Taking a Break from Running Can Make You Come Back Faster and Fitter
Whatever the reason you need time off, sometimes it leads to big benefits.
Taking a break from running can feel both exciting and worrisome. On the one hand, you can take that rest you’ve needed after, say, pushing your body through months of marathon training. And you can take time to enjoy the holiday season without adding to your stress levels. On the other hand, how could you possibly stop running? It’s the sport you love, after all.
Well, hear us out for those who are anxious about hanging up their shoes for a bit: You can gain real benefits for your body and mind when you put a pause on mileage for a little while. Heck, even elites do it from time to time! Remember when Des Linden — former Boston Marathon champion and Olympian — posted on X (formally known as Twitter) that she hadn’t run a step for a full month, and instead said she was “growing a sofa on my ass!” If she can do it, you can too.
To give you a little more context, we turned to experts to explain what happens when you take a break from running, including the benefits you can gain and whether you’ll lose serious fitness. Plus, how to make a strong comeback when you’re ready to lace up again.
What happens to your fitness when you take a break from running?
While you may not give up all exercise completely, if you do, you can expect some changes. After just a few weeks of little to no exercise, your heart starts to show significant signs of detraining, according to a 2018 study on marathoners published in the Journal of Applied Physiology.
But a month isn’t that long and if you were running regularly before, you can bounce back fast. “If you take a month off, it will take you about a month to get back to where you were,” says Polly de Mille, exercise physiologist at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York City. Think about it this way: You get a month to ride out this year, and another month to ease back into exercise at the start of a new one. Sounds pretty nice, right?
Of course, when most runners take a month off from running, they don’t melt into their couches. If you keep active in other ways, you will still keep your fitness. “Most of the research shows that three sessions a week at at least 70 percent of your VO2 max — whether that’s swimming or biking or an online class — is going to do a pretty good job of maintaining your aerobic conditioning,” says de Mille.
So if you take a break from running to give your body time or to restore your motivation mentally, you can easily maintain most of your fitness by doing some cross-training. This is even easier if you were already cross-training while also running.
One more caveat: While aerobic fitness starts to decline in seven to 14 days, muscle loss typically starts to occur in as little as three days, says Krishna Curry, outreach and marketing manager for Girls on the Run and contributing coach at RUNGRL.
“What’s important to consider is what your training looked like before you took a break,” she says. “If you’ve been training intensely over the past several weeks, you’ve put a lot into your tank so it’s not going to be as fast a decline as somebody who wasn’t that consistent with their running or who was a lot weaker to start with. And you’re going to adapt a lot faster when you come back to training.”
What benefits can you gain from taking a break from running?
A short break from running may serve up exactly what your mind and body need. Remember, effective training that results in positive change requires stressing your body—but too much stress can result in a lack of progress.
If you’re stressed about work or say, you’re planning a big event like a wedding or family reunion, layering that stress with high-intensity training (i.e. running), can put you on the road to overtraining and burnout.
“At this point, we’re not recovering the way we used to,” says de Mille. “There’s only so much we can take.” If you sense you need a break from running, then take care of yourself and take the break. The time off can help you assess the stressors you’re experiencing and how to best handle them.
Plus, a pause is an opportunity to set new goals. When you’re following a training plan, it doesn’t leave a lot of time for things you know you should be doing. Forget about mileage, and use a break to develop other areas of strength that you normally don’t have as much time to focus on because you’re racking up double-digit miles, says Curry.
“You can build your strength, do core work, zero in on mobility — things that will make running easier when you do get back it,” she says. You may not be running, but you’re shoring up all the weak links.
“Now’s the time to address any compensations or imbalances you’ve been coping with so you can rebuild yourself properly,” Curry adds.
How do you ease back into running after taking a break?
When you are ready to get back to running, ease into it. “Don’t assume that it’s like tapering for a race and when you come back, you’re going to be even more fit,” says de Mille.
You especially need to be respectful of the orthopaedic stress of running. “There’s nothing quite like the impact that you experience when you’re running, so if your tendons and muscles haven’t experienced that sort of eccentric stress in a while, your cardiovascular system may be way ahead of your musculoskeletal system in terms of readiness to go long or work hard.”
Sure, you’ll probably be excited to get back to it. But don’t feel like you need to make up for lost time. “It’s really important that people map out their plan beforehand so they can stay consistent,” says Curry.
Look back at the weekly volume you were maintaining before your break and pick the bare minimum — a healthy volume of running that you can maintain without inciting any injury, she says. As a general guideline, go for about 50 percent of the mileage you were running before you took a break, especially if it was two weeks or longer.
Then, Curry typically starts by adding two to three kilometres per week. Or you can follow the guideline of adding only 10 to 15 percent each week.
Just make sure to “lower your expectations for what you’re going to do when you go back,” says de Mille. “Be patient with yourself and listen to your body.”
