Hi Reader,

The dread is palpable, your lungs have the size and capacity of chip packets, whilst your legs are burning with hot pokers. Nope, not a race at all but that first run back after a break on the all-you-can-eat buffet and cruise.

Whilst it may feel like this after missing time from your running due to a holiday, work, or injury, what can you do to prioritise certain aspects of your training and what changes can you make to minimise the impact of having time off your feet?

Let's look at the minimum amount of running to maintain a decent level of fitness, what happens if you can't train at all and if the stop is due to injury or illness.

What's the minimum dose of running?

There has been plenty of research in this area, so we have a good understanding of how a reduced training load impacts us and the sessions we need to do to prevent fitness loss during these off-season type scenarios.

If you are carrying no injuries and are healthy, and either choose to or are unable to train fully for a longer period of 4-8 weeks, the absolute minimum is two runs and one strength session a week. As long as you can keep the sessions and intensities the same as before the break.

If you have time limitations per run, due to the seasons (think winter, daylight saving ending), and not the frequency, it’s OK to reduce the duration by up to 50% and ideally only by a third i.e. head out for a 30–40 minute session. It is possible to reduce the strength sessions through fewer sets, although it's better to do the same number of sets and stick to one gym/strength session.

Whether doing fewer sessions or less time on your feet, based on the research, it's the maintenance of your intensity that is the key to keeping your fitness. Do fewer runs but not necessarily easier. Like in a taper reduce the volume and maintain the intensity.

This is fine if your holiday allows for you to hit the road or trails, but what if you just can’t get out and run and your training has ground to a halt completely?

But I can't train at all!!

You have had that feeling of panic when forced through life events, work or hopefully not an injury, and unable to train. Even for as short a time as a week. It feels like our fitness is draining away rapidly and it's going take weeks to get back to your previous level, if ever at all. We know that feeling of the dreaded first run back, even after just 1 week off.

That rubbish feeling on the first couple of runs back is just peripheral. Yes, there may have been some very small changes to blood plasma volume and glycogen stores, but the key part is your physiological capacities from before, take much longer to go down. It takes months and months of consistent training for these values (VO2max, Lactate threshold) to noticeably improve. These same systems also take their time to go down as well!

2 weeks of zero training has hardly any effect on your VO2 value, stretch that out to a month you might lose 20%. There is a counterargument that the rest and recovery from doing nothing could compensate you for the physiological drop from those weeks of not training. Think how fresh the legs feel after a taper.

If you stop your training fully for more than a few weeks, you will see a decline in your performance of >20%. But by adding in the 3 sessions mentioned above, it will keep that reduction in the 5-10% area, even if that reduction is over several weeks. You're also going to get back to the same level of fitness much quicker.

Injury is stopping me from running, what now?

The final area to consider in these studies is that stopping the training was by choice. However, in the real world we live in, the reason for the reduction or stopping is important. If you are sick, or carrying an injury, then reduced sessions are potentially going to do more harm than good for your recovery and full rest may be the best approach. Don’t look for perfection in your training, your fitness is never going to be a constant and what fitness you do lose, you can enjoy the training to recover.

Having a week’s holiday with the family and chilling is not going to impact your training, go enjoy the time off, you've earned it!

See you on the trails,

Ash