OK, after hardly running for the last 4 weeks due to THAT cold, during which time I had a picklehead week (last week I swam nearly 3X my usual weekly volume) and did only short easy rides (50-80k max), I was finally feeling well enough to start running again. Well, after a slow short slog on Monday (just trying to remember how to run), I had a GREAT run today at lunch. I did my usual lung&quad busting run, and I was a good 2+ minutes faster than usual. This is a tough 9k run, with two mile long hills, so I see a 2min improvement as major!
So after 4 weeks with only 1 run, and not much else but swimming, the fitness is still there, if not better. Just goes to show, it can take a while for the fitness to drop significantly when dealing with a cold, so stop worrying, and focus on getting healthy so you can run!
I don’t share your optimism. Experience tells that that a 2 week layoff takes me 4 weeks+ to make a full comeback. This time it’s 3 weeks off for me, so we’ll see. My first session back was today, in which I did a very short swim and slogged through a slow 4 mile run today… everything hurts (knees, hips, shoulders).
Right now I’m just hoping I don’t worsen the coughing, etc.
Hmmm… I used to believe that too. Perhaps my base is just better than I thought. It’s too bad your shoulder’s hurting, you could just swim or ride and skip the running for another week. I tell ya, running is hard on the bod, that seems to be the thing that kept my cold around (I’d try and run and get worse) but doing the other activities helped keep the fitness higher than expected.
