Scheduling Rest Days - How Often?

Paula Radcliffe run 7 days and takes the 8th day off before starting another 7 day cycle. I'm sure she does some sort of X training on that 8th day.

I've ran 76 straight days of at least one hour.

I vote for running EVERYDAY. Why? It keeps you from running your workouts too hard (knowing you still have to do 8 or 9 miles the next day regardless of pace) and it makes you run your easy days at the right pace if you want to feel good for your next workout.

I realize this, and there are a few other elites (Lagat, etc.) that schedule days off. At the same time, I feel that they are the minority rather than the majority.

Look at it this way. I take two 2 week breaks per year after the end of both cross country and track. Thats 28 days no running. If I take a day off every other week, thats 48 more days no running. Total days off = 96. Thats 27% of the year! I'm not being OCD about this, but I guess my point is that at some point taking all these days off from running has to impact your development. Maybe 24 days off (once every 2 weeks) is a better idea? For those of you that recommend a day off every 14 rather than every 7 what is your reasoning?

just another hobbyjogger wrote:

I've ran 76 straight days of at least one hour.

I vote for running EVERYDAY. Why? It keeps you from running your workouts too hard (knowing you still have to do 8 or 9 miles the next day regardless of pace) and it makes you run your easy days at the right pace if you want to feel good for your next workout.

Yeah I understand your argument. In some ways, I feel like the more you run the quicker you recover and the more resistant you become to injury. It seems somewhat counterintuitive, but I feel like I am usually most durable doing high volume and high intensity with my workouts in more minimal shoes. After a hard workout in flats, running 8 miles in trainers feels like a day off. That being said, I recognize the value in complete rest and have had injuries. That's why I'm willing to consider scheduling days off.

Talk to God about it.

But seriously, I try to take a day off every two weeks. It's good to get a full recovery day in here and there.

Phenom Man wrote:

Talk to God about it.

But seriously, I try to take a day off every two weeks. It's good to get a full recovery day in here and there.

Do you do every two weeks rather than every week because you feel like once a week is unnecessary?

speedstar wrote:

... I'm somewhat injury prone and have a tendency to run my easy days relatively hard...

You should probably start by learning to run your easy days easy...

I run them easy, or more specifically within the range that McMillan prescribes. I typically am on the faster end of the range though. They're definitely still "easy" runs.

If you're tired, rest. If you feel good, kill it. Free your mind and your legs will follow.

speedstar wrote:

I know that there are many threads on here about this and many differing opinions, but I just want to get a more personal answer.

How often, if at all, should I schedule days off? I'm somewhat injury prone and have a tendency to run my easy days relatively hard. Would scheduling a day off every week be a good idea? The thing is that while I've noticed a rest day helps me for the run following the day off, the day after a run I feel the same as I did if I didn't take a day off 2 days earlier. I've also got injuries running 6 days a week, just because I take 1 day off doesn't mean I can't still bang myself up in one workout the rest of those 6 days. So what do you guys think? Rest day every week, every 2 weeks, or not at all?

I think you'd be better off learning to keep the easy days easy. Find someone slower to run with -- someone who will tell you to slow the fsck down. You need to learn what an easy day should feel like.

A day off is not a day off...it is no running. Running pounds the body day after day and a recovery day is not the end of the world and keeps you fresh. Get in the pool or get on the bike and save the impact of running 1-2 times a month. 2 weeks off after the season is also recommended.

You should try to finish most of your runs feeling as if you could have gone faster or longer if you had wanted to. Also, finish your workouts in such a state that you know you'll be able to run tomorrow. Doing these two things will pretty much guarantee over the longterm that your body holds up better.

I do not think you should schedule off days. You should rest when you need to rest. Putting it on a schedule is highly arbitrary and reflects simply a guess of how you might feel, rather than how you actually feel. How you actually feel is quite a bit more important.

You need to take it easier. Saying that you don't feel much different after one day off is a further indication that you need to look at the bigger picture. The answer is probably not that you need more days off, but that you need to run more bearable speeds/distances in all your workouts.

Or maybe you need to do something else different. We don't know your full history.

