A Day of Rest

Six days a week, I run and one day I rest. It is the most difficult day of my week. Especially when the February weather settles heavy over Snoqualmie and the whole family is indoors. The sky gray. The rain steady. Today a wind warning is in effect and our golden retriever is restless. The treadmill whispering.

Fridays and Sundays are my proving grounds. Friday is effort with intention (Hill Intervals). Sunday (the Long Run) is distance with resolve. Those are the days I measure progress.

And yet, the rest day might be the most important day of the week.

The Discipline of Recovery

When you run six days a week, it feels productive. Measurable. Tangible.

Rest feels invisible.

But physiologically, rest is when the actual adaptation happens.

• Muscle fibers repair and rebuild

• Glycogen stores replenish

• Hormones rebalance

• Inflammation decreases

• The nervous system resets

Training is the stimulus.

Recovery is the growth.

Without recovery, the body doesn’t get stronger — it just accumulates stress.

Health Is More Than Mileage

There’s a difference between fitness and health.

You can push mileage higher.You can stack intensity.You can grind.

But long-term health — the kind that carries you into your 50s, 60s, and beyond — depends on protecting joints, tendons, sleep quality, and hormonal balance.

Skipping rest day occasionally won’t break you.

But making a habit of it can. Since I've been more disciplined about rest I have seen fewer injuries.

Overuse injuries don’t appear overnight. They accumulate quietly:

• Tight Achilles

• Persistent knee soreness

• Low-grade fatigue

• Irritability

• Elevated resting heart rate

• Disrupted sleep

The rest day interrupts that accumulation.

It’s preventative medicine.

Longevity Over Ego

The goal isn’t to win Saturday.

The goal is to be running decades from now.

If I want to:

• Hike deep into the Alpine Lakes Wilderness at 65

• Run long Sunday efforts without knee pain

• Maintain healthy blood pressure and metabolic health

• Keep showing up consistently year after year

Then a rest day is not negotiable.

Not because I’m tired.

But because I’m thinking long-term.

The Hardest Workout

The irony remains:

Running six days a week feels easier than not running one.

But the rest day is not weakness.

It is strategy.

It protects the engine.It preserves the joints.It balances the hormones.It sharpens the mind.It ensures that Friday and Sunday can stay strong.

Six days of motion.

One day of recovery.

And in the long arc of health, that one quiet day might matter most.