More Than Our Story

How Often Should I Run?

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How Often Should I Run?

Should I run everyday? The short answer, no. Physical considerations like your age, health, fitness level, running experience need to be taken into account. Additionally, personal considerations need to be factored in as well, things like demands on your time from your partner, children, job and other extracurricular activities, as well as mental considerations. How badly do you want this? The following can help you determine what’s the right frequency for you:

Beginners

If you’re new to running or returning from injury, you should limit your running to one or two days a week. Focus on building your strength and endurance through walking a few days a week, in addition to running. Remember to stretch thoroughly before and after each session, and remember, your body needs at least one rest day per week.

Aim to start running one day per week as a beginner, or two days if you already do a lot of walking.

Intermediate and Advanced

If you’re a more experienced runner, three to five days a week is a good target. Adding cross-training to the mix is great way to increase your overall fitness and conditioning, and make you a better athlete. Supplemental exercises can include swimming, walking, cycling, resistance training, or any other physical activity. As always, remember to maintain at least one rest day per week, and as many recovery days as required. Listen to your body for signs of overtraining, as your continued progress relies upon it.

If you’re an intermediate or advanced runner, three to five days a week is a good target.

Elite

Running close to everyday brings with it associated risks of overtraining and repetitive use injuries. Only if you have the time, fitness, and your body can handle it, should you consider running six or seven times a week. If you’re older, this probably won’t be for you, as we age we recovery more slowly.

Only elite runners should consider running six or seven days a week.

Rest Days

Your body needs time to heal and recover. Make sure to incorporate rest days at least once a week. Rest days reduce the risk of overuse injuries, burnout, and over-training. Rest is also crucial to strengthening your muscles. Not just physically beneficial, rest days are also good for your mental recovery.

Recovery Days

After intense exercise days, recovery days are crucial. Keeping your body moving helps with circulation, which assists with healing your sore muscles. Recovery days are not intended to build fitness, so keep any exercise to a very low intensity. 

Running Tips

Running Frequency

  • Beginners: Start with 1 or 2 days a week. Walking in between will start to improve your fitness.
  • Intermediate: Three day a week should be sufficient. Add in additional cross-training to continue improving your overall fitness.
  • Experienced: Up to five days per week. Adding additional strength and flexibility training will keep your body in good shape under these more demanding conditions.
  • Elite: Only if your body, mind, and life can handle it should you consider running more than five days a week

How Can I Improove?

  • Timing: Take it slow. Make sure you have enough time to experiment, race day is too late.
  • Testing: Add a short, easy run to your weekly program for a few weeks. If you feel good, keep it up. if your body gives any signs of struggle, pull back.
  • Step it Up: Once your body gives you the green light, gradually increase the distance every week or so until you’ve matched your other days.

Listen To Your Body!

  • Rest Days: At least once per week. No running or exercising.
  • Recovery Days: Easy exercise to help you recover from more intense days.
  • Listen to your body. Be on the look out for overtraining. Common symptoms include excessive fatigue, lingering muscle soreness, bad moods and a lack of motivation.
  • Don’t push yourself too hard. Building up you running ability is a marathon, not a sprint.

SOURCES

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Daniel

Daniel is an extremely curious person, a wealth of random knowledge and facts. Extremely passionate about a vast array of interests ranging from health to history, science to athletics, everything culinary and the list goes on. Trust us, you would want to be on his team for Trivial Pursuit. Daniel is also years into his battle with brain cancer. He experienced a seizure while on a Zoom call at work in late 2020 and quite literally, his life changed within minutes. After his operation he started to talk about his story but had always known it was more than just him. From then, More Than Our Story became a PROJECT that has evolved into the starting point it is today.

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Each month we focus on one aspect of the three disciplines, swimming, biking and running, and provide updates on our race season along the way.