I’ve been running for several years, but have always had trouble making it a habit I could stick with.  I would typically plan to start running every other day, keeping the odd day for rest.  That would work until something came up on a running day to make me miss my run.  It would usually be some bad weather, or a scheduling problem.  Two days later on my next running day, after not running for several days, it would be so easy to skip, that I would end up falling completely off schedule.  After almost a week of not running, it was so easy to stay on the couch that I would end up a couch potato again.  Weeks would go by without my running again, and starting again was a huge undertaking. 

Then I found Running Every Day. 

If I committed to run every day, no matter how long or how slow, I would keep running and eventually get into a routine.  If something caused me to skip a day, no worries, I run every day so the next day, there is no question about “Is this a running day?” because every day is a running day.  I believe that this approach is the only way that works for me to keep running regularly.  

What about rest days?

Some of you may wonder, “How can you run every single day without injury?  Don’t you need to take rest days to recover?”.  That is the beauty of Running Every Day.  Since I run every day, if I feel like I need to take a break, or something unforseen comes up, I don’t have any guilt or problem taking a day off.  The next day I am completely back on schedule because I run Every Day.  I know, with my schedule, that I’ll end up with at least one skip/rest day every week.  I don’t schedule a particular day for rest, it just happens when it happens.  Weather usually makes me take a rest day.

Common Sense Injury Prevention

If I’ve been having a good week and running every day with great weather and no reason to stop, eventually I’ll start to feel like I need to change something in order to keep from getting injured.  Usually I’ll take an easy day, where I run shorter, slower, do cross-training or simply skip a day.

What about Back-to-Back skip days?

This situation is where you really have to be careful.  Skipping a day here or there is ok, but when you start to string together several skip days back to back, you may be at risk of losing your momentum.  Be gentle with yourself and simply remember to run Every Day, and you’ll get back on track. 

Don’t you get bored?

I keep my daily running interesting by changing my pace, route and distance regularly.  I keep working at gradually increasing my daily run distance or quickening my pace.  I don’t get bored.  If you start to get bored, change something.