how many days a week should you run?

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irishdancer23
irishdancer23 Posts: 172 Member
in Fitness and Exercise
i am just starting out running (and working out in general) consistently. i've been aiming to run about 3 days a week, but I'm wondering if I should be doing more. I don't want to overexert myself, but at the same time, I'm afraid that if I only run 3 days a week I won't be able to build my endurance and I won't see any progress.

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  • LadyOfOceanBreeze
    LadyOfOceanBreeze Posts: 762 Member
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    C25K Program is 3 X's per week so I am just gonna go with that:glasses:
    and best wishes for your success!!!
  • omma_to_3
    omma_to_3 Posts: 3,265 Member
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    3 days a week is plenty for a new runner, IMO. That's what I did, and still do. Some run every day, or 6 days a week, but that's for more experienced runners. I completed C25K in about 13 weeks instead of 8. I repeated weeks when I needed to.

    My schedule while doing C25K was run a day, walk a day, rest a day. Now, I don't have a set schedule, but I run, walk, and cycle. I still only work out about 5 days a week.
  • scottb81
    scottb81 Posts: 2,538 Member
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    If you are just starting out you will see improvement on 3 days a week. Add a 4th day if you want to but keep it real easy and short and if you feel any injury pains or extreme tiredness coming on then drop back to 3 days until you feel normal again.
  • runfatmanrun
    runfatmanrun Posts: 1,090 Member
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    As many as you want. I usually run 3 times a week and my endurance is fine. I am up to 12 miles and can go pretty quick. If you want to run more have at it, just listen to your body. If it starts to hurt scale it back.
  • michellekicks
    michellekicks Posts: 3,624 Member
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    You want to start with maybe 3 times per week. Once you're doing maybe 3 x 5k/3mi and recovery is fine, try adding a consecutive day. The rule of thumb, though, is that you shouldn't be adding more than about 10% to your weekly mileage... so if you start with 2 miles, 3 times per week, increase one run per week by maybe 1 mile at most, so you run 2, 2, 3... and the next week 2, 3, 3 or 2, 2, 4... does that make sense? It does take quite a long time to build up a good running base injury-free.
  • almostatgoalweight
    almostatgoalweight Posts: 234 Member
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    When I was running, I found it easier in terms of motivation to run almost every day. I started off slowly, the first day I ran 1 minute and increased it by 1 minute each day, up until 30 minutes a month later.

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