As above I gave up after a couple of injuries and now seem ok starting back into it. I was running marathons in 3:15 odd, after 3 years training.

I am planning just to get back into it easily but am wary of going too hard, is there any perceived wisdom/experience on how to ramp it up? Currently 8 min miles are fine, only doing 4 miles so far. It’d be great to be doing 15-20 mile training runs by the winter. I suppose increasing a mile per week is an obvious route!

Take it easy, stick to the 10% more / week rule. Once you get to 6 miles without problems maybe start doing intervals / speed work.

Anecdotally stretching well on a regular basis helps keep the injuries at bay, no doubt someone will be along soon to point out there’s no real evidence it works. But it does, for me at least 🙂

I pretty much had two years off my best due to injury then illness. I’ve just been heading back towards where i want to be by picking interesting and hard routes and adding bits in next time i do it. I also finding i’m doing better by not repeating routes very often. It’s been a bit of a lesson to myself about what i want to get out of my running

@Molgrim I’ve been doing a bit of pilates/yoga for flexibilty and core strength and it’s helping my endless list of leg injuries. I can actually walk the day after running now

As mogrim says. 8 min miles is perhaps a bit on the quick side if you are thinking of longer runs, another marathon etc (common wisdom is at least a minute slower than marathon pace.) Also, you can’t go wrong with a bit of core work, depends a bit on how fit you are and what else you already do.

If you were doing 3:15 even a few years ago then you were pretty fit.

Running is easy and you just need to incorporate a few things.
Several daily runs per week say Mon, Wed, Fri of around 6 miles ish.

A longish run on Sundays (convenient as you may get some mates to run with for company) of around 30-45 seconds or so slower than you are running now. Dont let these runs be “slow” its a training session so I would suggest doing an 8 miler to start with then as you get more confident get up to around 12. Only do more if you want to do Marathons or if you enjoy them 🙂 If your mates are too slow do them alone they are a “training session” and too many people run them ridiculously slowly risking injury with no potential training benefit.

As above then insert either a Fartlek session or intervals/hills/races when you feel ready. Parkruns are good weekly testers. For me a few years ago my week would look like:

Mon: up to 10 miles circa 7mm
Tue: Intervals/track very hard!!
Wed: Easy run of around 6 or so 7mm
Thur: Hills/Intervals very hard!
Fri: depends on Saturday but no race as per Wed, if race Saturday easy jog up to 5m
Sat: Race or Fartlek//tempo
Sun: anything up to around 15 no slower than around 7mm

So vary your training pace, I seldom ran much slower than around 6:30 to 7mm even on steady runs and Sunday runs could easily end up around 5mm in the last few miles but dont be scared of pushing yourself if you are injury free, thats the fun bit 🙂
Try stretching if you want but to paraphrase Dave Bedford “they dont give medals for it!

Take it much easier than you think you should would be my advice.
I was running PBs over 5 and 10k for 2-3 years, got tired of the intensity of the training and took a break for a year.
Went for a casual 8min/mile run a couple of months ago over 4 miles and had to walk the last few hundred metres as my quads totally seized up…

Off road tends to be gentler, as does flat rather than hills.

+1 for the yoga/pilates and maybe some swimming to get things working again?

Two things that got me back running injury free (after multiple injuries probably down to over training)

1) build up mileage slowly and all at a very easy (almost painfully easy) pace until you get to your desired weekly mileage (before you even think about speed work etc)

2) every 3 or 4 weeks, have a cut back week when you drop your mileage down a little allowing your body to recover and absorb the previous 3 weeks running.

Cheers all, seems sensible.

My injuries were from not stretching so I plan to be better at that & foam-rollering. I’ll not go above 3 runs a week and just want to get fir enough to do halfs -> ultras eventually.

8 minute miles is VERY comfortable just now (barely need to stretch after) so I’ll keep it at that pace, up the mileage slowly and see hat transpires…I’d leave intervals until I had an event and plan for that.

Would still love to go under 3 hours, I suspect next year might be too early.

My injuries were from not stretching

Either that or not slamming your gonads in the door repeatedly post run. It works for me anyway I never got injured when I included that into my post run routine 🙂

I came back to running last year summer after a big break and a massive loss of fitness, although i was a lot slower than you.

I set myself a maximum speed and distance and applied that for about 6 months even though it felt easy and I had to force myself to slow down but it allowed my body to get used to the running. You lungs and muscles will adapt quickly especially if your fit from cycling. But the connecting tissues and tendons take the time to adjust and they heal slowly as well it’s not worth rushing in my opinion. Last time i came back the time to running I ended up with shot achilles due too much, too steep too soon.

I recently had a spell of 3 or 4 months where I wasn’t running much due to work/travel/moving etc. and when I started running regularly again I convinced myself that I had to take things easy so knocked back the pace on my tempo runs to and every single run seemed to be hard work. After a month of struggling I concentrated on making my tempo runs harder, once I was back to doing 5k at sub 19:00 pace then I felt much better during intervals and long runs.

Taking things easy on the short runs doesn’t help me – I need to do some running at a faster pace to stretch my legs and have a differential between running and jogging. It’s too easy to drop by default into the ‘marathon shuffle’ otherwise, but if you did a Thursday night 8 miler at faster than ½ marathon pace then Sundays run at slower than race pace feels like a jog.

So in direct opposition to most of the advice above, If I was in your position I would be concentrating on getting my existing runs back to my previous paces before adding any significant distance.

Either that or not slamming your gonads in the door repeatedly post run. It works for me anyway I never got injured when I included that into my post run routine

You don’t know what you are missing!