My official answer is that you should not schedule your off days. Assign an order to your key workouts, maintain volume, make sure you go into each workout feeling good, and only take a day off when you need it.

most people emphasize the work portion of training too much, and give short shrift to its equally necessary rest portion.

it's just not sexy talking about rest.

from my experience, results are more productive when rest volume increases at a greater rate than work volume.

e.g. running heavy-workload doubles, then resting 40 hours until the next double. consistent, heavy-workload doubles every other day, accompanied by two-nights rest give you a challenging dosage of work and--importantly--complete, full recovery.

fitness strongly ascends, and injury and fatigue are minimized. running doubles everyday and resting the same amount as you did in jr. high is unreasonable--you cut short the growth period. that's the whole reason you do all this stuff--to get faster. two workouts and recovery time every 24 hours is not sufficient for full growth and recovery, and is just a cyclical habit people have because 24 hours is a convenient cycle used back when you ran one run per day--run & rest in equal doses.

as i said earlier, giving yourself an increasingly greater rate of recovery time (e.g. 40 hrs rest) allows for the full growth and recovery of the body from a cumulative 3-4 hours of demanding work, less incidence of injury, and a steeper fitness ascendancy curve.

more hours of rest allows for harder and/or longer workouts.

This question has so many potential answers. How often should you take a rest day? Well, that depends on how you're feeling day to day, how slow/fast you do your recovery runs, if you're injured, sick or healthy.

I found when I ran faster on my easy days (6:00-7:00 pace) and when I killed my workouts, I needed rest days or I would "burn out" (while running 50-70 mpw)

As I slowed my easy days to 7:00-7:30 pace (generally... sometimes slower, rarely faster), increased my mileage dramatically (90-100) and ran more within myself on workouts, I almost never need a day off now.

So it totally depends. I think it takes a long time to learn and experiment with this to get it right for yourself... but I am a big proponent of less days off, more mileage and dramatically slower easy days when you are supposed to be recovering.

Once a week (usually every Monday) I will have a day where I run whatever I run at 8:00 pace (maybe 4&8, 6&6, 5&7, or just 7 or 8 with no double). This seems to work for me as a recovery day and is certainly better then a day off every week.

Like you, I also take 2 weeks off in spring and fall, and I also will take a day off here and there if I'm very sick (maybe once a year), peaking, or if life gets in the way (rarely, but does happen).

Somewhat related... I have found that the best approach to getting better is to run as much mileage as you can at a slow pace, and then have the pace come down as you get fitter, rather then run fast for lower mileage, and then bring up the mileage but at the same training pace.

i.e. rather then run 50 mpw at 6:30 pace and then add 10 mpw every month, but keep running 6:30 pace, run 100 mpw at 8:00 pace and let the pace drop naturally over time to whatever your now increased fitness allows it to.

Amazing that it took me years of training and listening to guys like Malmo to realize this.

speedstar wrote:

I'm somewhat injury prone and have a tendency to run my easy days relatively hard.

The thing is that while I've noticed a rest day helps me for the run following the day off, the day after a run I feel the same as I did if I didn't take a day off 2 days earlier. I've also got injuries running 6 days a week, just because I take 1 day off doesn't mean I can't still bang myself up in one workout the rest of those 6 days. So what do you guys think? Rest day every week, every 2 weeks, or not at all?

I have left in your quote above, the things I think you said that are answering your own question or at least giving yourself some good clues.

More straight forward here are my suggestions:

1) Have a purpose for every run you do and execute it to achieve that purpose. Some days your purpose will be recovery and you have to make sure you are running easy enough to accomplish that. If you run your easy days relatively hard like you stated, than you are failing to execute the purpose of your run. Have the discipline to state a purpose and execute on that purpose. That is a key fundamental of training.

2) If you do #1 than I think you'll find that you can run every day and will reap significant benefits from that.

It is likley your problem with injuries stems more from an improper stress-recovery cycle than it does whether or not you are taking days off. If you fix the stress recover cycle (i.e go hard on your stress days and easy on your recovery days) you'll find you can be much more consistent and handle more work, both of which will help you run faster.

For more on this I have recently written a blog on this subject:

Here is an article on recovery. it may be very helpful to you

http://www.runningmanathletics.com/articles.htm

Regina Jacobs doped and took days off. Rest is good.

I've tried it both ways, I built up an 18mth streak a while back, but I'm running better with more rest.

I usually take friday off, I find it really pays off in the pace I can sustain on my weekend long runs. And as it's at the end of the week I could always run to make up the mileage if I need to.

Knowing you only have to run 6 days out of 7, or whatever, takes the pressure and stress away if you can't fit in a session or really don't feel like running.

As always, different things work for different people- experiment and see what works for you.