If you're new to running or you've been thinking about increasing your mileage, you may start thinking about maybe I should run every single day, but you're worried what's going to happen to me? Is it going to be a good thing? Is it going to be a bad thing? Well, that's what we're going to talk about on this episode of Runner's High.
If you like running or if you're new to running, especially hit that subscribe button, stick around for more episodes of Runner's High every Tuesday and Thursday where we talk about everything running. From should you run every day, what happens to your run every day or the other one from this week? How to do Yasso 800's and if you're like, What the hell are Yasso 800's of them, you can check out that video.
In any case, what happens if you run every single day and there's a lot of anecdotal experience from different people that have kind of talked about this, I'm going to talk about some of those things, but I'm talking about some of my personal experience and then also things that are backed up by data as well. So we're going to cover a broad range of things in this video, but I want you to know that the answer really is it depends. And that's why we have to cover such a broad range of topics because it depends on how you approach it. It depends on if you can recover and handle running, you know, seven days a week.
It depends on if you are doing too much mileage. If you're doing a moderate amount, you know, it depends on a lot of things. So none of these are the absolute truth in that it will definitely happen for you. But if you take my general strategies I talk about here on the channel again subscribe, stick around if you hadn't seen those.
If you take those into account structure your training appropriately, then a lot of the positives that I'm going to talk about is what you'll experience and you'll avoid a lot of the negatives.
So let's get on to the positive side. Let's start off on the right foot. Let's do the thing we want to know what are the good things that are going to happen? Well, some of the basic things that you would expect should happen, and that's you're probably going to get stronger. You're going to build some kind of muscle. Does that mean you're going to be turned into Arnold Schwarzenegger? No, especially not if you're just running long, slow miles, but you will build some muscle. And then there's also the potential to burn fat. I've seen this as a very common thing. If you run every day, you're going to lose all this fat. That is possible, but you have to remember you can't outrun your diet. So if you're eating more than you are burning, then you're probably not going to lose fat. It's also possible that you might lose fat and gain muscle at the same rate so that your weight stays the same.
But again, it depends. I'm not a dietitian, so this is a little beyond the scope of this video, but that is something that can happen, obviously positive if you can lean down a little bit. For most people, not if you're already lean, then don't worry about it. There's a whole other video I've done for you on should you be skinny to run fast? So again, subscribe to the channel here a minute, but more positive things that can happen. What are those?
The thing that should be common to pretty much all of us. And if it isn't, then that's a sign that you're probably going too hard or too much mileage. Is it your mood is going to improve.
And the reason is the namesake of this show Runner's High.
So when we run, when we do this cardiovascular exercise and especially when we do it consistently, there are neurotransmitters, these chemicals in our brains that are released and make us feel better. I wanted to say feel happy, but that's a whole other philosophical conversation about what is happiness. But generally, you're going to feel better. If you feel terrible, you're probably overdoing it. So you should have a generally overall better mood. And it may be hard to notice because it's kind of gradual. It's going to not just like, hit you in the face. It's a, you know, slow elevation over time, especially as you're building mileage.
So if you want to know, has this happen to you, you can actually go through, keep a running journal, keep a running diary and how you feel that day and then write it down one to 10. How do you feel that day? And then write down, how do you feel on the run? How did you feel the rest of the day? And you should see a general tendency towards going upwards toward better and better moods. So those are some very positive things that could happen.
The other thing is, again, a fairly obvious one you should have a better cardiovascular system because you're using it right. You're running every day, you're working it out, it's going to get better. And that means that every day tasks become a little easier.
This is another very subtle thing, and this is something I think makes it hard to commit to running for some people over the long haul because these are very slow changes. They don't hit you in the face. We're so used to instant gratification that it's hard to get used to some of these things taking a while.
And then what I mean is that have you ever gone up a flight of stairs and been winded and you're like. Why? Why am I winded? Because you're doing work, you're pushing against gravity to go uphill. You go up a flight of stairs, right? But if you increase your cardiovascular system through all this running, maybe you still get winded going up a longer flight of stairs or a long hill.
I know I did in college as many, many campuses seem to be this way, but my college campus was on the top of the hill, so the athletic center was at the bottom of the hill and the rest of the college campus was at the top. So when we got done for the day, we still had to go up to the top of the hill still got winded, but doing very basic tasks become easier and I'm sure it was much easier to get to the top of that hill for me because I was in such good shape. Then if I was out of shape, not doing all those mileage. So those are all the very positive things that can happen.
What are the negative things you want to watch out for?
I already touched on. You want to watch out for that dip in mood. So if you're just feeling terrible for a long time, you're probably doing too much. Now that is to say that you won't feel terrible temporarily or bad, not necessarily terrible. Feel terrible. You're probably overdoing it. But usually there's a roughly two week lag time between when you start to increase mileage and when your body's energy systems catch up to deal with that mileage.
That's also why I often suggest a two one or sometimes a three one in the right case set up for your training where you working hard for two weeks and then you take one week of rest.
