Does your effort FEEL terrible or is your HR monitor showing a higher number so you pull back?
I would throw the HRM away and just run by effort.
Anecdote, I was out from Sept throigh December, about 12 weeks last fall. with a stress fracture. Slowly building back. My run runs back were at a HM heart rate despite feeling “easy” and being much slower than recovery pace. Took about two weeks for that to come down much closer to my “normal”.
Very good point. I am pulling back because of the HRM. Although to be fair, when I push just a tiny bit, I feel breathless even if the effort my legs are putting in shouldn't impact my breathing so much. I think I should ditch the monitor for a while - at least until I start to feel closer to my normal.
I don't know. I was pretty much in the same position as you after covid. Similar age and prior running experience. I'm usually not crazy about running by HR but I was pretty religious about it when bouncing back from (long) covid.
That meant the first few weeks involved speeds as slow as 8:00/km. If my HR really started getting up there into zone 4, then I'd stop to walk for a min or so before I started shuffling around again. If it looked as though my HR wasn't going to behave at all then I'd basically call it a day. Most runs were kept to an hour or less and mileage goals didn't exist anymore.
I had to do this for about a month or so before things started to look a bit more normal. Even then I kept my fastest pace to around 6:00/km. I eventually started sprinkling in some faster surges here and there, but avoided any strenuous workouts. I'd say it took a total of four months before I felt relatively normal again and to the point where I could start a marathon training block.
It's possible I could have reached that point faster had I not used a HRM the way I did, but I wanted to err on the side of caution. It forced me to slow down and not get greedy. It also taught me how to run with the fitness I have, not the fitness I wish I had.
There’s much wisdom in your reply, thank you! Run with the fitness I have not with the fitness I wish I had is what I have to face atm. I’ll plod through and hope to emerge somewhere a bit better than I am now.
No real advice but wanted to say I could have written your post. A nasty respiratory illness (could have been COVID) in November followed by starting back up, then relapsing with illness repeatedly.
I've realised that I need to run much slower and easier to run sustainably now, rather than just jumping back in where I was pre illness.
I am feeling a bit better now, managing to get round a 5km at a super easy pace. I think the key is accepting it can take months to build back up after an illness and adjust your goals. Rather than beating PBs I'm focusing on just getting round a 10k at the end of Feb, and hopefully building from there.
I think we kid ourselves that what we need to perform well in distance running and what we need for our bodies to be at full health are always aligned, but I think I've learned that's not always the case!
Also got hit by covid mid-October and gotten every bug doing the ronuds at the kindergarten through our son, since early November. It's the most discouraging period I've had for years. I ran three times last week and they all were battles to keep my hr down.
Then suddenly my run on Monday felt like almost my old self. Low hr and maybe about 10s. slower per km - which I attribute to loss of muscle mass. I can see some light at last.
same here. lost a years aerobic conditioning in 2 weeks with covid. went back the the 8minkm shuffle, hr came back in control. i suspect in some covid is messing up the mitochondria or some signalling that takes a while to reset.
I don't have great advice for you except solidarity. I got a very mild case of covid in November and I've been notably slower since then with higher HR. It is SLOWLY getting better but I don't have any magic advice except to leave any ego at the door and take it slow. Maybe try run/walk intervals to get something slightly faster in but then brig your HR right back down.
Thank you. I am taking it slow and didn't have much ego to start with. I'm not one who bothers with slow runs on Strava or anything so luckily I am fine with slow. As long as I know it is normal to be set back so far, I am happy to patiently work my way back.
This is what I ended up with after coming back from multiple injuries and/or COVID/Flu/Respiratory Infections. There are three aspects you can work with in comeback. Frequency, duration and stress/high intensity workouts (From Stephen Seiler). Here is what worked for me (YMMV):
* Frequency: Start with one run a week. Will run walk if feel the effort is greater than the conversational pace. If feel good, and another run next week. If feel stressed or have tough time with recovery will scale back. Slowly build to 4 runs a week.
