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From: Paul Shields
Category: Coach
Date: 1/8/99
Time: 7:11:54 PM
Remote Name: 203.38.32.113
Ema,
You are certainly putting a high level of committment into your training.
Training involves a controlled process of breaking down your muscles and rebuilding them stronger. (This is a bit of an exageration but gives you the idea) Both the breaking down and the building up are important. The breaking down occurs during the training activity and especially on the 'hard' days whilst the building up occurs during rest and 'easy' days. If you don't have any rest or 'easy' days then your body will never have the chance to recover from the hard training and it won't re-build. You will also be more susceptible to illness and overuse injuries.
If you don't rest then you won't improve. This is why many of the training programs you have been seeing have rest days incorporated into them. I always try and get people to include a rest day but if you don't then make sure one of the days is very easy.
Over years of training our bodies adapt to the training workload. As this happens people become more able to recover and rebuild without completely resting. This takes years to develop and people like this often have several easy months after a hard season.
The short story is to try and take a rest day but if you can't then make sure the have a hard day/easy day regime and a hard week/easy week cycle so you body has a chance to improve.
All the best,
Paul
RunCoach - 1998 Index - 1999 Index - Discussions - Calculators - Tips