360: Getting Back on Track: Returning to Running After Time Off

In Episode 360 of the Real Life Runners Podcast, we dive into strategies for making a successful comeback after an extended break due to injury, surgery, or life circumstances.

Kevin shares his personal experience of returning to running after hernia surgery and outlines three key points for a successful return: extending your timeline for return, listening to your body, and not neglecting strength and mobility exercises. 

Throughout the episode, we stress the importance of meeting yourself where you are, adjusting expectations, and ensuring progress without rushing the process.

04:03 Kevin's Journey: From 100-Mile Race to Hernia Surgery

06:45 The Road to Recovery: Extending Your Timeline

15:34 Listening to Your Body: Navigating Pain and Progress

23:06 Effort-Based Training: A Gentle Approach to Comeback

26:00 Personalizing Your Comeback: Listening to Your Body

33:11 The Importance of Strength and Mobility in Recovery

37:58 Embracing the Journey: Meeting Yourself Where You Are

41:04 Reflecting on the Comeback Process and Future Goals

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Transcript

0:01

This is the Real Life Runners Podcast, episode number 360. Coming back after time off. Today, we're talking mostly to Kevin. We're going to talk about how to come back to running after an extended break. So maybe that break was for injury. Maybe life got in the way, but we're talking about coming back to running after. An extended period of time off. So this is not, you know, you miss a week of training and we're talking about coming back after a while. So for those of you that maybe this applies to fantastic for those of you that, you know, are thinking to yourself, well, I'm, I've been consistent for a very long time. This doesn't apply to me. I still want to encourage you to listen to this episode because there's still going to be plenty of things that you can take away from this episode that is going to help you with a lot of different things, both the mental and the physical aspects of your training. And also it's just kind of fun to hear Kevin's story coming back after his hernia surgery. So if that sounds interesting, stay tuned. All right. Welcome to the show, everybody. Thanks for joining us. If you haven't yet, please take a minute, pause this podcast and, uh, do me a favor and leave us a review over on Apple podcasts or on Spotify, whatever you're listening to us on. When you leave a review, that's a way for you to say thank you to us for creating this content for you for free every single week. And, Because when you leave a review, you help us reach more people. And really that is our goal with this podcast. The whole reason that we started this podcast and that we've been doing this podcast since 2017, 2017, Kevin, I know we're at episode 360, 600 or six and a half years of this podcast. Um, we don't. Have any ads. We don't have any sponsors for the podcast. We do all of this just, just for you, because we want to spread good running information out there in the world. There's a lot of junk out there, as I'm sure you know. So if you appreciate what we do every single week, A great way to say thank you to us would be to leave us a review over on Apple Podcasts and that would just mean the world to us. So thank you in advance for those of you that actually take the time to do that. We really appreciate it. Yeah, that's a good one. Also you tell a friend because you probably know which one of your friends might actually have a chance of listening to a podcast. You have non podcast friends. You have podcast friends. Share with your friends and say, Hey, this might be a good one. Uh, this one's going to be a lot about me. So maybe not this one. Cause then I'm going to feel all awkward and super subconscious on this one. Yeah, maybe you do have that. friend that has kind of taken a break from running. I know this one might be a really good one to share. So this one might be a really good one to share. Or maybe you have that friend that's like, uh, like that sees you and says, Oh, I really wish I could do that. Right. I really wish that I could run like you run or something like that. Maybe this would be a good one for them as well, because our goal is to inspire more people to make healthy changes in their life. That is really the, the goal. Underlying deeper purpose of all of this is to help people live healthier lives. Yes. We want you to become better runners. We want you to get faster. If that's what is important to you, we want you to be able to run longer, but ultimately we want you to be healthy so that you can go out and live your life the way that you want without limitations. And so if there's anybody in your life that is feeling limited by their bodies and like by their health, send them one of your, one of your favorite episodes from our podcast. Like pick one that you think would apply to them. You have 360 to choose from. So there's probably something that would apply to them and send it to them. And maybe you never know, you know, that one little share could change somebody's life. I know that we've had so many people reach out and tell us how this podcast has changed their life, which is amazing. And it like so humbling and that's just, that's our goal, you know, is to help us. To reach more people, we would be so appreciative. So today, let's talk to you, Kev, mostly. Um, we wanted to do an update. I know that some people have been reaching out and asking how it's going after you had your surgery. So, for those of you that maybe are not familiar with Kevin's story, a little background. Kevin ran the Daytona 100 in December and completed his first 100 mile race. Now, the cool thing about this story is that he