Rest: As Important As Training

When I first started running five or so years ago, I got into a routine. Every weekday I would run three miles. I ended up getting ankle injuries every three months or so that would put me out of running for a couple weeks at a time. I consulted my sorority sister (who also happens to be a physical therapist), Becca Boone, and she suggested cutting down my running to three days a week. When I did that, the injuries stopped. In fact, I haven't had a real injury since, even though I have increased my running back up to five days a week.

There are two keys to staying injury free: building up slowly and resting. Sometimes resting is just as important as the actual training. That is today's TIP OF THE WEEK.

When you run, your body (and particularly your foot and ankle) is absorbing two and a half times what you actually weigh with each step. This causes stress on your joints. [Look for more information about proper running shoes that may assist in better absorbing this force in a future blog.]

In addition to the joint stress, exercise causes small tears in your muscles. This allows the body to build and condition those muscles and improve your performance and endurance in the future. But you need to allow yourself time for those muscle tears to be repaired.

The training plan has three workouts each week. I suggest you include a day of rest in between each of the workouts. Perhaps you run Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and rest the other days. I like to do my longer runs on weekends when I have more time, so using this plan I would run Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday.