In todays world, we want instant gratification, the thing is running fitness is a process, and often times a long painful process. Distance running is not sprinting, anything at about 800 meters and over has a larger percentage of aerobic energy needed than anaerobic energy. With sprinting you are either fast or your not, you can get faster over time, but the room for improvement in sprinting (anaerobic fitness) is much smaller, where the room for improvement with endurance running (aerobic fitness) is very large.
With that said, it should be known that you can not expect to step out day 1 and see results with aerobic fitness. It is like building a house from the ground up, you have to put in a good bit of time putting one block at a time into the foundation. Along the way you will cut your hands, bruise your elbows, bang your knees, and pretty much want to give up everyday. Don’t get me wrong, there are lots of days you feel pretty good, and the cool thing is, that over time and once you are about done putting that last block into the foundation, you will be able to go further and faster than you could do when you started. This does not mean the work is done, it really is never done. It’s just time to start a new phase of your training where you are doing different types of work to keep building fitness. The funny thing about aerobic fitness is that you will get to a point in your fitness levels where you plateau. When this happens you have to increase the training stimulus to keep your fitness growing. This can be things like more mileage, harder workouts, etc. This process continues until you are almost to your goal race, and then you back off a bit (peaking) to freshen up how you feel so you are ready to race well.
Once this larger process is over, a runner typically takes a small amount of time off, then begins to repeat that process again. Over time and years you keep building on these small “seasons”. The thing to understand, is if you take too much time off, you will loose all the fitness you gained very quickly. IF this happens, you will feel like you are struggling again when you begin to build another house! It is a part of the process, but you do not want to take too much time off between seasons, usually 1-2 weeks off is ideal and gives you enough time to just mentally and physically recharge.
We hear it all the time at the beginning of the season or when someone starts back running after some time off. Those who have taken the recommended 1-2 weeks off usually feel pretty good again from the start, or maybe within a week. Those who took too much time off (most of the summer) struggle and feel like they are way behind, or they can’t breath and don’t know why. If that’s you, read this article again. You built your house, then you let if fall down, so now you are starting all over again.
The thing is, it’s going to happen, sometimes we just need a break. But realize that when you do that you won’t feel the best when you start back up. So don’t get down on yourself, you just have to slowly build back to where you were.’