does not have a running related injury. Okay. So I want to just kind of put that out there. Kevin had a hernia, um, has had a hernia for at least five years before this race and stubbornly did not want to go get it fixed. And so after the Daytona 100, he decided, okay, it's time to get it fixed. Like it had gotten to the point where it. It needed to be fixed before the race, if we're being completely honest. Um, but obviously running that 100 miles did not make it better, um, by any means. And so he finally decided, okay, if I want to continue running these ultra marathons, which you do. Yeah, that's a plan, but the pain afterwards was so awkward and uncomfortable and it was pretty clear that it was, it was the hernias problem. Yeah. So, I mean, it. You could say that the running, um, exacerbated the pain. The running did not cause the hernia, um, but it definitely didn't make things better, okay? And it worsened things in this situation. Surprise, running a hundred miles, you know, made a hernia worse. So, anywho, long story short, Kevin got surgery. He had surgery on March 18th. And he didn't really want to have surgery because obviously whenever you have Any sort of surgery you're gonna have to change your training, right? You're gonna have to take some time off probably even if it's just a few days if you're having like a very minor surgery Um kevin's he had to take off weeks. He had to take off. Um extended amount of time So let's talk a little bit about you know, what? Are three of the things that we want you to keep in mind. Cause yes, it's Kevin's story that we're going to talk about here, but we want to apply this to you as well so that you can gain some benefits. So we kind of broke it down to three things that we want you to understand if you're coming back after an extended time away from running or your fitness routine. Yeah, no, that's a, that's a good way of looking at it. I mean, my, my comeback actually was even longer because post surgery had this time off, but between race and surgery, I was not. Effectively running like nowhere near what I was doing before. Like I was run walking for 20 minutes a few times during the week. So compared to running 60 to 70 miles a week, going off and run walking for a mile and a half is not really doing much. Like I was drastically detraining. So one of the things, the first kind of jumping off point that we're going to go for that kind of applies to everybody when you're coming back off of a big gap here is stretch out your timeline. To return like the timeline to return to normal planet being longer than you expect. Yeah. And this one I think is the foundation and that's why it's number one that we wanted to talk about here because I also think it's the one that most of us don't like either. Oh, it's the worst. It's the worst. Right. Because we want like after a time off and we're, when we finally make that decision or, um, Maybe for some people it's a decision. Maybe for you, it's, you know, actually having that surgery and like doing the thing That's actually going to help lead you to get better. Yeah, you're like, okay great now I just want to get better right like now I just want to get back to where I was before and oftentimes if we're trying to Speed up our recovery it leads most people to doing too much too soon and that can lead to Setbacks along the way it can lead to you know, you know Making the situation worse. It could definitely lead to just not progressing the way that you want to and so the key here is to expect it. To take twice as long as you want to, and that is really, really hard to swallow, especially if you're somebody like me, because when someone, if like one of my things is, you know, call it a, let's, let's call it an endearing quality, um, about me is that if somebody challenges me and tries to put a limitation on me, I do not like feeling limited. Freedom is one of my core values. And so I don't like feeling limited. And so if somebody wants to limit me. I'm like challenge accepted. So an example of this would be when I get in the car and put a destination into my GPS maps, and it gives me an ETA of when I should be there. I say, challenge accepted. And my goal is to beat that time. I don't think you're alone in that. I think that a lot of people think that the GPS is, is a suggestion to be, um, I don't know. Defeated. I think is the way to put it. I do see that. Even like Matt, you can ask our, our youngest daughter when we're driving to, uh, like her Irish step dancing workshops. She's like, what's the ETA? I said, well, it says that we're supposed to be there at this time. But I think I'm going to be able to shave at least three minutes off of that. Yeah. Whereas if we're trying to figure out how long it's going to take to get somewhere, I like to plug it into GPS and then add five minutes in case something, you know, Makes it take longer than it should. And then if it's a longer distance, maybe even really extended, like if you're going on a lengthy road trip, like we're trying to stop bathroom stops, maybe traffic that an accident that hasn't even happened because it's two hours down the road. And that accident has not even taken place yet. So it should be a four hour drive, but when you get caught in an hour of traffic, this is why when you're trying to come back from whatever the Really stretch that timeline out because. There's going to be setbacks along the way. If you've taken off an extended period of time, it is really unlikely that this is going to be a perfectly smooth, linear progression on the way back. Yeah. Because your brain still gets in the way, right? Like we still have the, these thoughts that are making us push harder because we want to get back to where we were. Or there's just other things that come