2 weeks of vacation ... how to get back to running

[Lezlie]

I think I need some advice from you. I had been on vacation for two weeks with no running at all. Before that I managed 8,5 km for the long run. Now I don't know on what distance I should start. Today I will do another 30 minutes run. That run is the fourth 30 minutes run (around 4,7 km) since the vacation.

Until 5th May I followed MY plan which relayed on JuJu's plan but with only 0,5 km steps every second week.

May, 5: managed 8,5 km!

May, 9: I did my run to our athletics training (2 hours), but did now cool down and we had to wait for one girl :/ muscels cooled down after immediately stopping running, no cool down, no stretching

May, 10+11: knee pain

May, 12: knee felt better, but due to time lack I could only manage a 30 minutes run

May, 13+14: again knee pain

May, 15: did a soft cycling training, almost no hills

May, 19: did the 8,5 km run again, but was a (little) struggle

May, 22: 30 minutes run

vacation time

June, 6: 30 minutes run

June, 8: 30 minutes run

June, 9: cycling up- and downhill

June, 11: 30 minutes run

Since that vacation I'm running too fast and because of that the heart rate is too high. But I don't really feel bad ...

So what would you do? I tend to do a 7 km run on Saturday to have a look how it is going on a long distance. I think the 8,5 km would be too much.

[UpTheStanley Graduate10]

I think you know the answer already, really - slow down and increase the distance bit by bit.

Personally, I wouldn’t expect a fortnight off to have much effect on me, might just need a couple of easy runs to get back in the swing of things, but I wonder if you are actually more worried about your knees?

[Lezlie in reply to UpTheStanley]

Yes, you are right, I'm really worried about my knees. Everything went so fine before that knee problem occured. I always think back about 9 years, when I trained for my first 10km race and afterwards I had to stop running because of knee pain. This time I started running very softly with Laura. I took a lot of time for the program to build up my muscels. Although I started with C25K already in March last year, I'm so happy what I reached so far ... uuhmmm, what I reached to the beginning of May. Maybe it's only a mental thing ... to be anxious to be forced to stop like 9 years ago?

So ... I will be patient again and build up the distance bit by bit.