Fitness levels fallen off a cliff

MikeL93

I used to be a really good runner, I was a member of my local running team and I’d run on the roads 3 or 4 times a week and the rest of the time I’d either go the gym or go swimming. But then COVID happened and I ran 4 or 5miles on the roads every day for about 15 months until my knees just gave up on me.

Since then I’ve left my running team and only run on the road once a month if that, I go swimming 4 days of the week now, 2 days I’ll go the gym and one day I’ll have a rest day and just go for a walk.

I’m fine swimming and going the gym but if I try road running my fitness levels have just fallen off a cliff. Before COVID I would run 4 miles in about 27/28 minutes but now it takes me about 30/31 minutes and after about 2miles I’m just knackered.

Is this normal?

MattMattMattUK

MikeL93 said:

I used to be a really good runner, I was a member of my local running team and I’d run on the roads 3 or 4 times a week and the rest of the time I’d either go the gym or go swimming. But then COVID happened and I ran 4 or 5miles on the roads every day for about 15 months until my knees just gave up on me.

Since then I’ve left my running team and only run on the road once a month if that, I go swimming 4 days of the week now, 2 days I’ll go the gym and one day I’ll have a rest day and just go for a walk.

I’m fine swimming and going the gym but if I try road running my fitness levels have just fallen off a cliff. Before COVID I would run 4 miles in about 27/28 minutes but now it takes me about 30/31 minutes and after about 2miles I’m just knackered.

Is this normal?

Yes, it is what professional sports people refer to as "match fit", just because one is fit overall, does not mean it translates to a specific activity. If you ran three times a week for 6-8 weeks you would find your fitness came back pretty quickly. 

As an example during the lockdowns I was jogging and walking around 240km a week, I decided to buy a bike and though it would be easy, but I was exhausted at the end of a 20km bike ride, yet after a 20km walk and jog I would have not broken a sweat and would not have any impact on me, I could quite easily go and do it again. After a couple of months my fitness was built up cycling and I could go out and do 40km without getting tired out. Then I spent the winter doing nothing and my fitness fell off a cliff, rebuilding it now, but after a 10km jog now I feel more tired than I did after 50km during the Covid summer. 

Give it time, let your body get used to it again and you will be back where you were in a couple of months at most. 

DietIrnBru

The concept of fitness is often seen as detached from the actual job of living. When folk refer to it, its often in context of a fitness magazine type of thinking - how I look, how far I can run in x mins, my PB when lifting a weight that would not normally be required in any avenue of life.

Personally I find the obsession with running to be as unhealthy as that of weight trainers who push to lift weights beyond anything practically needed. It damages  a body that was never designed to be pushed beyond certain limitations.

It is about balance - perhaps mentally you cba with chasing an arbitrary time that kind of means nothing. If your fitness allows you go a run with friends and chat, climb up a hill without being out of breath, run about with the kids, keep a healthy weight that lessens the chances of diabetes, then thats good. Better than knackering your knees. 

Your body is like a car - maintenance is needed and it will never perform the same throughout life.

MrsStepford

Totally agree with @DietIrnBru. There are studies coming out now that show that compound exercises which exercise more than one group of muscles are better than cardio. Heart surgeon Dr Philip Ovadia MD says that cardio is not that great as exercise goes. Another study says 4000 steps not 10000 steps is good enough. Jogging is so Seventies. 

thara1996

Heya. 

There are a lot of cheaper fitness options to try in order to keep fit and save money at the same time. For example you can use a iPhone app to track your steps. Also you can trial a home fitness plan in question once a month. You can then go and alternatively purchase a fitness DVD to watch at home as well. Other fun but classic ways include a untimed nature walk and housework too. There is a lot of free exercise tutorials that are posted on YouTube to attempt. 

Walk all around the garden. Exercise your dog if you have one. Buy a cheap Fitbit. After lunch do some nice stretching and balance exercises using hand weights in the living room. Or do a full hour in the garden. Weed the pretty flowers. If you have a colourful exercise band use it for five stretching exercises once a day. You can try with a hula hoop in addition. 

Go on Amazon to see what you can find. Talk with a personal fitness expert online. Not everyone in Britain can afford to visit the town gym often. I cannot afford to install expensive indoor exercise bikes in my flat either. So I do exercise via other means and methods with other often more effective techniques. I used a cheap exercise ball as a motivational aid in lockdown three years earlier but once a day. Now that it is over I have signed up to a competition night each Tuesday at a indoor ten pin bowling alley.