up, right? Like healing is often not, whether it's. It's physical healing, mental healing, whatever it might be. It's not often a linear progress. It often looks more like the stock market. Yeah. And you're generally getting more healthy. That's a good, good, uh, metaphor there. You're generally improving, but not from one day to the next. And maybe you're like, all right, on my comeback here, I'm going to push a little bit more today and let's see, see how my body feels if I stretch out just a little bit and you overdo it. And it's a setback the next day, and it's not like completely derailing you, but it's just I'm gonna need an extra day of recovery. Maybe You know, three months ago, you could go out and hit that kind of workout, take a, an easy recovery day and then be back in normal the next day. And this time you tried to hit that workout and it just completely set you back. Now you need two days off. Yeah. And so if you expect it to take longer than you want it to, then you will be pleasantly surprised if it doesn't, right? Like you'll be able to kind of like wrap your head around this whole idea of like, okay, I'd like this to take. But I'm going to go ahead and say it's going to take me six weeks. And then maybe when you're back in four or five weeks, then you're going to be pleasantly surprised, right? Cause you kind of plan for those hiccups in those roadblocks along the way. Even if you don't know what they are yet. Yeah, exactly. I think one of the things that gets in the way of this one of this whole length in your timeline is people like. a race to help them come back. And so it's like, all right, I'm going to come back off of this gap and I'm going to sign up for this half marathon. I'm going to sign up for this big thing that fixes your timeline. Like you have a timeline, you know, and maybe you set that race far enough out in the future that you already did lengthen your timeline. You've got the ability for, for hiccups and setbacks along the way. But if you don't. Yeah, that's a really good point. So it could be helpful if you do set that long enough out there. Yes. Yeah. But most people don't do that. Most people totally try to shorten the timeline and then make it work and kind of like shove Yeah. Your training into this shortened timeline. Like, you know, you like someone that's trying to fit into like skinny jeans when they were 14 years old and your body's completely changed since then. Like it just doesn't work. I can wear my jeans. Yeah. I didn't talk about you. Okay, fine. I said other people, other people, other people, I don't know who fine. Um, but people have had that experience, right? Where you're trying to put a bigger thing into something smaller that doesn't fit anymore. Yeah. I mean, my example was going to be trying to fit a normal 12 week half half marathon plan into also come back from injury. Also come back from extended time off, right? You're not at the same starting point. Well, there's two different things that you're trying to accomplish at the same time, which doesn't usually work, right? Are you training to optimize your race? Are you training to get back off of this extended time period? Doing both is going to cause a problem. Right. So tell us a little bit about your experience with your timeline then, like after your surgery, give us an idea of like, what did the doctor say? And then what, where was your head in that process of like the timeline that you are going to give yourself here? So the doctor said I could, let's see, I had surgery mid March and he said I could run in four weeks. He said you could run in a couple days, but he doesn't really, I, this is the thing with that. I had the issue that I have with a lot of doctors is US for some clarification. Well, because you're not like most runners, right? And this is the thing, like what I was trying to help your, your surgeon understand is like, he runs a hundred miles. That's not normal. Like when a lot of people think, Oh, I like, yeah, sure. You can get back into cardio and running. And they're thinking people are going to run a couple of miles, like one to two. That's what he actually said is you can get back to, to, to easy cardio. And I think he imagined maybe some like run walking. I think he actually used the term you can jog around a little bit. Like maybe I spend some time on like a, an elliptical on a bicycle and a variety of things. And there wasn't technically this major limit that he put on me. Right. Because the major limit after your surgery is weightlifting, right? After hernia surgery, there's a. Five week restriction on lifting any sort of heavy weight, which makes complete sense but for most people going out and doing some light cardio is Fine, but like we said that's kind of a walk or a light jog for most people But you have a different definition of running than most people do and so that's why I think it's important for you to align Those definitions with okay. Well, but what am I actually allowed to do? Like what's is there anything that How do I know when I'm overdoing it? And I think that that's the, really the big. And he really, the problem is it's a, it's a big subjective gray area that is varied from one patient to the next. And so he really tried to clarify that surgically, there's not an issue, especially once I was cleared to lift weights, that there's not a restriction on my ability to run. He goes, the problem is when you run, it literally builds up, pressure inside of your abdominal cavity, and that might feel uncomfortable. And it feels, it feels so uncomfortable that you are in pain throughout your entire run, you're not going to want to do it. He goes, it's not that it's, that you're literally hurting yourself, but it will be painful. You're not going to cause an