Like all things that require consistency, running has its ebbs and flows. Sometimes you’re training for a marathon and sometimes you’re lucky if you’re going out for a 5k run once a week.
When you’ve found yourself in a running drought, here are 5 key ways to get back to running after a break.

1. Create a Schedule

In the world of habit-building psychology, routine is crucial. Running, just like any form of exercise, thrives off of consistency. If you’re reading this, you haven’t been running consistently, but you’d like to. So, you need to rearrange your non-running schedule into a running schedule.

What does this look like? First, you need to identify the days and time of days you’ll run.

Let’s say you decide to run three times a week on Mondays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. Look at your schedule on those days. When do you have time to run? This may require canceling or rearranging certain tasks.

Let’s say I want to run Mondays and Thursdays after work. In my current schedule, I come home after work and cook dinner, wash up, then relax with a book or watch television.

Following my new running schedule, I will instead plan to run straight after work. For dinner, I’ll eat something less time-consuming, like leftovers or an omelet.

We all have the same amount of time in a day. Setting new habits means first understanding how you currently spend your time. Then, keeping that in mind, you must rearrange how you spend it to accomplish what is truly a priority.

2. Find a Running Buddy

Running with a buddy is the absolute best motivator. It requires you to show up, gives you someone to commiserate with, and makes the run very enjoyable.

I used to meet a former track teammate for runs in Central Park at 6 am every morning. Having that plan got me to show up for her – and for myself – even on the cold, wintery mornings I despised getting out of bed.
Every morning after the run, I was so much happier for having done it.

A tip on a good running buddy: it’s best if your running buddy isn’t someone you’re too close to, like a sister or best friend. You want your running buddy to be someone you would not feel comfortable canceling on.

That’s a good rule for any accountability buddy, whether for exercise or anything else. Use your buddy to motivate you!

3. Slowly Build Weekly Running Mileage

People get running injuries far too often for silly reasons. Patience is tough for runners or people with type A mindsets. WE WANT IT ALL RIGHT NOW.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t work with running. You have to build mileage with patience or soon you won’t be running at all.

What does slowly actually mean? There’s some debate about this among coaches and running professionals. Some claim to use the 10% Rule, which says that you should increase your mileage by no more than 10% each week.

Others say that you can increase your mileage faster than 10% at the beginning of a build period. Then, as you start to get higher in your mileage climb, use the 10% rule.

Beginners should get used to training a consistent mileage before increasing mileage. Run 3x a week with a base run of 1.5 to 3 miles and a long run of 3.5 to 4 miles. Once you’ve done this for a month or so, you can begin to lengthen your runs by half-mile increments.

A KEY CAVEAT: If you’re a seasoned runner of double-digit mileage weeks (like over 25 miles per week), and you’re coming off a break of 1-4 weeks, you do not need to start your mileage from scratch. Instead, lower your weekly mileage by 10 to 15 miles. So, if you were running 40 miles per week and took off a month, start by running 25 miles per week and build from there.

4. Mix Up Your Running Paces

Common sense thinking goes that to build back endurance, you need to be running for long periods of time. While that’s true, there are also more ways to build endurance after you’ve taken time off.

Doing short, high-intensity sprint training or medium length, medium-intensity running training is a great way to build back endurance while also focusing on speed.

Some examples of what this might look like:

• Running two steady-state days and doing one fartlek workout of 2 minutes on, 2 minutes off x 4
• Doing a 2 mile run and finishing with 20 second sprints on the track, with 40 seconds to a minute recovery
• Doing a Faster Leaner Stronger Full Body workout on the treadmill

Mixing up your paces and running durations will make the slog back to running fitness more fun.

5. Cross-train

A key to getting back to running is to…not run? Yep, that’s right!

A commonality about all these getting back into running tips are that your body – mentally and physically – needs to remember how running feels.

Running places stress on your joints. Without proper resistance training and a slow mileage build-up, you can even get injured.

To avoid these hindrances, cross-training will allow you to build up your cardiovascular endurance and retrain your brain for the mental strength running requires. Nothing reminds your brain better of boredom than 45 minutes on the elliptical!

Besides the elliptical, some other cross-training ideas are:

• Stationary or outdoor biking
• Lap swimming in a pool
• 1 hour of yoga
• 1 hour of Pilates

Interested in more cross-training ideas? Check out these posts:

• Eight Workouts For When You Have No Equipment and Limited Space
• Sweaty Outdoor Interval Workout
• 10 YouTube Workouts For When You Don’t Feel Like Working Out

Final Thoughts

Getting back into running shouldn’t be a chore or something you dread. If you’ve taken some time off, ask yourself why you did and what your reasons are for getting back into it.

I’m a huge believer in listening to your body and your life. If seeing other runners gives you a rush of envy and desire to run, then listen to that and get back at it!

But if you’re looking to running as a reason for self-punishment for not being “enough,” in whatever way you’re telling yourself that story, then I recommend rethinking a need to return to running.

Only when I started to approach running as a way of self-care did I truly start to love it. I hope you do too.