Running every other day?

Question

My HS cross country team runs every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday... Should I run on my own on Tuesday's and Thursday's or will it not affect me? I do want to have those runs benefit me in some way, I don't want it all to go to waste. I am also running a 5k this upcoming Saturday and I just now started (on Monday) running since track ended (May 23).. Do you think I will run okay?

Answer 1

It would be beneficial if you do some easy runs on Tuesday and Thursday - it will improve your aerobic capability and help the recovery. But, if you feel tired or muscle/tendon pain, then rest.

Answer 2

If you are running on Mon, Weds and Fri...I don't recommend you run on Tuesday and Thursdays.  Your body needs to rest and recover and your muscles need to recuperate! You will perform better if your muscles are allowed some resting time.

Instead..if you REALLY need to exercise on the Tues and Thursdays..how about you do a more gentle form of exercise such as swimming?

Also..before your race...make sure you eat lots of carbs the night before. Drink plenty of water before the run on Saturday as well.

Answer 3

You need some down time between runs for your muscles to get stronger.If you do decide to run in between triaining keep it to short sprints.This causes different muscle reactions than cross country runnning does.

Answer 4

You probably want to be running at least 6 days a week.  5 can be ok too.

Depending on what your team's workouts are on M, W, and F, you should be supplementing them on your own.  Is your team doing a very long run?  If not, you should look into doing that.  Most programs have a long run that eats up about 25% of their weekly miles.  

The people telling you that you need to rest every other day are just wrong.  You shouldn't be doing hard track workouts every day, but recovery runs will help your body recover and still give you some benefits in conditioning.  You should be able to do an easy 4 or 5 mile run the day after a hard workout.

As for your 5k, I doubt you will have your best race ever, but you should be fine.  I would treat it as a tempo run.

Answer 5

you can run in tuesdays and thursdays if you want to because your body doesnt need that much of a rest each week. if your coaches told you not to then dont but if they didnt say anything about running on those two days i would say run, because on my team we run everyday and we have one day off each week and some girls do light run that day.