issue because you're not lifting weights. The pressure is not so great, but It's going to be painful. So you're going to want to ease back in. Yeah. And that really is going to lead into step two that we're going to, our second point that we want to talk about here, which is listen to your body. But before we jump into that, did you have a certain timeline in your head? Cause there was the five week lifting restriction, but like, what kind of timeline did you give yourself coming back after surgery? I didn't make a fixed timeline. Like I didn't say I have to be doing this by this date. I had things that I wanted. I wanted to be able to go out and run for like, I forget, I was like, if I could just run for 20 minutes, if I could run a 5k by like Easter and that gave me like two weeks, that would be awesome. That would really suggest that I'm coming back nicely. I did not at all do that by that point. I was still run walking because as soon as the first day that I tried to get out there and go from walking into jogging, it was super uncomfortable and like stabby, uncomfortable and not like, Ooh, that feels like some uncomfortable pressure. That kind of feels like a side stitch. No, no, no. That kind of felt like a knife in my lower abdomen is what that felt like. And that was too much. Like, I think the doctor did a decent job of explaining that you're not really restricted up to your own level of pain, but you can decide how much pain you want to go through. And I was still in lifting restrictions at that point. Like, once I cleared lifting restrictions, I was like, okay, I've really fully recovered from this surgery that I can lift So the pain that I'm feeling is not going to tear anything. So, if I can kind of overcome that pain, and I think part of this is really just getting used to some, you know, level of discomfort, because it had been months since I had any sort of running discomfort. Like, the last time that I had uncomfortable from, How much I was running was December. Like I hadn't run any decent distance at any sort of speed since December and it was now late March. So that was, that was a long time. So I was hoping a couple of weeks and I'd be running and it took me about three or four weeks before I had like, I could actually consistently run three, I think it took me a month. But what I'm hearing from you here is that you really had an open ended timeline. It wasn't like, I have to be doing this by a certain date. It was really this open of like, I hope to be doing this thing, but I'm still going to listen to my body and do what I think is best. Yeah. I mean, that's the thing is what we've got for point number one and point number two really blended to me. I leaned a lot into our second point of listen to your body because I didn't want to rush it. Like there is a race out on the timeline that I would like to be able to sign up for and I was like Well if I could get to this point, you know if by June i'm doing this or by august i'm doing this then I'd be I would feel comfortable signing up But how far away was that? Race on the timeline. January. Right. So surgery was in March and this race is in January. Yeah. And there's a 9 month timeline. Yeah. So that's I think really important. Cause there's people that want to get back in three months into a race, like you said, because there's a 12 week training plan or a 16 week training plan. So let me just jump right into that. We're extend your timeline. Okay. Let you let your body have what it needs to heal because that's what's going to be the best for your longterm success. So many people try to rush this process and just try to ignore their body and push too hard. And it leads to not only setbacks, but possibly doing. Increase damage to your body so that you aren't going to be able to get back to where you want to be because you're going to damage something else or you're going to increase the damage that was at that site, whether it was surgery or maybe it was just an injury that did not require surgery like you can make things worse by pushing too hard and doing too much too soon. Or, you're trying to come back from surgery that's causing pain in one area, you're overcompensating by using muscles in a different area, and now, because I had this, I had the pain in my right knee in college that screwed up my running form and then suddenly caused pain in my left knee. And it wasn't that the right knee was better, it's that I screwed my form up and tweaked my left knee in the process of doing this, because I wasn't I wasn't fully able to come back from that particular injury. I wasn't prepared. I tried to rush everything. Yeah. So when we get into listening to your body, you know, there's two main things that I see often when people are coming back after an extended period of time. Number one, people ignore their bodies and push too hard, right? That's I think more common. And then the second thing is that people are afraid. To get hurt again, so they maybe don't push themselves enough. Maybe they kind of baby themselves a little bit. So then, but then there's like this weird thing of they don't want to get hurt again, but then they're also upset that they're not making progress. Right. And so it's like this kind of double edged sword that a lot of people are experiencing. Yeah. That's a tough one. Yeah. So what do you think is kind of the best way for you to understand how to listen to your body? Because I think this is one of those things that is confusing to a lot of people because it's The question arises, you know, is this pain that is okay for me to push through, or is this pain that is telling me I should slow down, I should stop, I should, you know, scale back things, like how do you determine the difference there, or how did you determine