Run every day!

[Bumblebee43]

I’ve noticed my mood is so much better on the days I run, thinking about doing the 5k daily. Does anyone else do this? I’ve read about the health risks, but surely that’s about just listening to your body?

[UnfitNoMore Graduate]

Some of running is about listening to your body for sure... sadly, the big risk would be muscle tears, and they don’t tend to talk much to us, sometimes you may get a pace or two’s notice.

As a new runner your legs are still conditioning to this activity... after at least 6, preferably 12+, months of running you can start to look at gradually removing rest days... but it needs to be done wisely to avoid putting the weekly milage up too rapidly. In general there’s a 10% rule for adding weekly milage, but it’s best not to add any when putting a new run day in, so you’d shorten a run, add another in and then after a couple of weeks start getting them back up to 5k.

Even after all of this process, running every day doesn’t suit everybody... and running the same distance daily can become a little tedious.

[Newbie59 Graduate in reply to UnfitNoMore]

So, I was running every other day up until week 5, weeks 6 and 7 I started having two days rest in between which was working fine for me. However, yesterday I did a long walk with a lot of ups and downs in the hills (around 8 miles) and I didn't do my planned run this morning as I just didn't feel up to it. I listened to my body! However, my body said it didn't wish to run tomorrow either and I had some wine tonight. So next run should be on Sunday morning, I will have had four days off including the walk day.

[UnfitNoMore Graduate in reply to Newbie59]

Sounds good to me... especially that bit about wine! You’ll have nice fresh legs by Sunday.

[Bumblebee43 Graduate]

Wow 6-12 months .. ok, I don’t want to risk injury! So I could so say a 20 minute run daily for a few weeks, then build back up to the 5k in 29?

[UnfitNoMore Graduate in reply to Bumblebee43]

Straight away? Not safely. Rest days will remain important... so if you’re running 3 times a week or every other day step one would be to get you to 4/7, and then you could go something like 5k, 3k, 5k, 2k... a couple of weeks like that and then you have 1 or 2k a week to add, so 5,4,5,2 then 5,5,5,3 then 4x5 is pretty safe. Run that for a while and you can think about going to 5/7... as again same total milage and then you can add 2 per week as you start at 20 (10% rule). Going from 3 to 7 days of running a week should take a few months to do... and that’s where listening to your body becomes important, some of us need at least one rest day... a friend of mine needs 2 but they’re OK split or individually.

Right now... if you have ambitions to try to go to daily running, you’d probably be best served looking to get a run up to 10k... following then plan on Bridge to 10k would have you running a 10k, 5k and 4K in the last week, which being a bit more than 3x5k would give you the ability to add milage a little quicker. Rest days suck... my wife hates them more than I do (and shes not a runner 🤣) but there’s plenty of ways to get an endorphin fix that will support your running.

I’d also start thinking in terms of distance rather than duration... if you do vary runs you can also vary pace.

[IannodaTruffe Mentor]

I cite this article runnersworld.com/runners-st... in the guide to post C25k running, wher I discuss running on consecutive days.

I would err on the side of caution, whatever you decide to do.