Detraining and fitness loss; a kind of case study

--amadeus--

For obvious reasons there is not a lot of information or academic study available on the effects of de-training on athletes yet it is one of the biggest causes of concern. Runners can take breaks because of injury or life and the most common question is "how much fitness will I have lost?" To an extent the answer is personal but the generic rules and theories I have seen vary wildly - if you train for 6 months and stop I have heard everything form 3 to 9 months quoted as the length of time it will take to return to your untrained state.

Well kind of by accident I followed almost a classic case study profile for this over the last 18 months or so so if anyone is interested this is what I found...

Background:
I used to do a run or two a month, maybe a mile or three never too fast and then in summer 2005 I signed up to do the DCM. First runs were in the 9 min/mile range and a week after starting I did a 13 mile LSR which almost killed me - avg pace was 11-12/min/mile and I was in bits. So that is kind of the baseline for "untrained". I ran 3 marathons in 2006 and then settled into a spring / autumn routine for 2007 / 08 / 09 so I was always either in a training cycle or recovering. Took the first half of 2010 off and followed a patchy training cycle for Amsterdam in Oct 2010. Weekly mileage totals were roughly 36.16, 31.98, 50.17, 60.51, 14.02, 71.22, 50.05, 26.07, 8.01, 27.62, 63.11, 43.2, 30.73, 28.05, 66.29, 46.68, 34.81, 43.32 for the 18 weeks and I ran 2:58:07 in the race. I targeted 2:55 and went through halfway in 1:27 but backed off to guarantee sub 3 when I found teh pace a bit spicy. That probably represents peak fitness so I had gone from 11ish pace for 13 miles to 6:50ish pace for 26 in 5 years.

And then I pretty much stopped. From 1st Nov 2010 to 31st Ovt 2011 I ran 53 times (almost exactly once per week) and less than 300 miles in total. Even that was in clumps - a week of consistent running was followed by a month of nothing but I was pretty much back to what I had been doing pre 2005.

After the detraining:
On Thursday 20th Oct I started back again and ran 5 miles in an average of 8 min/mile.

I generally didn't feel as fit and had gained some weight - not a lot, maybe 4kgs or so but enough that it was visible. I am pretty sure that I lost a lot of lean muscle so the total weight gain isn't indicative of the fat gain. That said I was still able to run upstairs or walk wherever I wanted, etc.

By Mid Nov I was back doing faster work and on the 15th I ran 6:25 / 6:48 / 6:50 splits for three miles.

What is encouraging is that I didn't go back to the level I was at when I was “untrained”, I was faster than when I first started and able to run 8 miles at the same pace the next day so my stamina was improved from 2005.

Training since:
Nov wasn't great because of work but I did what I could and since Dec and in particular since the New Year I am back fully (averaging mid 50s per week since Xmas)

Current status:
Now well into a plan for Rotterdam I have completed 18 and 20 mile LSRs as well as 2 * 16 mile runs at under 7:30. I am also back doing faster running – eg 3*3 mile reps with 4 min recoveries at an average pace under 6:40 (under 20 mins for the 3 miles). Weight is back to 68kgs without any change to the diet and resting HR is back in teh mid – low 40s. Overall I would say I am broadly back to where I was.

Conclusion:
I didn't lose much off my “cruising speed”, my conversational paced running on fresh-ish legs is roughly 8 min/mile and that is what my first run back was at
I obviously lost stamina but less than I would have thought, stepping from very little up to 8/10+ wasn't difficult and I have transitioned to a marathon program with LSRs without difficulty and as easily as if I had trained through
I did however lose speed. My PMP was 6:45ish and even after a few weeks training I was still having to fight to hold that for 3 miles.
However after 8-10 weeks of good training I am back at least as fast as I was before at the equivalent point in the schedule

I'm not sure exactly what conclusions you can draw from all of this. Certainly the fact that I did some running rather than none helped me retain some fitness through the year off. I had expected stamina / endurance and speed to fall off roughly equally but they didn't. It might be just that I am better at going long than going fast but I had no problem with distance at any stage but I have consistently struggled with pace. Or it could be that I lost more pace because the running I did do was steady rather than fast.

If you are faced with being out for an extended period of time I would certainly recommend doing something to maintain fitness. Assuming you could run I would try and do some form of speedwork as well to maintain that edge rather than just plodding, or higher intensity cardio work if running isn't an option. And changing your diet to reflect your lower calorie demands is obvious – I was only gaining weight at ~250g per month but over a year that adds up. And be careful getting back into it – I was advised to go slow when I returned and was guided through the process but still had to take a couple of days out with an overuse injury.

There, I hope that is of interest and does anyone have anything to say / questions or similar experiences?!