the difference there? I mean, I think part of this is, Um, is it, is it like an acute sharp pain? Like I've heard you talk to so many people on our, on our cross country team of, well, what does the pain actually feel like? When does the pain come on? And does it come on when you're running and, oh yeah, after, after 20 minutes, I suddenly get a sharp stabbing pain here. Great. And then when you stop, what happens? Oh, then the pain goes away. Well, maybe you're just pushing a little bit too much. If you can run to a certain point and then. Then suddenly the pain comes on. And as soon as you stop running, the pain goes away. Running is clearly the direct cause of this. And maybe you're just overdoing it and you're, you're going too aggressive. If there's just sort of like this low underlying pain, that's more fatigue is you're just trying to build back. And. Man, I did not realize how much I had lost from Literally from December to March like pre surgery how much I had lost because part of getting back into it wasn't just making sure that the different You know incision sites on my abdomen felt fine But I was just so much more tired so much faster like that was part of it And so I'd go out and run and the next day I'd be sore, but I wasn't in pain I was sore from pushing myself. It's just that what What was now pushing myself definitely had not been pushing myself in like November, December before like the the injury really came to be too much. Yeah, and that really goes back to the reminder of not to compare yourself even to previous versions of yourself. Oh, but that is so hard because You know, previous versions of yourself. It's you, like those are always in your head. So you head out on the run in all likelihood, you're doing the same loops and trails and everything that you've done before, you know, how long it should take you to do that. And suddenly you're doing it five to 10 minutes slower and your heart rate's higher and the comparison just shows up immediately. And you're like, okay, yeah. But that previous person didn't have this injury. They didn't have this setback. They didn't have this time off, like whatever the thing is. I had three small incisions in me. I'm trying to picture women coming back off of a C section. That's a massive thing. Like, I don't, I don't understand how you can make a comeback from this. We women do it all the time. This seems absurd. Yeah. Yes. It, it, it kind of is right. But this is, thank you for acknowledging that. We appreciate it. But so kind of going back. To this idea of listening to your body. This is where effort based training is really, really important. People want to jump right into, okay, what pace should I be running this at? Or what training plan should I be following? I would argue against all of that, especially at the beginning. I, and I would like to kind of have a discussion with you on what you think about this timeline. But to me, effort based training is really just a way to How hard does this feel? Okay, on a scale of 1 to 10, how hard does this feel? And most, if I should say, I'm just gonna say it, all of your training, especially at the beginning, needs to be done at L2. Like at level 2 3, it needs to feel easy. You should not be pushing yourself More than like a level three out of 10 at the beginning. When you're first coming back, the question is, don't do that. Okay. The question is how long should this last? Okay. This whole idea of just building an easy base of training, because I think this, I'm wondering if we agree on this or not. We probably don't. What do you think? Because I don't think you should be doing any sort of speed work if you're coming back after an extended period of time, especially if you're coming back after any sort of injury or surgery. All right. We definitely disagree on this because when you're coming back, you're going to be so limited on mileage, at least in my case. So I was suddenly at my weekly mileage was Less than a third of what I was used to. And so since my mileage was so far reduced and I'm trying to come back into it, lot more of my days felt closer to L5. It's not that I felt like I was pushing myself really hard. It was just because I felt like I was so out of shape for myself. It seemed a lot closer to L5. So, was it L2? It was, it started as L2. There was like an awkward uncomfortableness, but it quickly slid into 3, 4, 5. This is why I kept taking walking breaks for so long, because I was trying to keep my overall effort lower. But, after the first week, I had days where I was like, alright, it can't all be the same. So I'm going to make sure that I keep taking walking breaks. And when I run, I'm going to slide up into three. And then as I go, I'm going to let that three drift into four. It's not like I went from standstill to five. I just kind of felt out how does my body feel as I kind of push a little bit more on the accelerator with a firm cap at L5. And it made me feel smoother because I wasn't, I was running more fluidly. I wasn't trying to hold myself back and really feel L2, but I made sure that I was taking extended walking breaks during that. Right. So overall, would you say that your run was like around an L2, L3? Like, if you had to average out the whole run. Yeah, sure. It's in, it's in the three to four range then. Okay. Yeah, like three, because I was bouncing between two and five. Honestly, I was probably, I was bouncing between walking, so I was bouncing between one and five. So, yeah, three would be the average. Okay, and how long do you think that that should last? Depends on what you're coming back from. I agree. Like, I think that that's a huge thing. Like, are you, are you coming back from injury? Are you coming back from life got in the way? And so I haven't been running