Back to running (Read 629 times)

Hello! I'm a 21 year old recent grad just getting back into the swing of things running-wise. I was a relatively competitive cross country runner in high school, but once college hit, studying took precedence over nearly everything else. Now that I've graduated and started to run again, I'm discovering how difficult it is to morph my sedentary lifestyle into an active one once again. I was very excited to find the log offered on this website as it is working out a whole lot better than my Excel spreadsheet was. And now that I've discovered this message board, I was hoping to get any general advice anyone has for someone hoping to get back to a level of running. Thanks!

The logging tool is what originally got me using this site. My suggestions are to get an IPOD and a good set of running shoes... otherwise I don't have much to say.

I'm 26. I ran HS cross country (never outstanding, but ok), and I a couple marathons when I was 20. After that I didn't really train for five years, although I stayed reasonably active with occassional running. A year ago I got serious again. I've done a lot of running since then, much of it fairly intense (but very careful not to overtrain, I stayed injury-free), building up to lots of 15-20 mile long runs and a marathon three weeks ago. But it never started to feel easy like it did back then. And I think I've figured out why. I really need to rebuild my aerobic base. I've read several articles and posts about measuring aerobic fitness, and based on my pace relationship at difference distances, I think I'm a prime example of a decent runner with poor aerobic fitness. My best recent 5k is 20:01, my marathon was 3:41:44. Various guidelines predict that given my 5k time, if I was aerobically fit my marathon would be more like 3:15 to 3:30. I think that as teenagers we take our aerobic base for granted, because we have a built-in base provided by a whole childhood of running around. Once you get a little older and spend some years without serious exercise, you lose that base. You can build it back up better than ever, but it will take patience. Learn about aerobic base training. A heart rate monitor is an excellent tool to keep your effort level correct. I'm just starting my own summer plan of a long base-building phase. This is a good place to read the basics: http://www.myjjk.com/viewtopic.php?p=5296