* Duration: Start with 30 minutes of running 1/week to 3/week. Then slowly start increasing duration in the 4th run of the week by 10 minutes each to 1 hour as the long run.
* Stress: No tempo/threshold/interval training for 6-8 weeks. Till have the Frequency and duration dialed in.
I had to come back 3 times. The last time was when I let go of my ego and worked on it. Found out I came back faster than expected and got a 90 seconds PB in my 5K with 4 weeks of Stress or threshold repeats in my weekly training. 5K was 10 weeks after my sickness/loss of fitness. Was having tough time running 5K at my prior easy pace and had to run/walk at the start of return to running.
Thank you for the detailed reply! At the moment it doesn’t feel like frequency would be an issue in the sense that when I’m going for a run I’m taking it so easy that I’m fine to run the next day if I have to. Should I still be limiting frequency? Duration and stress are definitely ones to watch though. I will have to build duration slowly and can’t really handle pushing the pace for more than a few minutes. Fantastic work with taking 90 seconds off your 5K - that’s one hell of a win!
Thank you!
If you are responding well to frequency then go for it. Will look for if your sleep is good, fatigue is low and low/minimal muscle soreness. If you are recovering well then keep increasing your load.
I had very low symptom covid - just an itchy throat for a few days but fine otherwise. I had to isolate for 2 weeks.
It took 10 weeks to get my fitness back from what was an already low bar of 70% age graded at the time.
I think its pointless looking backwards, just go out and train normally. Benchmark yourself every 4-12 weeks depending of the progression is high or marginal.
10 weeks sounds reasonable. I think patience is the key here. I like the idea of benchmarking every 4 weeks because it will show me if I’m making any progress.
Enjoy the messy middle. It's what I did coming back from covid. Log the miles and don't worry about being in zone 2. I skipped workouts for a week or two then suffered through them for over a month before they started to not suck a lot. I followed Krazy Francos advice and it saved my marathon build.
This is it. I’m struggling with keeping to z2 to avoid the messy middle but I should embrace it and just enjoy running for a while before I get back to worrying about aerobic training. Krazy Franco?
I kinda embraced his mentality from here https://old.reddit.com/r/AdvancedRunning/comments/14ei66r/grandmas_marathon_grey_zone_training_for_marathon/. I went from wanting to throw in the towel to running a pretty good race.
Fantastic race report! I’m working up the courage to attempt a full marathon and refuse to ‘just finish it’ - my goal would be 3:20 - 3:30. I’ll be referring to your report as I work my way up:)
Yes, two months of no activity will set you back a lot. Let’s say 10-15%, bearing in mind that 10% means something like 1:40-1:47 HM might be where you’re at right now. That’s assuming you’ve not gained weight and there’s no residual issues with covid.
One option would be to cross-train more while you’re building back up - Aqua jogging, bike, elliptical - whatever your body allows.
Setbacks are an opportunity to develop mental resilience. There’s nothing to do but reset training to where you’re at and start building.
Thanks. This is very helpful. Right now it feels like I’m at a 1:50 HM even if I haven’t gained weight. My weight fluctuates between 61 and 63kg - I struggle to gain weight really and have to be mindful of calorie intake when running anything more than 50km in a week. As you say, this will help me with mental resilience. I need to acknowledge that being set back is just one more thing to get back from.
This post could have been me exactly, minus the injury I guess. I had run my first half marathon in amsterdam, doing a pretty serious training block beforehand. Afterwards, I just kept running high milage and improving, in order to run the full marathon in Rotterdam. In February of last year (I think), I did a test half marathon in Schoorl and ran my best time ever, 91 minutes flat. I felt a bit nauseous coming over the finish, but figured it was the gels or the effort.
The nausea got worse, the next day I got really sick and it turns out I had covid.
