Return of the Runner: Getting it Right the First Time
Okay, maybe not the first time, failure is a great teacher, but this article is a primer about returning to running after a break.
Most people who have dabbled in a physical sport have, in most probability, experienced downtime owing to reasons such as injury or other personal commitments or shifting priorities or just taking a break. Running coaches understand the importance of breaks, which could extend to a week for no reason at all, and they encourage to enjoy the fallow period instead of the athlete suffering from a constant guilt of not making it to the track meet or failure to join friends for a social run, or just missing the feeling of having ran a good distance.
Have a break, Have a Kit-Kat (or your favourite snack)
More often than not coming out of a running drought coupled with the above psychological factors translate into caving in to the feeling of cutting lose on the initial few runs. Maybe to reclaim that lost pace, or to feel the wind gushing in the hair, or experience the sweet burn of lactic acid in the legs. Everyone has their reasons. Mine is sometimes having signed up for a race that I’m really looking forward to, and ramping up too much too quickly to get in shape for it.
Essentially, this lack of self-control can result in injuries that could push your plans even further. Ramping up too much too fast has resulted in me collecting a set of injuries over past years. These include patellar tendonitis [1] and posterior tibial tendonitis [1]from running too many flat miles. Achilles tendonitis [1] from climbing too much too soon, and Iliotibial band syndrome (ITBS) [1] in the final 5 downhill miles of a 50k last year. A race that I should have sat out of, but went with my gut feeling, coupled with disillusionment.
Plagued by constant injuries I finally decided to make my own database and research each one of them, talking to my coach, the great David Roche, and fellow runners to make my tenth or fifteenth coming a more enjoyable one but more importantly I just wanted to run consistently.
To make this more informative I should add that these are my own findings which apply to me. I’m not a doctor and I’ve made an effort to keep the takeaways more generic.
Regaining Running Fitness
Running fitness in broad sense consists of two parts, exoskeletal fitness and aerobic fitness. Getting back to running depends on slow acquisition of both these factors. Understandably, both are a factor of how fit you are at t=0. For me coming out an injury to aquire “reasonable” aerobic fitness takes about 3–4 weeks. Aerobic fitness is your heart, lungs and oxygen-transportation system getting in shape to take on the challenges of a good running workout. Some people measure aerobic fitness in terms of aerobic capacity, or more common term- VO2 Max. This is essentially the measurement of the maximum rate of oxygen consumption measured during incremental exercise [2]. This article is not going to delve in the details of VO2 Max, which in itself is a intriguing topic for scientists and athletes. There is a lot out there you can research on.
I measure my aerobic fitness by the feel. When I start getting consistent for about 3–4 weeks, my heart is doing nominal work on a easy 10 mile hilly run, I’m not heaving, and I know I can carry on for much longer. At the end of the run I feel refreshed, not tired, my legs aren’t stinging. it just feels… easy. If you have to take breaks on your runs, feel tiredness, if you’re slouching then you need to slow down. Remember… slower is better.
Exoskeletal fitness is related to the bone structure. Essentially, its your skeleton gaining strength to take the pounding your body goes through while running. To give a perspective, during running, the forefoot has to absorb almost 110 tonnes of cumulative force per mile [3]. In more scientific terms, that’s a shit ton of force! Here, I give my body about 6 weeks of consistency to feel better.
For these 6 weeks, I keep my runs mostly (95%) easy and rarely (5%) at moderate effort.
They key takeaway here is to allow your body to take care of itself, listen to it and give it the love it deserves.
When in doubt- slow down
Effort
How to define what’s easy or moderate effort? If you’re starting to think and have a boat-load of questions at this point for which you are craving for answers then I’d call this article a success. I have a few answers but majority is the runner’s homework.
A quick classification between easy, moderate efforts- For flats, I sometimes use a heart-rate monitor to guage my aerobic fitness levels. After a few years I chucked the monitor and now go by the feel. I’d advise use whichever method works for you. Easy effort to me is when I can have a conversation with a friend while on the run, laugh, chill, banter or go at flower-sniffer pace. On mountains and hills similar rules apply. On mountains, I like to go with “perceived effort”. If I’m running uphill, easy means going at a pace where the body feels like it can go uphill forever, not literally but for really loooong. I often tell myself to slow down when I resort to a medium-effort.
“Go gently. Be soft of the soil. The mountain will love your body in the same proportion”.
Medium effort in terms of ramping up is intervals, these could be 4x(20 seconds fast + 2 min easy). But again, these intervals are only after the 4th week and once a week.
Mileage
This one is a little different for everyone, but for starters it’s preferable to begin with a weekly mileage of 15–18 miles and remember never to ramp up more than 20% weekly mileage. By the 5th week you might be doing ~45 miles/week injury free.
Here’s a my first week run plan for starting up after a recent break once I was recovered from injury-
Monday- Rest
Tuesday- 3 miles easy
Wednesday- 4 miles easy
Thursday- 3 miles easy
Friday- Rest
Saturday- 5 miles easy
Sunday- 4 miles easy
This is a typical first week when there are no signs of injury left. If the injury signs come back, then take a 3-day break. No excuses. Then revisit running after gauging the situation smartly.
Nutrition
This part cannot be stressed enough, always eat more if you intend to get stronger. Never eat less than what your body needs. For the Indian body type (thin and less fat deposit) eat more all the time. On your longer runs (longer than 1.5 hours) I take a Unived Rrunn gel, electrolytes and water with myself. I’ve been using them for past 2 years now and they work well for me. I might be biased here since I’m a Unived athlete so I’ll leave you with this information- Different things work for different people, so try out variety of snacks, gels, fun foods on your runs. Experiment and learn what works for your body.
Epilogue
I truly believe that the world would be a better place if everyone would go out and run. My aim here is to make the process happy and fruitful.
Hope this helps.
References
[1] http://www.runningwritings.com/p/the-injury-series.html
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VO2_max
[3] https://www.runnersworld.com/health-injuries/a20801065/metatarsalgia/
