My general schedule is broken down into lifting and runnign days. My rynning days vay between 3-4 and my liftiing 4-5. They kind of all depend on my schedule, weather, soreness, etc. But my usual week has 4 days of lifting and 3 days of running. If I feel I need a "day off" I usually only run 2 miler, enought ot say I did something but not enough activity to hinder me.

**Knocks on wood** I've never had an injury that has made me stop either running or lifting. I am in very good tune with my body and what I should (or should not) be doing. I do occassionly take a day off involoving NO structed physical activity. Usually these are the day after a big race because I push myself harder at race time than I do on my own. I know this won't work for everyone, but it works for me.

When I was training for my first half-marathon (exactly 1 year ago today!) I focused on my endurance and simply just getting my milage up. My training week usually saw 2 short runs (2-5 miles) and one long endurance run (6-11). Once every 3-4 weeks that long run day was used to as a new distance day. For example, 8 miles in August, 9 miles in September, 10 Miles in October (notice the trend ) It just happened the race feel in January.

Best advice I can offer you is to tune into you body and listen to what its telling you. I hope this or something this was helpful!

I find active recovery is best, easy bike ride/yard work/weights/swimming.  The active recovery helps remove the lactic acid and speeds recovery.  A all out rest day some times is good!

I rest on rest days. No weights. No running. No biking. Walking to work, or to a store on a rest day is not exercise per se.

If you don't rest, you don't fully recover. I'm so drained after weightlifting or my long run, it's difficult to do much of anything well the next day.

If I want to build and see improvement on my next run, I make sure I am rested. I have at least one rest day per week. Mostly it's two days every 8 days or so.

If you don't rest, you can overtrain, and set yourself up for injury. Then you are forced to rest for many days.

Rather than work out every day, I change things around. Run-weights-rest. Repeat. Other weeks I'll run three or four days in a row, rest  then lift, rest, then run, bike, lift.

If I've done my training properly (lifting and long run), I need to rest the next day, not because I want to, but because I don't really have a choice.

Rest days also make me want to get out and train the next day even more, because I'm not dog tired. I have much more energy.

My rest days are just that, resting. I usually walk my dog on those days, but I don't consider that a work out.

I've found that rest days are just as important as the other days because my muscles and legs have time to recover and rebuild the damage of previous workout sessions.

~D

Complete rest (as in doing nothing that raises a sweat) seems to be counter-productive for me. Gardening, a walk, cycle, strength, or a few short sprint reps at three-quarter pace seem to make the return to running easier.

Hello,

On rest days i easy bike and also stretch some, i try to be "busy" even on rest days but i dont do in excess.