Extra Recovery - Without a Day Off

There are times in your training that you just "can not" take a day off but you are tired and want max recovery before your next run possible.  Examples of this might be if you have to keep a running streak alive or if you have a training week where your mileage is too high to miss a day of running. 

There are a couple of different recovery tricks that you might want to try and still be able to log miles. Try splitting your 8 mile run day to a 4 mile run in the AM and a 4 mile run in the PM.  That way you still get in the mileage for the day but the training is split into what is supposed to be two baby easy runs. Another really good recovery trick so you can get around 36 hours of recovery time before your next run is to run in the morning one day and the following day of training log your mileage at night. That way you do not miss any mileage and you max that recovery time without having to take a day off.  This trick works especially awesome by doing your Sunday long run in the morning and then logging your Monday mileage at night.

Those two options sound very simple, but you would be surprised how many times I hear of runners just slogging through the same mileage every single day at the same scheduled time of the day.  Weekly schedules are tough to re-arrange but maybe first try these recovery tricks in your Saturday and Sunday training schedule.  You will recover much faster and get rid of stale running legs.