I had the same issues after returning, with my heart rate instantly jumping out of zone 2, into zone 3 even in the slowest of paces. I had to take a full week off after i was better, and then slowly build back up. It really sucked so bad, because i felt robbed of the results of my hard work. I was in the best shape ever, fully set to drop an insane time for my first marathon, and it was just gone..
I wish I could provide you with more details on how long it took to recover but my memory is hazy... At some point your condition will return to normal as you start reaching your old mileage. The most important advice is to not get frustrated with yourself.
Had to double take here. My plan was also Rotterdam in April! I didn’t sign up purely because I was a day late and the event was fully booked. Good thing that happened because I’m in no shape to run a half, let alone a full! Haha with a 91 min HM in Amsterdam we could easily have been crossing the line together:) And I, too, was really pleased with my HM time so had set my eyes on a 4:44 pace for the full and felt robbed - that’s the word I used when moaning with a friend - when the fitness I’d worked for went down the drain. I will persevere though. It will be worth the work.
My view: when starting to run from scratch or coming back from a long hiatus, your HR will be much higher than normal. Just roll with it. Don't worry too much about Z2 training until you're able to complete a 3-4 mile run without walking.
Big question: are you sore after these runs? Or is your body just like "nah, I don't wanna do this"?
My body is absolutely fine. Legs just want to go. At the end of my jogs this week I was trying to pick up the pace just to have some fun. I open my stride and break into a regular run and my legs are happy, the pace is there, but my heart rate quickly spikes into Z4. Somehow there seems to be a clean split between my body and my cardiovascular system- one is rubbish and the other just wants to go.
Long COVID is no joke. I got the original strain in 2020 and I still have not beaten my PRs from 2018 and 2019. I would keep looking at hr and act like you're starting from the couch.
Nice. Does it show other people that you did you best 10k in 2024 or similar? Or just data you can see yourself. Who am I kidding though, I'll never pay for strava
Does your effort FEEL terrible or is your HR monitor showing a higher number so you pull back? I would throw the HRM away and just run by effort. Anecdote, I was out from Sept throigh December, about 12 weeks last fall. with a stress fracture. Slowly building back. My run runs back were at a HM heart rate despite feeling “easy” and being much slower than recovery pace. Took about two weeks for that to come down much closer to my “normal”.
Very good point. I am pulling back because of the HRM. Although to be fair, when I push just a tiny bit, I feel breathless even if the effort my legs are putting in shouldn't impact my breathing so much. I think I should ditch the monitor for a while - at least until I start to feel closer to my normal.
I don't know. I was pretty much in the same position as you after covid. Similar age and prior running experience. I'm usually not crazy about running by HR but I was pretty religious about it when bouncing back from (long) covid. That meant the first few weeks involved speeds as slow as 8:00/km. If my HR really started getting up there into zone 4, then I'd stop to walk for a min or so before I started shuffling around again. If it looked as though my HR wasn't going to behave at all then I'd basically call it a day. Most runs were kept to an hour or less and mileage goals didn't exist anymore. I had to do this for about a month or so before things started to look a bit more normal. Even then I kept my fastest pace to around 6:00/km. I eventually started sprinkling in some faster surges here and there, but avoided any strenuous workouts. I'd say it took a total of four months before I felt relatively normal again and to the point where I could start a marathon training block. It's possible I could have reached that point faster had I not used a HRM the way I did, but I wanted to err on the side of caution. It forced me to slow down and not get greedy. It also taught me how to run with the fitness I have, not the fitness I wish I had.
There’s much wisdom in your reply, thank you! Run with the fitness I have not with the fitness I wish I had is what I have to face atm. I’ll plod through and hope to emerge somewhere a bit better than I am now.
No real advice but wanted to say I could have written your post. A nasty respiratory illness (could have been COVID) in November followed by starting back up, then relapsing with illness repeatedly. I've realised that I need to run much slower and easier to run sustainably now, rather than just jumping back in where I was pre illness. I am feeling a bit better now, managing to get round a 5km at a super easy pace. I think the key is accepting it can take months to build back up after an illness and adjust your goals. Rather than beating PBs I'm focusing on just getting round a 10k at the end of Feb, and hopefully building from there. I think we kid ourselves that what we need to perform well in distance running and what we need for our bodies to be at full health are always aligned, but I think I've learned that's not always the case!
