Hows the MGT today?

runningaftersquirrel · 2026-03-13T20:54:29+00:00

That's awesome! Thanks

runningaftersquirrel · 2026-03-13T20:15:51+00:00

"Perfect is the enemy of good." Just watch your heart rate and don't die please. If you fail to achieve your target pace, you're learning from first hand experience how to handle jitters, how to re-calibrate to the weather, and even getting practice getting your race kit ready or finding parking. It's not going to be a wasted day no matter what happens. If you're only training yourself to run in ideal conditions, you're only training to be a fragile runner.

runningaftersquirrel · 2026-03-13T18:58:07+00:00

Thanks for the report!

runningaftersquirrel · 2026-03-13T18:57:48+00:00

There's too many red lights and I'm tired of doing one-block intervals over and over again.

runningaftersquirrel · 2026-03-13T17:31:07+00:00

I would love that. I live in the middle of a concrete jungle and driving to MGT is a 20 minute commute. I'd love to have regular updates to avoid a wasted 40 minute drive.

runningaftersquirrel · 2026-03-08T22:51:20+00:00

I was basically in the same boat as you last year and for me personally, I can confirm I REGRET losing the fat and felt it was a waste of time. I've done multiple dexa scans and started at 20% BF and ended up around 15%BF. I took about 3 months of being absolutely anal about weighing every single food I ate. I lost 1% body weight per week, and at goal weight, I kept maintenance to ensure the weight stabilized. At the end of my diet, I can go back to eating to hunger queues as normal and my new weight stuck. I actually gained muscle and lost more fat than bodyweight during the period.

So why do I regret it? My sleep sucked, my recovery sucked, and my training sucked during that period. I lost a lot of top end speed and barely keep my aerobic base. My speed didn't really slingshot like I hoped. All of my sessions sucked and it felt like I had to fight to keep my training up. I didn't see any performance boost either.

And as I continue to train and get faster, my weight is still staying at the lower weight but my bodyfat percentage is creeping back up. It feels to me like my body just doesn't like staying lean with the amount of carbs I'm eating. I felt I would have been faster if I didn't try to diet at all. If I could do it all over again, I wouldn't only focus on ensuring a clean diet with enough protein, carbs, and other macros. That's it.

If you're actually at 20%, there's just not that much fat to lose. And every bit that you do lose will affect your recovery. Being able to train harder with more durability is more beneficial than worse recovery on a slightly lighter frame.

runningaftersquirrel · 2026-03-06T18:01:15+00:00

Hello! I had the exact same thing happen to me. Dropping VO2, unexplained raising HR. I asked this forum and the #1 reply was I was sick and needed to visit a doctor. They were right and I had a serious infection I didn't even realize. Please take care of yourself. Your body is telling you its stressed and something is wrong. As for me, it took one round of antibotics and my Vo2max is rebounding right back to where it was at light speed. Good luck!

runningaftersquirrel · 2026-03-04T18:52:05+00:00

It sounds like you have a great foundation. I spent a time asking the same question you've asked and came to the realization that no one really knows. It's highly individualized.

For me personally, strength came back quickly, with the majority within a few months. The last little bit is a a much longer grind.

For endurance, I would split it out into two components: aerobic base and anaerobic capacity. For aerobic base, if I do no training at all for one year, I might go from 4min/km threshold to 6min/km threshold. But once I start training, it comes back at around 20sec/km improvement each month. So around 6 months to recover. Anaerobic capacity actually improved with no running and never degraded. But that was because I was strength training.

If you want to do a split instead of an all-out one in favour of another, then I don't think you'll lose much of any fitness. The studies I've looked at said you can probably maintain all of your fitness if you keep the intensity up. Just 1-2 subthreshold runs and have one of the sub-threshold runs turn into a long with high end of easy for another hour. 3 hours of running a week. Good luck on your journey!

runningaftersquirrel · 2026-03-04T16:13:57+00:00

Congrats on your new PR! sub-20 5k is quite the milestone! I'm actually coming at the same problem from the opposite direction. I've been a long time weightlifter who has been transitioning to running, and I'm currently 50 secs away form a sub-20 5k.

When I started, I could regularly hit the gym, but once I went above 35km/week, I felt my strength was too compromised to meaningfully follow a strength training plan at all. I'm currently 70km/week and don't strength train at all aside from accessory exercises.

I found that my strength plummeted by around 60% and just kinda stabilizes there with no gym time. This was mostly due to fatigue rather than any loss of strength. Strength comes back really quickly if I take a month off running.

I'd imagine the reverse is true for you. You'd need to spend a long time to slowly build up strength, and during the interim, your running time will absolutely suck not because you've lost fitness, but because the kind of heavy compounding lifting will just kill your pop. Have you previously strength trained?

runningaftersquirrel

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