much at all. Super, super inconsistent for the last three to six months. And I think it also depends on what you like doing as well. There are some people that love L2 and, and don't really like speed work. So if that's you, if you are someone that just loves L2 and you do not like speed work, don't do speed work for the first few weeks because the goal is to Get back into consistency and if speed work is something that's going to throw you off because you're gonna be like I don't really Want to do that speed workout. I don't really want to push harder stay at L2 until you mean until you build that base of Consistency for a few at least I would say at least three to four weeks I mean, if you, if you really like L2, yeah, stay there for a good four weeks. There's no reason to rush back into speed. There's really not. Because you've, you've got time to get the speed back. You're gonna be okay. If, if L2 just feels like you're so painfully slogging around out there, and that's mentally? Was the challenge is I'm like, my pace was so much slower than my pace used to be. Even when, like, once I had progressed to the point that I was just, so I was, I was past the point where I had to take walking breaks because it was, it was too uncomfortable that I was running three straight miles. It was so much slower at such a higher heart rate than it was four months earlier that it was driving me nuts. So I'm like, all right. That sounds like a good mental exercise. And, and on some days I took the mental exercise, but on some days I'm like, I can't, this is already difficult physically. It's L two, but still physically, I'm putting myself out there and it's, it's uncomfortable. Even if it feels overall easy effort, it's still, there's still some uncomfortableness with running, you know, did I let more things slide into three? Probably. I probably let a lot more things slide into three at consistent pace. But on days where I'm like, I've got to just push a little bit so I can feel like I'm floating more. I went to five, but I took way more walking breaks than he needed to. And I gave myself that I'm like, okay, if I kept myself at five, but consistently take walking breaks, I'm going to enjoy the comeback. And. I think that's super important. I think you have to enjoy the process. So listen to your body, check in with your mind also, because it can't be miserable the entire time. That's brutal. Yeah. I mean, you're totally right there. Because if you're just miserable the whole time, you're going to want to stop. You're going to want to quit real quick. Because there's only so much willpower and mental, Like toughness that we have out there. We need to be enjoying some of this as well. Yeah. So, you know, throw on some music, throw in the podcast that you like, find whatever you need because consistency is super important at this. It's how I got you consistent in running. I gave you workouts that you liked. Absolutely. And so. Kind of going back to that one point that you made though, depending on why you needed time off, that's really important here too, because if you had a running related injury that led you to need to take time off, it is important that you not introduce speed work too quickly, okay? So especially, let's just think about this. do an example. If you have an Achilles issue, a calf strain or something like that, it is not a good idea to get into speed work because that is going to put increased stress and increased strain on that injured tissue. So if you are still in the process of rehabbing that tissue, if you are not 100 percent healed in that tissue before you start running again. Do not do speed work. It is just going to set you back. Okay, even if you love speed work and enjoy it, this is one of those times that you're just going to have to swallow that and not do it. Because it's just not a good idea. All right. So this is going to be way too broad of a question, but how do you ballpark when you are capable of starting to introduce speed work? It's too broad of a question for sure, because this needs to be done on an individual basis. Hopefully you all are working with a professional in your area, a physical therapist that can guide you on this. Um, this is one of the things that I help a lot of people with, like inside of our group coaching program. That's what I assumed the answer was. And it's. I have to ask them more questions, right? Like that's really what it comes down to is I have to ask them more questions. There's not, in my opinion, good general guidelines. And I think that general guidelines are what get a lot of people into trouble. On this. It seems like general guidelines are super dangerous of, well, as long as you've made it to six weeks. Oh no, that's going to be a problem. Right. And so there's, there's. You know, a big part of it is how much can you run without pain, you know, at L2? How is that compared to where you were before? I just keep hitting this microphone So if you guys hear like a bonk during this the episode, that's what it is Because I talk with my hands. Yes, you do. Hashtag Italian. So, um, There's a lot, there's a lot that goes into it. Um, you know, are you still doing strength exercises? How far can you run? What kind of pain is it? Like, when does the pain come on? There's a lot of other things that go on here, but I would argue that you should be able to run at an easy pace without pain before you start to introduce speed work. The question is for how long? So I arbitrarily chose three miles regardless of how long that took me. I chose if I can run as slow as I need. for three miles without needing a walking break due to pain, then I can also introduce L5. Mm hmm. And I introduced L5 before I did anything else. Yeah. Like, I'm not going to be like, all