All of us have faced a layoff from running for some reason. It might be due to an injury or some life-altering event like the birth of a baby or some sort of family crisis. I picked up a knee injury from an unrelated sport that sidelined me for over a year. The tricky part is that when we return to trail running the temptation is to try and start where we left off because that is what we remember being used to doing.
The way to return to trail running after a lengthy layoff is to listen to your body as regards how much training load you can add. Your body decides the rate that you increase your training, not your memory. If your body isn’t yet for long runs, supplement cross-training for some endurance workouts.
Let’s take a closer look at how we can return to trail running after a long layoff and do so without making training mistakes or picking up any injuries that will force a new layoff.
How To Return To Trail Running Without Mistakes Or Injury
Returning to running on the trails after a lengthy layoff is something that is close to my heart because it’s something that I’ve been battling with over the past 10 months. I have made all of the mistakes we can possibly make including one that I consider the greatest key mistake that held me back.
I’ll be discussing each and every single one of those with you yet so that hopefully you don’t make the same mistakes that I have when returning to try running.
The Difference Between Just Running And Training
For a long time, I’ve not had any specific events that I’ve been training for. Therefore, I’ve just been going out and running without any structured approach to my training.
Once I decided on a specific race that I wanted to do and started adding intensity into my training, I started ramping intensity up way too quickly for my fitness level and that caused me to start developing a little problem behind my right knee as well as slight Achilles soreness on my right-hand side.
This came from just being too excited and adding too many quality sessions to quickly thinking that I was already fit enough to be able to handle them. I thought this because I was already running five times a week but there’s a major difference between just running and actually training for something in particular.
Have The Patience For Training Adaptation Rather Than Just Recovery
When I’m just running rather than specifically training my focus has always been on being able to recover properly after each training session.
What I hadn’t realized is that when doing specific intensity sessions that are needed when training for an event I needed to allow my body to adapt to those key sessions rather than just merely recovering like I was doing when just running at an easier level.
So what I should have been doing is doing fewer intense sessions, spaced further apart, and slowing my other runs to more of a recovery pace. This would have allowed my body to adapt to the training stresses rather than heaping more stress on an already tired body by doing my long runs too quickly.
Your Body Controls Your Comeback Not Your Brain
When making a comeback to specific training, even if I’ve been running regularly for a long period of time I have to remember that my brain can easily write down all these special high-intensity training sessions on my workout plan but it’s my buoy that determines the rate at which I can come back to intense training, not my brain.
Getting Excited About Testing Fitness
Another mistake that I made by getting excited about returning to training was testing my fitness at least once every week on top of all the high-intensity training sessions I was doing.
I should rather have been focusing on the training and then only testing my fitness once a month or maybe spread the fitness tests even further apart.
What I failed to realize was that fitness tests took a toll on my body and didn’t allow me to train properly for good three days after the fitness test. Setting too many fitness tests was just simply way too draining on my body especially and didn’t even allow me to get the maximum benefit from the training I was doing.
I’m somewhat older than I once was before. By that I mean I can’t just smash my body to pieces repeatedly with fitness tests and think that I can bounce back like when I was a kid.
I remember something that former XTERRA professional Dan Hugo told me. His season would be split into training blocks and racing blocks. During a training block, he would do no fitness tests at all. His focus was on getting the most from the training sessions and adapting to the training. During a racing block, he would race every week for 5 or 6 weeks and focus on recovery between each race and not do any key training sessions during a racing block.
Build A Fitness Base And Don’t Heap Quality Sessions Too Soon
When returning to intense training make sure that you add the intensity gradually rather than just heaping a whole lot of intensity on top of the long weekly mileage that you’ve already been doing. Make sure that the long miles that you do are at an even slower pace so that you can recover properly and adapt to your training or else you’ll just be setting yourself up for reinjury like I’ve been doing for the past year.