I’ve been sick this last week. Cold/flu – felt miserable, no energy and didn’t do a thing. Not even a walk. Every day I’d get up and tell myself today was the day I’d at least go for a walk, but no, nothing eventuated. Just sat around like a vegetable.
This morning for the first time this week I felt like doing something, yay, and then I started to think and worry about how much fitness I had lost in the week. It’s a hard task to build fitness. It takes consistency, hard work and dedication, and the urban myth I had heard was that particularly women lose half their fitness in the first week of non training. What does that even mean, half what of their fitness? Cardio fitness, muscle fitness, strength fitness or all three and then some.
I hit the research button and read many articles on the subject. There is unanimous agreement that there will be a loss of fitness mainly in the cardio area but research shows that in the first 14 days it’s neglible. One of the articles published by https://runnersconnect.net/losing-running-fitness/ talks about a 5km runner who is running the distance in 20 min (so not me) after 7 days of not training running the distance in 20:10 and after 14 days of not training in 21:05.
I can live with that. I run at snail’s pace anyway so that is not too bad. Just means I’ll go a bit slower but it would appear I will still be able to cover the distance.
Bring on the week. Back to the joy of exercise and the happy endorphins that follow.
Have a great week everyone.