right, now suddenly, let's see if I can do L9. Yeah. And if you ran that by me, I would have approved it. Excellent. I, I asked you questions along the way. You did. Like, we, we've done this enough that I, I certainly am very far from a doctor, but I've, I've listened to you work with so many people in our program that I kind of have an idea of what it is that we're going with here. And if anything came up, I knew exactly where I had the answers to it. I asked you questions along the way. You did. For sure. I was just joking. I did not make you write me a plan. That was not going to happen. No. All right. Well, and that's something to be said too, is You know, having a plan versus not having a plan. I mean, I guess that's a discussion we could get into, but I think having a plan is helpful as long as you're willing to abandon it due to acute pain and instead of abandon, I adjust. Yeah. Yeah. We don't, we don't necessarily want to abandon the plan, but we do have to be able to adjust along the way. Like fully accept that any particular day where it's like, all right, well, Wednesday's a speed workout and you start it and you're like, Nope, not at all. Like, I mean that, that quick to shut down speed days when the acute pain shows up. Absolutely. Yes. All right. Let's move on to number three. The third thing that we want to talk about if you're coming back after time off, and this goes for every single person in every single circumstance, no matter why you took time off, do not. Forget strength and mobility exercises. This is an absolute must, especially if you're over the age of 40, you need to be doing strength and mobility exercises on a weekly basis to make sure that you're rebuilding that strength foundation before you. And as you rebuild your running foundation. So talk a little bit about strength and mobility. Cause I know this is one of your favorite things. Okay. So this one, this one drove me nuts because my biggest restriction as we covered already is the doctor said I could start cardio. But I couldn't lift anything like I couldn't actually do strength and like the main area that I would want to do strength on to make sure that I was back and ready was my core. And those were the specific exact exercises that I couldn't do coming back from abdominal surgery. So as I started running, I'm like, well, this is uncomfortable. And whether I figured it out myself, because sometimes I can actually think these things through, or I asked you the question, the answer to how do I fix pain in this area? was some core exercise that I was not allowed to do. So as soon as I was allowed to do things, I immediately started nice and smooth, not overdoing it, because man, I wanted to overdo it on this, because I'm like, I've lost so much strength because I have not done strength on core because it made my hernia awful. So I have not done that since. mid December. And so I've really lost a lot of strength in that area and still feels uncomfortable. It still feels like strength and stability in that area is my main limiting factor when I go out and run. Like I ran six miles this morning and my main limiter is discomfort that I know I can fix with strength because of where the discomfort is. Like it's, and it's single leg exercises. It's core exercises. It's, you know, a mobility routine that's helping, but ultimately I need to build the strength back up and that takes time. Yeah. So what did you do when it, when it came to Your your mobility. Let's look at mobility first because it's true that with your surgery, you were limited with which kind of strength exercises you were allowed to do or that you should do. But what about mobility here? Because that was something that I think that you focus on more than you normally Do or did before surgery because you realized how important it was well I mean the mobility exercises really were what got me from like October to the starting line because things were not ideal at that point And so I just kind of went back to some of these things like sidelining like clamshells Without any sort of weights on it. And I'm like, okay, wait, that's, that's too much right after surgery. So what if I just stand here and hold my dresser and just swing my leg out to the side and that felt okay. And it felt like that was honestly, that was helpful for me. What if I stand here and put one hand. to balance on the dresser and just try and lift my legs. So just standing in place, marching. Now, can I do it without holding onto the dresser? And at first I'm doing them pure mobility. So I'm stabilizing myself on the dresser and just trying to really increase the range of motion of my hips. Can I move my leg like across the front of my body? Can I swing my leg forward and backwards while stabilizing myself on things so that it was just mobility, not mobility and like really light strength work. Um, so. Those were some of the big things that kind of just got me able to, to move. There were some lunges that you had me do. I don't know if lunges is the best word for it because I couldn't actually put my foot on the ground and lunge into it. So it was lunges with my foot on like a chair. Yeah. I put all the way up on a chair and then lean into it. Well, those are really good mobility exercises for your hip. Yes. Right. So one of my favorite mobility exercises is runner's lunge and specifically a twisting runner's lunge and you couldn't get yourself into that position. Oh God, no, not even close. So by putting your foot, your front foot on a chair, it opened up more motion for you because it was a modified version of it. It was, it was meeting yourself where you were. It was just super funny because you would demonstrate it. And I'm like, there's not a chance. Like it was uncomfortable to see the position you