“Running is wonderful in that you can be tired before you do it but feel energized afterward. It revived flagging spirits and defeats fatigue.

Still fatigue is cumulative. If you feel tired day after day after day yet continue to log your usual miles, you may be ignroing what your body is telling you and risking injury or burnout or both.

Overtraining has both a mental and physical component. Your body wears down over time, but so does your mind. There’s nothing at all wrong with taking a day off if you’re just not into it mentally for whatever reason, though you may feel fine physically.

you must learn to trust yourself in this regard. If you take a day off and it leads to a week, what’s wrong with that? Maybe you need the week off, after all. See how that feels. Enjoy the inactivity for a change. You’ll knwo when it’s time to come back.

Never run ‘through’ your fatigue. Listen to it as you would any other signal from your body, and put it to good use.”

—Kevin Nelson, “The Runner’s Book of Daily Inspiration”