That doesn't mean you don't do anything, but you back off to like 50 to 60 percent of the mileage you were doing and then get back on to schedule.
So if you are taking this big jump up, there's probably going to be a lethargic, not so great feeling situation for a couple of weeks. And then you should start seeing things kind of turn around.
If you don't clear sign that you need rest and or you're going too fast and bumping up mileage, especially if you've gone from, say, two or three days a week to now, seven days a week. I personally didn't go to seven days a week until I was a junior. Yes, a junior in college. So at that point, I'd already been running for seven years. And obviously, young 20 some, you know, 20 ish, 19 20. And I'm in incredible shape at that point as far as the span of my life.
So don't feel pressure to run every day if you don't want to, but it is a possibility, but you have to pay attention to that mileage. One of the other things if you haven't ever run this much before and it's a real bane, is chafing. So to deal with this as a few things you can do one you can wear like tight leggings or tight pants, something that's going to cover the areas that are chafing.
I know for me on particular that's my thighs. It doesn't have anything to do with how thick your thighs are. I feel very white saying that, so I apologize in advance or I guess, posthumously anyway. I apologize.
What it has to do is just skin contact. So I also get rubbing under here or my lats are nowadays because of all the triathlon time I spent. I have like a little bit broader chest and lats. Now I'm not big by any means, but bigger than I was in college, and so I get a lot more rubbing in those areas. What can you do about that? You can pick up like an anti chafe balm. We make something like that. Four ingredients all natural. That's something that me and my team making and pick that up. Solpri.com/shop.
Obviously, there's many, many other manufacturers of that. But clearly this is my channel and so I'll talk about the things that we make.
The other things you want to watch out for are things like leg twitches. So if you've not run a lot of mileage before, you may not know. And if you don't know, I don't know where you've been because there's so many advertisements for this is that you sweat electrolytes out of your body, right? You know, it's something that has to be replaced and often, especially if you're running lower mileage. It's something that's going to be replaced through your regular diet, probably without too much, you know, extra thing.
However, if you are trying to be really clean about what you're eating, you may not be getting enough sodium, enough calcium, potassium, all those other things. And you may end up getting leg twitches as you increase mileage because as you increase mileage, you're going to be losing more electrolytes. And if you're not replacing them, then that can be an issue.
Now I'm going to talk more about electrolyte replacement in the particulars of how to set that up for you, in particular in a future. Video Because soon we are coming out with a brand new sports drink that is pretty much different than what anybody else is doing. So I'm excited to talk about that.
But the key is that you and me and everybody else sweats a little bit. Different amounts of electrolytes, it's generally determined by your genetics, and so the amount that you need to replace is not going to be the same as me and again in a future. Video I'm going to talk about exactly how to figure that out and what you need to do to figure out how much you need. Should you replace, when should you replace all that kind of stuff, but know that if you're getting leg twitches probably need to look into some kind of electrolyte replacement and it doesn't always have to involve sugar.
The last thing I want to talk about in terms of negatives, something to look out for, and this is generally going to be a longer term issue.
And this is when you've overworked yourself and that's your hormones go in the toilet.
So for if you're a guy like me, I can't see through the camera. Sorry. Then maybe your testosterone gets shot. I know I dealt with this and very high profile athlete Cody Beals, Canadian pro triathlete. He has blogged about this and his struggles with having his testosterone in the toilet and the things that he did to kind of help bring him back out of it. If you want to hear more about his story, which I think is very, very, very important to look at because it's so common in endurance sports for various reasons. Check that out. Go to Google. Cody Beal's testosterone.
I'm sure that'll come up, but it can also affect women. So if you start missing your period, then your your hormones are probably screwed up and probably because of excess fatigue over time and you're not recovering. It happens to pros. No, I wouldn't. I wouldn't want to say very often I don't have the numbers in front of me, but it is not uncommon. I'll say that. So it's something you have to work at not getting yourself into because it leads to all kinds of problems down the road.
As I've talked to various different female guests on the Smart Athlete Podcast, the other show I do on this channel, we've talked about this issue. We've also talked about the kind of performance curve that women deal with as they go through puberty and age and their bodies mature.
How if you put yourself in this position of having your hormones in the toilet and then they recover, you're typically going to see a drop in performance for a while before it comes back up.
So if that's you, and that's something you need to deal with because you've been running too much for so long, then don't worry about it. But as a forward looking thing, pay attention to your fatigue levels. Pay attention to Am I too tired? Do I not want to go out and run in my just lacking motivations when previously you felt fine? If you hit it off ahead of time, then you don't have to worry so much about, Oh, you know, my testosterone is in the toilet or my estrogen is in the toilet now, and I've got to fix this larger problem.
So those are all the things I can see that are going to be long and common to most of us if we run every single day. And I mean, obviously, the last thing is you're going to be better at running, but those are the commonalities, the positives, the negatives.
What questions do you have for me? What video would you like me to do for you in the future? That you'd like an answer to your question leave them down in the comments below I'd love to do video just for you.
I'll see you next time on the next episode of Runner's High.