were taking. I'm like, all right, but what if I put my foot on this two foot tall chair? Like that's how, how much of a extra adjustment I needed is my foot was two feet up in the air while trying to do the lunge. Yeah. And that's fine because I think that's a really important point. So if we're going to add a bonus point here, and I guess this is kind of What ties everything together is meet yourself where you are. We want to so often jump so far ahead of where we are because we want to get back to where we were. We want to belt buckle. We want, we want to get ahead, which is such a great thing. That's one of the things that makes runners so awesome is that we constantly want to improve and challenge ourselves, but it's really, really important for us to understand. We need to meet ourselves where we are so that we can, um, Hold our own hand and, like, bring ourselves along for the journey instead of, like, trying to jump ahead and kind of leave old you behind. Sometimes it's nice to hold your hand and keep me from trying to run too far ahead on the journey. Sometimes that's helpful. Sometimes it's helpful when you have somebody else there to kind of help you. really in a little bit. It's really helpful. And sometimes just post surgery, you needed to hold my hand just to get me out of bed. This is all sorts of hand. That was when the physical training, uh, physical therapy training definitely came in handy. Once I remember. Because that first night I like totally had a big. Like brain block and was like telling you to do things that you should not have been doing. It's fine. We made it out of practice. We made it through as a team and we're good. And there, there are belt buckles in the future, but I have not signed up for any race because if I'm not sure yet of the timeline, it's not progressing as, as fast as I hoped I am enjoying the comeback and I'm not doing, I'm not trying to rush anything because I want to make sure that I'm coming back. Smoothly. Yeah. And I think that that's the other question that I would really encourage you to ask yourself if you are coming back is what's the rush, right? Like, what is the rush? You think you want to get back and I want to run this half marathon. I want to run this marathon. Why does it matter if you wait a couple more months? Why does it matter if you choose a different half marathon or marathon or wait for that same if there's like a very specific race you want to do? Why not just wait till next year on that one? And it's like, well, I don't want to. But why? Right? Like, what is the rush that we all have sometimes? And I ask myself this question as well, okay? So this is definitely not me on a high horse by any means telling you, you should stop doing this. Because I ask myself these questions every single day, every single week, definitely. I ask myself this on almost every run. But what's the rush, right? Like if we can do things in a healthier way so that we can improve our performance, but also do this in a healthy way, there's a lot of runners that do things that in the name of performance that actually sacrifice their health in the process that actually sacrifice their wellbeing. Let's do both. You know, let's get stronger and healthier and improve our performance, even if that means the timeline is a little bit longer. I mean, you've summed up, I think we said that a couple episodes back, your strongest and healthiest self is your fastest self. So if the timeline takes a little bit longer, because some people are like, but I'm getting older, I'm going to slow down. Sure. But the strongest, healthiest version of yourself is your fastest, even if that self is six months older. Like, it's still the fastest version of you. Yeah, exactly. Anything else that you want to add about kind of your comeback thus far? It's taking longer than I wanted. And, as long as, like, but I'm still seeing Overall progression. I think one of the things when you're coming back and we kind of skimmed over this of taking things too easy, almost babying yourself is it's, it's trying to find that balance of, I don't want to just put a race on the thing on the schedule and say, all right, I've got to make sure that I knock off these things so I can be ready for that race. Even if that race is pretty far out and you seem like it's going to be safe to get there, but also without anything on the horizon. Yeah. You can always say, Ooh, it feels a little bit uncomfortable. Maybe I should just not make a big progression from one week to the next. Like I know what I was doing a few months ago. So I am still trying to make a gradual progression from one week to the next to head back towards that. Even without a race on the timeline, seeing some step of improvement, because you could stagnate really quick on this comeback unless you are consciously looking at it. I don't have a full plan written out for myself, but I know what I'm doing from one week to the next. I'm like, something needs to increase every week. Everything doesn't need to increase, but something has to increase. Am I going to add a little bit of speed work? Am I going to add an increased strength? Am I going to increase my overall mileage? Like something has to get tweaked from one week to the next so that it's still gradually building. Yeah. Because we always want to maintain that. Principle of progressive overload. That's what I'm going for. Yeah, absolutely. All right, you guys, if this episode is helpful, please share it with a friend, share it on social media, um, share the love so that we can help more runners understand how to train in a way that's best for them. And as always, thanks for spending this time with us today. This is the Real Life Runners Podcast, episode number 360. Now get out there and run your life.