Runners - rest days?

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allierae14
allierae14 Posts: 167
in Fitness and Exercise
How often do you take rest days?

I know it is important to take at least 1 a week. Is there a particular way to schedule it to help prevent injury? I am relatively new to running and have been upping my runs mileage and would love to avoid injury!

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  • BeautyFromPain
    BeautyFromPain Posts: 4,952 Member
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    bump
  • babareeba
    babareeba Posts: 74 Member
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    I am a new runner too, and I am listening my body. My routine is to take every fifth week off. That is what work for me. And, I run only three times a week, two shorts and one longer run (in between I work out)

    This helped me to avoid injuring my knee which I had have surgically treated 20 years ago after I broke two ligaments skiing.
  • mummum2
    mummum2 Posts: 415 Member
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    Hi, I generally run on Mondays, Weds and Fridays, other days I do strength/weight exercises at home or the gym! bu this week will be running all week so will do long, short,, long, short runs i.e. from 3.8 miles to 6.4ish miles! I'm a bit restricted on time as I run during my lunchtime at work, the nice thing also is that we have showers which is so appreciated after a run! Good luck, but to be honest I would say you need to have at least one day off to help muscle repair!
  • LorinaLynn
    LorinaLynn Posts: 13,248 Member
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    Personally, on the road to recovery from a stress fracture, I don't like to run on back to back days, unless it's really light running (around 2 miles or less). Plenty of other exercises you can do on days you're not running.
  • allierae14
    allierae14 Posts: 167
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    Thanks everyone for your advice!

    Right now my max run is about 2.5-3 miles, at a 10 minute mile pace. I hope that one day this will become my easy run! Maybe today I will take a brisk walk with some sprints in there. I have two days scheduled for rest this week (days that I know I will not have time to commit to the pavement).
  • scott091501
    scott091501 Posts: 1,260 Member
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    I run 4-5 days a week. Of course I also swim and bike so.run exclusive folks may differ. I have one day that is entirely off.
  • allierae14
    allierae14 Posts: 167
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    I do supplement my runs with cross training of some sort (bike, horseback ride ect).
  • athensguy
    athensguy Posts: 550
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    I run most days. Sometimes I take a day off.

    I do Easy Pace on MWF, I'm starting to add in some speed work on TR or just Easy Pace if I don't feel like it, and a Long Run on Saturday. Sunday is the day I may or may not run.
  • Sweet_Pandora
    Sweet_Pandora Posts: 459 Member
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    I've just started back into running and have been running every second day 5 km and my long run on Saturday or Sunday is up to 8 km. I also do other workouts and try to schedule 1 complete day of rest a week.

    The best thing is to listen to your body.

    Karen

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