Rest Days?

Today on our run, the issue of how many days a week runners should run came up. The traditional "wisdom" you hear seems to be that people need at least 1 rest day per week, if not more, so that 1 day is full rest and another has you doing some sort of cross-training. But then two of my buddies who have serious running relatives (collegiate athletes) said their relatives don't really have running breaks, so I decided to look it up and see if there was any scientific information out there, based on studies. It turns out, there's not much out there because it differs so much from person to person, and based on how experienced a runner you are.

There's a guy named Matt Fitzgerald who writes for Competitor whose stuff I really like. He's the author of several running books and his stuff is just really informed and well written and based on fact rather than hearsay. He has two articles that I found interesting on the subject of how often to run: Running 101: How Often Should You run? and Ask the Experts: Do I Need a Weekly Day Off? The gist of both is that you can run lots without a problem if you've worked your way up to it and your body allows you to without injury. That makes sense. I know when I first started running, I couldn't run more than every other day without making my next run SUPER hard. I recently experimented with adding a day of running in so that I was running Monday, Tuesday AND Wednesday, and had no problem. (I've done it only twice now.) I'm excited to see that my body really IS becoming accustomed to the sport of running, which I used to think was not possible.