Listen to Your Body

“Listen to your body” is an interesting term. When folks say “listen to your body” it just means, don’t kill yourself training. Personally I think it is a lot of bull. If you don’t train hard enough you will never get your personal best. Sure, there is a risk of injury but running injuries are close to inevitable. If you keep listening to your body and heed all the time, you will never train hard enough.

Listening to your body is nothing but realizing how your body responds to a certain amount of training. It is not how you feel before the run. When you on the 16 week program, there are often times you don’t want to run on a certain day. If you heed to that, you will never be able to comply with your training plan. Listening to your body is to observe how your body feels during and after the run. Are you really sore during the run? Is the training program so hard that you cannot really run the entire distance during training? Are your muscles stiff or sore for more than normal? Have you caught a cold several times during training? If the answer is yes for a few weeks in a row, you might want to modify/change your training plan.

Personally, I never advise anyone to run with a cold/cough. It is okay to take a day off from the training schedule and go a little bit easy on your body. The more you run on the cold, the longer it takes for you to recover. The training program tomorrow says 2k * 4 repetitions at 3.55 minutes per kilometer and it will be good to do all 4 repetitions within that time. It will be nice to have a training partner who can push pace especially tomorrow.