how often is too often to run for a newbie?

[juicychops]

i have been running for 9 weeks now and can now run 4.5 miles in a go. Im running about 3-4 times per week.

i would ideally like to go every day now but im a bit worried about pushing it too far. would doing this distance 5-6 times per week (with a half mile increase each week) safe to do for me when ive only been going a while?

If you do 4 x 4.5 miles per week, then your weekly mileage is 18 miles from which you can calculate your safe increase. The general rule is not to increase by more than 10% per week to avoid injury by overtraining, ie running too much too soon for your body to cope with the increased strain. You could therefore add, for example, 0.5 miles to two of the four runs and then 0.4 miles to the remaining two runs and should be fine on this. Do try to keep the running steady however because if you suddenly include hard interval sessions within this increase in mileage I suspect your body might let you know about it! If you want to include more runs per week I think the best thing to do is plan out your runs to include a short quick 5k paced run, a steady 4-5 mile tempo run, an interval session (that could be anything up to 4ish miles on your current fitness), a longer slooooow run and then include another shortish run to bring your total running days up to 5. This is just an example of what you could do but obviously play around with whatever combination works best for you. The idea is to train your body to run off it's reserves of glycogen at pace for sustained periods and also to run for longer periods using it's stores of fat. It also works on your pace so you feel like you can not only run further but also quicker!

Have gone on a bit but I just wanted to give you a few ideas which you can research yourself. Good luck and happy running!

thanks for your reply moshimoshi

i did 4.5m on Sunday evening and then did 5m this morning which killed me. i dont think i would have been able to do today's run if i had done anything last night so for now i think i will leave it as every other day for the time being. maybe in a month or so il start with short 2.5m runs or something in between and then slowly increase them like you suggested.

god i did my run 10am this morning which took an hour and im still knackered now!