I’m Listening to My Body, But What Is It Saying?

How to translate your body’s cues to know when to take a day off from running

This morning, I woke up at 5:45 am and waddled to the closet to put on my running clothes. It was 19 degrees outside, so I wriggled on layer after layer, becoming almost as puffy as the bags under my eyes. As I was doing my early morning dance/war with my clothes, I noticed a murmur of soreness radiating from my hamstrings.

Oh god, I thought. Am I going to have to call it a day already? After all of that??

I finished getting dressed and moved to my living room to warm up and hopefully loosen up my muscles. My hamstrings felt better with the dynamic stretches, and I continued on with my plan.

I went for the run, and I was fine. More than fine, actually. The cold air woke me up right away, and the russet-colored sunrise put my mind at ease. The miles passed quickly, and before I knew it, I was hopping in a hot shower to regain the feeling in my fingers.

A lot of people will tell you to listen to your body. But as I was first getting acquainted with running, the hardest part was that I couldn’t find a translation for what my body was saying.

Sometimes, it really is asking me for a rest day, and it’s best to give it one if I want to keep progressing in the sport. But other times, I’ve found that my body will lie to me. It’ll plead and moan in the morning, desperate to answer the call of my cozy, dark bed. Over the years, I’ve gotten better at figuring out what my body really needs, but there are still mornings where it’s hard to distinguish a need for rest from a tendency toward laziness.

If you’re encountering the same issue, I encourage you to ask yourself these questions. Consider it like Duolingo for your body.

Have you gotten up to move around at all?

If you’re lying in bed and wondering if you should go for the run, you have to get up to figure out what your body needs. Trust me, I never convince myself to overcome any laziness with the covers tucked under my chin.

Movement is also helpful to decipher whether your body is too sore or tired to do the workout. If you’re noticing pain as you’re getting ready and it’s not getting any better, it’s best to take a day off.

Does your soreness get better when you stretch and is there any pain in your joints or bones?

Similar to the above point, you should warm up and stretch (dynamically, not statically) to wake up your muscles. With my hamstrings, I noticed dynamic stretches helped them feel less sore, so I went through with the workout. If the stretching doesn’t help and/or you think you might have a strain or sprain, head back to bed to let yourself recover. You don’t want to go out and make an injury worse, which will only sideline your progress.

If you’re interested in learning more about how to ease joint pain, I recommend giving this comprehensive article from Runner’s World a read.

Have you had a recovery day recently?

Because if not, you should take one. In the past, I thought I needed to do high-intensity workouts or runs every day to get stronger and faster, but fell victim to overtraining. Overtraining happens when you don’t let your muscles properly recover from a workout, so instead of getting better, you’ll actually see your performance begin to decline as the muscles break down.

However, if the opposite is true and you’ve been skipping a lot of workouts lately for various reasons (unrelated to injury), it may be your mind telling you to stay in bed. It’s time to get up and get after it! Here’s how you can motivate yourself to lace up when you don’t want to.

Have you been sleeping ok?

I might be the millionth person to lecture you about the importance of sleep, but trust me, there will be a million people behind me in line waiting to tell you the same thing. Sleep allows your heart to rest and cells and tissues to repair, so if you slept poorly the night before, you’ll likely feel better and perform better in the long run if you allow yourself to sleep in.

Two things to note here:

1. You might think, I’m literally always tired when I wake up. Same. I typically define a “bad night’s sleep” as something that leaves me with a headache in the morning, nauseous, and/or supremely foggy. I’ll also take the hours I slept into account — if it’s six hours or less, I know that my body won’t like me very much for the rest of the day, but if I get my normal hours in (7+), I’ll typically suck it up and go for the run.
2. If you didn’t sleep well the previous night and want to sleep in, the timing of your run can be flexible to fit your schedule. Do you have time during a lunch break or after work? Do what makes sense for you and don’t subscribe to an “all or nothing” mindset when it comes to planning your workouts.

Have you felt this way before a previous run? If so, how did that one go?

The more I listen to my body, the more information I store about its cues. For instance, in the future, if I wake up with a slight soreness in my hamstrings similar to what I experienced this morning, I’ll remember I was fine when I decided to run. I can also recall runs with a not-so-happy ending, like when I had a piercing headache and ran anyway, only to quickly turn around and bag the whole thing. Now I know not to run when I have a piercing headache.

The beauty of running is that it’s all just a practice. Each run is an opportunity to learn more about your body and catalog that information for when you’re trying to translate its cues later on.

What’s your back-up plan if it goes wrong?

If you happen to have a run with a not-so-happy ending like the one I described above, you should always have a Plan B. For instance, a month ago, I went for a run and had to stop because I was dehydrated and felt faint. I was too far out to just turn around and go back, so I called my younger sister to come pick me up.

If you’re on the fence about whether to head out for a run and decide to go for it, you should either run a route that would be easy to return from if needed or have someone on deck who’d be available to come get you. The last thing you want is to get injured or stuck out there, sweaty and frustrated.

So, now that you’ve answered the above questions, what’s it going to be: rest day or run day? Let me know if these help and feel free to drop any other suggestions in the comments!