Krusty_Clown

Hi Amadeus, I'd be more interested in the differences at the more cardio-intensive end of the long-distance race scale, e.g. 5 mile, 10k, 10 mile. Have you completed any races at these distances recently? I reckon this is where you really lose out when you take a prolonged break.

In a similar (but not entirely related) vein I took a break (6 months) after completing a challenging marathon, though it was a hard-training break, rather than a running break (I didn't do any speed sessions, intervals, tempo runs, etc., just easy enjoyable runs). I did run a consistent 50mpw though, and found that I had lost little speed over 10 miles (60:02 mins -> 61:5x mins). Over 10k though, I had to do some hard training, to get the speed back in the legs (and the capacity back in the lungs!). I succeeded eventually, but it took some work.

Larry Brent

I had an experience of running 6:00 pace for 10miles, a peak performance for me at the time. That was followed by 1 month of no running whatsoever or other exercise. On return to training I jumped into a 4m race straight away (after just 2 days of very easy 30min runs). This was beyond doubt the hardest race I have ever done. Ended up at about 6:05 pace for the race. Couldn't believe that I couldn't hold a pace for 4m that only a month previously I held for 10m and that it was 10 times more painful. It felt like a 1500m race from miles 1 to 4, that type of pain and breathing effort. Clearly I was way over my anaerobic threshold, so I was surprised that this had fallen quite so far.

One thing I think though is that no matter how long you're out for, getting back will be way, way quicker than it ever took to get to that level first time round.

--amadeus--

Krusty_Clown wrote: »

Hi Amadeus, I'd be more interested in the differences at the more cardio-intensive end of the long-distance race scale, e.g. 5 mile, 10k, 10 mile. Have you completed any races at these distances recently? I reckon this is where you really lose out when you take a prolonged break.

In a similar (but not entirely related) vein I took a break (6 months) after completing a challenging marathon, though it was a hard-training break, rather than a running break (I didn't do any speed sessions, intervals, tempo runs, etc., just easy enjoyable runs). I did run a consistent 50mpw though, and found that I had lost little speed over 10 miles (60:02 mins -> 61:5x mins). Over 10k though, I had to do some hard training, to get the speed back in the legs (and the capacity back in the lungs!). I succeeded eventually, but it took some work.

Nah, I don't race the short stuff :P

I have no plans to race before Rotterdam at the minute and don't have a benchmark anyway. What I will say is that I did 3*10min progression on Tuesday going from PMP -> HMP -> 10k pace and average paces were 6:37 / 6:16 / 6:13 so I'm still short at that top end speed.

Larry Brent wrote: »

I had an experience of running 6:00 pace for 10miles, a peak performance for me at the time. That was followed by 1 month of no running whatsoever or other exercise. On return to training I jumped into a 4m race straight away (after just 2 days of very easy 30min runs). This was beyond doubt the hardest race I have ever done. Ended up at about 6:05 pace for the race. Couldn't believe that I couldn't hold a pace for 4m that only a month previously I held for 10m and that it was 10 times more painful. It felt like a 1500m race from miles 1 to 4, that type of pain and breathing effort. Clearly I was way over my anaerobic threshold, so I was surprised that this had fallen quite so far.

One thing I think though is that no matter how long you're out for, getting back will be way, way quicker than it ever took to get to that level first time round.

It's interesting that we are all seeing the same sort of effects - a fairly rapid loss of speed. The biggest lesson I'm taking is for the taper - the orthodoxy is to cut volume not intensity and if our experiences are typical then you can understand why, 3 weeks of low volume low intensity training could see you lose a surprising amount of speed.

ThisRegard

I read this thread when it originally came up but had no evidence to back up how I was doing after an unforced break of the best part of 2 months due to a virus. So this afternoon I loaded my garmin activities which I hadn't done so since the end of last summer !

Anyway, as I said I was off for about 2 months, last bit of activity I done was the IMRA Powerscourt Ridge on November 12th and nothing then until the new year. I started off quite gently not wanting to rush back into things due to avoiding injury and not wanting to run myself into the ground again. I never bothered timing myself or checking what distances I was doing but initial thoughts were that I was feeling surprisingly well, aerobically I never felt out of breath but obviously my legs were feeling it but not as much as expected.

Roll on a few weeks and out comes the garmin to start checking, ran a few 8k training runs which were manageable and not far off the pace I was doing before hand. Ran 10k this morning and it was right in there at the average time I had been doing previously so felt really good about that. So in the space of about 6 or 7 weeks of relatively easy runs, only about 3 times a week I'm back up to my regular pace.

I'm going to give this weekends IMRA a go and see how I do at race pace, however the results will be skewed by the fact that although the distance is not too long Maulin is a bloody steep mountain.