes about 10 days off. I felt awful. Granted, running on the dreadmill is always difficult for me (and for some reason, theirs is worse than normal!), but despite all the extra red blood cells from the altitude and a week of skiing, I felt sooo slow and tired. On second thought, maybe skiing wore my muscles out - I know my legs have been pretty exhausted! So hang in there, take it easy, and be patient - it will come back faster than it came in the first place!