With Chicagoland's unpredictable weather, falling behind on your training plan can be a common occurrence. Many runners often wonder if there is a way to "catch up" or make up for missed days.
Thankfully, you can still find ways to carefully add back volume and slowly close the gap between where your fitness is and where you would like it to be. You of course cannot go back in time and make up for the missed training days, but you can look forward and potentially add on extra miles to certain days. Additionally, you can consider increasing your running frequency.
The first priority is to get back on track to the original running volume you had scheduled before adding anything extra. Once you have a week or two of consistent running and you are back to your normal frequency, then you can look at days where you can add a mile or add a run. A simple method is to just add a mile to each training run you have planned going forward, especially on shorter mid-week runs.
Overall, you want to think long-term and over the course of a year, as these challenging stretches of weather will appear as a small bump in the road and don’t have to be the cause for dramatic changes to your training. Some Novice schedule examples are below, but the principles could be applied to all training ability levels.
The nice thing about missed runs is that they should leave you fresh and eager to tackle your training going forward. However, a common mistake is for runners to try to get it back all within the next run or the next week. This is typically a recipe for injury. Over time though, if you take a steady approach and increase gradually, you can eventually make up the cumulative mileage you missed and get your fitness back on track.
Have a training question? E-mail us at training@cararuns.org.
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