Cross country running and rest days?

lisa91263

I came to running late in life started at 44 years old. I ran for about a year 5 days a week and had to stop due to an unrelated shoulder injury. I have just started running again, cross country, some hills, avg 5k 4-5 days a week and once a week 4-5 miles. My question is how important are rest days? I feel like I could run 6-7 days a week and I am not going for speed or in training for anything So are rest days truly needed. My concern is I dont want to end up with stress injuries but I have been keeping this pace for about a month now and feel fine. I would love to hear from other runners what are your thoughts about rest days?

CarsonRuns

There is no hard and fast rule. You have to listen to your body and rest when you feel like you need rest. If you are doing mostly easy aerobic running, you won't need as much recovery time as you would if you were doing higher intensity running.

If you are running 5 days a week now, add a six day for two weeks and see how you feel. If your legs start to feel beat up, back down to 5 days for two weeks, then go up to 6 again for two weeks. Ease yourself into it.

Personally, I only take 2 to 3 rest days per month and some weeks I will run a double on a couple days. I had to build into that type of volume though.

lisa91263

thanks sounds like good advice