Long time no blog...

Too many hen dos, trips to Seattle, coughs, colds, work and holidays have meant I haven't blogged for ages. And the lack of blogging is reflected in the amount of running I've been doing. Anyway, I'm back now with renewed enthusiasm (if not fitness)...
So, what's been happening recently? Well, we did brilliantly at our fourth midweek league race and almost (but not quite) won the league and got promoted (that was quite exciting). Sadly I missed the Mob Match due to hot date with Christine Sharp at the exciting AGM at the Letchworth Corner Sports and Social Club. Probably the less said about this the better but I've had more interesting evenings!
I spent a week in Seattle with work, the expedia website was had a succesful (more or less) upgrade and I had a week on holiday in Somerset which was fun despite the nasty cough I took with me.
All in all, this does add up to not a lot of training. So, in true Lindsay style I decided to find out how quickly you loose your fitness.

According to this Runners World Article "Most runners can be completely sedentary for a week without losing much fitness. After two weeks, you’ll notice a change, and after three weeks of complete rest, you’ll experience a significant loss of fitness, leaving you feeling ‘untrained’. Five weeks with no training will cause a loss of race-readiness."

Time to run state that "After a long layoff you're bound to lose at least some fitness. A general rule of thumb is that it takes about two weeks of "retraining" to come back from every week in which you do no exercise."

Brian Mac confirm that "When training ceases the training effect will also stop. It gradually reduces at approximately one third of the rate of acquisition."

Eek, this doesn't look good for me does it? So why is this and what is it called?

I found an interesting post on another blog (I must try harder) where the blogger talks in more detail about this:
Reversibility
One of the core concepts of training is reversibility, which simply details that when a training stimulus is inadequate or absent then the physiological aspect it relates to begins to decline. Or even more simply, use it or lose it. As a rule of thumb it is thought to take between 2 and 6 weeks to lose a "significant level of conditioning".

Maximal oxygen uptake (V02 max) declines by 4-20% in 2 weeks

Endurance athletes have a 5-12% decline in blood volume in 2 DAYS.

In eight weeks the dimensions of the heart decrease in parallel with stroke volume. The left ventricle can decrease by up to 20% in 3 weeks

Maximal voluntary ventilation (breathing rate) can decrease by 10-14% within a month.

Oxygen uptake by muscles can decrease by 8-12% in 3 weeks

There are other stats from a variety of studies, but the main point is that 3-8 weeks of complete inactivity can have an immense affect on your level of conditioning. Even 2 weeks complete rest can diminish your hard earned conditioning by a significant degree.

Oh, and before I forget, here's a running and beer article from
Runners world which is somewhat related to my last blog post about beer and running.