aches

[El Gordo]

I'm sure you're right Sweder, but I'd add that most of us underestimate the value of rest (which is related to the recovery stretching and the dip in the sea that you mentioned). My running has been a bit sporadic recently and to be honest I haven't suffered too much from these aches and pains. But including today, I've now run 5 days out of 6 and guess what? My legs are really aching this evening. Obviously a lot depends on just how hard you train (not usually very hard in my case) but I think we need to force ourselves to take a day or two off more often. Tomorrow for instance I was looking forward to teaming up with the running group again that I came across last night, but after this evening's run, and bearing in mind that I have to do my longish run on Friday this week rather than Saturday, I'm having to force myself to take a rest instead. We tend to get paranoid about taking two days off in a row but I'm increasingly finding that a run after a 2 day break is much stronger than the others. I've even read training advice that states that over-40s shouldn't run on two successive days

The other thing is the usual reminder about reassessing your shoes from time to time. A lot of injuries are blamed on surfaces and overtraining when the wrong, or worn, footwear is to blame. Probably not relevant to SW in this case, but worth repeating.