How long does fitness hold ?

Spirogyra

Hi I'm thinking of availing of a 'very early bird' discount for a marathon abroad. Its quite a long time away. I'll be undergoing ' a procedure' and a recovery period before the marathon. I'm wondering how well would fitness be retained during 6-12 weeks of very limited physical activity?. Assuming fitness and endurance were good beforehand, how would I stand afterwards? .
Thoughts appreciated.
SðŸ˜႒

Chartsengrafs

Like 99% of questions here, the answer would be 'it depends'. It's impossible to give you an authoritative answer especially as you've not been too specific. When is the marathon? How limited would you be in terms of physical activity during the recovery period?

3 months is a long time. And 3 months with a 'procedure' (which I presume you mean an operation of some sort?) could take a lot out of you. If it was me.. very little fitness would be retained. Though if your fitness and endurance is good like you say, it's always easier to get fitness back than to gain fitness for the first time. Either way, best of luck with the procedure.

Inventive User Name

https://runnersconnect.net/running-injury-prevention/losing-running-fitness/

kal7

Good article, Inventive User name

In my opinion, I would say endurance will be slow to deteriorate too badly.

The top end, icing on cake, type fitness and therefore speed will suffer with say two weeks off.

This is probably due, as article says, to some loss VO2 and neurological and muscle sharpness.

Marathon to get around could be ok, but wouldn't be PB. Especially shorter race distances.

I would be worried about sudden increase on tendons and there insertions, as they dislike sudden changes, they take about 100 days to adapt.