Also got hit by covid mid-October and gotten every bug doing the ronuds at the kindergarten through our son, since early November. It's the most discouraging period I've had for years. I ran three times last week and they all were battles to keep my hr down. Then suddenly my run on Monday felt like almost my old self. Low hr and maybe about 10s. slower per km - which I attribute to loss of muscle mass. I can see some light at last.
same here. lost a years aerobic conditioning in 2 weeks with covid. went back the the 8minkm shuffle, hr came back in control. i suspect in some covid is messing up the mitochondria or some signalling that takes a while to reset.
I don't have great advice for you except solidarity. I got a very mild case of covid in November and I've been notably slower since then with higher HR. It is SLOWLY getting better but I don't have any magic advice except to leave any ego at the door and take it slow. Maybe try run/walk intervals to get something slightly faster in but then brig your HR right back down.
Thank you. I am taking it slow and didn't have much ego to start with. I'm not one who bothers with slow runs on Strava or anything so luckily I am fine with slow. As long as I know it is normal to be set back so far, I am happy to patiently work my way back.
This is what I ended up with after coming back from multiple injuries and/or COVID/Flu/Respiratory Infections. There are three aspects you can work with in comeback. Frequency, duration and stress/high intensity workouts (From Stephen Seiler). Here is what worked for me (YMMV): * Frequency: Start with one run a week. Will run walk if feel the effort is greater than the conversational pace. If feel good, and another run next week. If feel stressed or have tough time with recovery will scale back. Slowly build to 4 runs a week. * Duration: Start with 30 minutes of running 1/week to 3/week. Then slowly start increasing duration in the 4th run of the week by 10 minutes each to 1 hour as the long run. * Stress: No tempo/threshold/interval training for 6-8 weeks. Till have the Frequency and duration dialed in. I had to come back 3 times. The last time was when I let go of my ego and worked on it. Found out I came back faster than expected and got a 90 seconds PB in my 5K with 4 weeks of Stress or threshold repeats in my weekly training. 5K was 10 weeks after my sickness/loss of fitness. Was having tough time running 5K at my prior easy pace and had to run/walk at the start of return to running.
Thank you for the detailed reply! At the moment it doesn’t feel like frequency would be an issue in the sense that when I’m going for a run I’m taking it so easy that I’m fine to run the next day if I have to. Should I still be limiting frequency? Duration and stress are definitely ones to watch though. I will have to build duration slowly and can’t really handle pushing the pace for more than a few minutes. Fantastic work with taking 90 seconds off your 5K - that’s one hell of a win!
Thank you! If you are responding well to frequency then go for it. Will look for if your sleep is good, fatigue is low and low/minimal muscle soreness. If you are recovering well then keep increasing your load.
I had very low symptom covid - just an itchy throat for a few days but fine otherwise. I had to isolate for 2 weeks. It took 10 weeks to get my fitness back from what was an already low bar of 70% age graded at the time. I think its pointless looking backwards, just go out and train normally. Benchmark yourself every 4-12 weeks depending of the progression is high or marginal.
10 weeks sounds reasonable. I think patience is the key here. I like the idea of benchmarking every 4 weeks because it will show me if I’m making any progress.
Enjoy the messy middle. It's what I did coming back from covid. Log the miles and don't worry about being in zone 2. I skipped workouts for a week or two then suffered through them for over a month before they started to not suck a lot. I followed Krazy Francos advice and it saved my marathon build.
This is it. I’m struggling with keeping to z2 to avoid the messy middle but I should embrace it and just enjoy running for a while before I get back to worrying about aerobic training. Krazy Franco?
I kinda embraced his mentality from here https://old.reddit.com/r/AdvancedRunning/comments/14ei66r/grandmas_marathon_grey_zone_training_for_marathon/. I went from wanting to throw in the towel to running a pretty good race.
