Townshend Performance BLOG

Returning to running after a long hiatus can feel daunting. Whether your break was due to injury, life changes, burnout, or simply losing motivation, the good news is: you can come back—and maybe even stronger than before. But doing it smartly matters. Below is a guide to help you do that safely, sustainably, and with joy. Understanding What Happens During a Break Before diving into tips, it helps to know what your body may have lost (and retained) during time off: VO₂max (a

Quality and interval sessions need to be hard or very hard to be effective and easy/endurance days need to be easy! A mistake we often see as running coaches is when runners do all their runs at a medium or hard-ish effort. It's not slow enough to be restorative or boost aerobic capacity and yet it's not fast enough to produce meaningful physiological change. You just get good at running at that medium pace, and don’ get any faster. The first part of the equation is to run y