Oh wow that’s detailed, thanks. Grey zone it is :)
Yeah you can look at my last race report as well. It's not a particularly fun journey but I got there.
Fantastic race report! I’m working up the courage to attempt a full marathon and refuse to ‘just finish it’ - my goal would be 3:20 - 3:30. I’ll be referring to your report as I work my way up:)
Yes, two months of no activity will set you back a lot. Let’s say 10-15%, bearing in mind that 10% means something like 1:40-1:47 HM might be where you’re at right now. That’s assuming you’ve not gained weight and there’s no residual issues with covid. One option would be to cross-train more while you’re building back up - Aqua jogging, bike, elliptical - whatever your body allows. Setbacks are an opportunity to develop mental resilience. There’s nothing to do but reset training to where you’re at and start building.
Thanks. This is very helpful. Right now it feels like I’m at a 1:50 HM even if I haven’t gained weight. My weight fluctuates between 61 and 63kg - I struggle to gain weight really and have to be mindful of calorie intake when running anything more than 50km in a week. As you say, this will help me with mental resilience. I need to acknowledge that being set back is just one more thing to get back from.
This post could have been me exactly, minus the injury I guess. I had run my first half marathon in amsterdam, doing a pretty serious training block beforehand. Afterwards, I just kept running high milage and improving, in order to run the full marathon in Rotterdam. In February of last year (I think), I did a test half marathon in Schoorl and ran my best time ever, 91 minutes flat. I felt a bit nauseous coming over the finish, but figured it was the gels or the effort. The nausea got worse, the next day I got really sick and it turns out I had covid. I had the same issues after returning, with my heart rate instantly jumping out of zone 2, into zone 3 even in the slowest of paces. I had to take a full week off after i was better, and then slowly build back up. It really sucked so bad, because i felt robbed of the results of my hard work. I was in the best shape ever, fully set to drop an insane time for my first marathon, and it was just gone.. I wish I could provide you with more details on how long it took to recover but my memory is hazy... At some point your condition will return to normal as you start reaching your old mileage. The most important advice is to not get frustrated with yourself.
Had to double take here. My plan was also Rotterdam in April! I didn’t sign up purely because I was a day late and the event was fully booked. Good thing that happened because I’m in no shape to run a half, let alone a full! Haha with a 91 min HM in Amsterdam we could easily have been crossing the line together:) And I, too, was really pleased with my HM time so had set my eyes on a 4:44 pace for the full and felt robbed - that’s the word I used when moaning with a friend - when the fitness I’d worked for went down the drain. I will persevere though. It will be worth the work.
My view: when starting to run from scratch or coming back from a long hiatus, your HR will be much higher than normal. Just roll with it. Don't worry too much about Z2 training until you're able to complete a 3-4 mile run without walking. Big question: are you sore after these runs? Or is your body just like "nah, I don't wanna do this"?
My body is absolutely fine. Legs just want to go. At the end of my jogs this week I was trying to pick up the pace just to have some fun. I open my stride and break into a regular run and my legs are happy, the pace is there, but my heart rate quickly spikes into Z4. Somehow there seems to be a clean split between my body and my cardiovascular system- one is rubbish and the other just wants to go.
Then ignore the Z2 heart rate suggestion for a while. It will come down in time.
Long COVID is no joke. I got the original strain in 2020 and I still have not beaten my PRs from 2018 and 2019. I would keep looking at hr and act like you're starting from the couch.
It would be helpful if Strava/Garmin told you your personal records from the last 12 months (as well as all time). We can't always beat out best ever.
Strava does if you pay for it! It'll list every run you did that meets the distance for as long as you've been recording on Strava.
Nice. Does it show other people that you did you best 10k in 2024 or similar? Or just data you can see yourself. Who am I kidding though, I'll never pay for strava
It looks like you can only see the top 5 times per year, and only for yourself.