There is a commonly held running philosophy called the principle of specificity which suggests that to become a better runner, we have to run more. For some runners, increasing mileage and intensity can result in running injuries that take weeks and months to recover from. But we can take steps to safely increase our mileage by following some key best practices to prevent running injuries.

A runladylike.com reader who is looking to improve her marathon time recently wrote to me and asked the following question:

“I was wondering if you’d do a post on avoiding running injuries and what you did while training for the Chicago Marathon to avoid them.”

For the past several years, I trained using the FIRST method (also known as the Furman Institute of Running and Scientific Training approach or the “Run Less Run Faster” strategy) in which I ran 3 hard workouts per week (sometimes with a fourth easy day) and cross trained twice per week. While this approach helped me tremendously and led me to enjoy a string of personal best races during 2013 and early 2014, I knew that to truly break through at the marathon distance, I was going to need to run more and increase my mileage.

During my fall marathon training this year, I gradually increased my mileage and ran higher weekly mileage than I’ve ever run before – hitting a peak of 61 miles in a week. (I know many runners go much higher than this, but for my first time increasing mileage this was the highest I could safely go during my training cycle.) My typical training week included 3 hard workouts – speed/strength intervals, a tempo run (or marathon pace run) and a long run – as well as 2 easy runs (1-2 minutes slower than race pace) and sometimes an additional recovery run for a total of 5 to 6 days of running per week. I was a little nervous about how my body would respond to the increased mileage.

Thankfully, this training approach translated into a 10-minute marathon PR at the 2014 Chicago Marathon and an injury-free training season.

There are a series of factors that lead to running injuries. These typically include:

• Muscle weakness
• Lack of flexibility
• Biomechanical issues
• Poor or incorrect training (or training that doesn’t take the above factors into account)
• Running in the wrong (or worn out) shoes

For instance, if you have too much strength in one area of your body and not enough flexibility in another, your body may not work efficiently. Inflexibility in one of your muscles may lead to a misalignment of your leg as it strikes the ground. If you don’t address muscle strength, flexibility and form, your body may not be able to handle your training plan. Once we injure ourselves, we’re likely to stress another area by overcompensating for the injured area or repeat the injury because we didn’t treat the underlying cause of an injury.

So how can you increase your mileage and prevent running injuries? Here are 12 tips to help you run healthy and happy that have helped me increase mileage while remaining injury-free.

12 Tips to Prevent Running Injuries while Increasing Mileage

1. Gradually increase your mileage in safe increments. Whenever a new runner tells me they’re training for a marathon or half marathon but have started experiencing some “knee pain,” 9 times out of 10 it’s because they tried to do too much too fast. This also holds true for more experienced runners who shift to a higher mileage training plan. One key to help prevent running injuries caused by overuse is to increase your total weekly mileage by no more than 5 to 10 percent each week. (Example: If you ran 20 miles last week, you shouldn’t run more than 22 miles the next week. If you ran 50 miles last week, the following week’s mileage shouldn’t exceed 55 miles.) Add your increased mileage first to your long run, but don’t increase your long run mileage by more than 10 percent week over week. When adding mileage to your weekday runs, add miles to your longer training days first before your shorter speed work days. And of course, you always want to ensure you spend adequate time building a solid running base before introducing higher mileage or speed workouts. For the Chicago Marathon, I had built a solid base of running (up to 14 miles for my long run and comfortably around 25-30 miles per week) for more than a year. I gradually started adding mileage during an 18-week period, beginning around 32 miles and ending at 61 at peak week.

2. Alternate hard training days with easy training days, and actually run slower on your easy days. Avoid running hard workouts on consecutive days. For instance, you should schedule an easy day or rest day between a speed workout, tempo run or long run. This will help your body recover and prepare you for your next hard workout. If you’re doing intense back-to-back training days (i.e. speed workout day followed by strength training day), be sure to focus on different principal elements of training and muscle groups.

Additionally, many runners struggle to run their easy runs slow enough. Easy days should be run about 1 to 2 minutes slower than your race pace. It might feel like you are as slow as molasses, but that pace will help you recover while building endurance. During this past training cycle, I often ran long, slow recovery runs the day after my long run and on the Monday following my long training weekend. This helped my body get used to running on tired legs, even though my pace was slower. My average marathon race pace was 8:06 per mile, while my easy runs typically hovered around 9:20-9:30 per mile. Some days I would run slightly slower, other days I’d run slightly faster. Running with a heart rate monitor is a good tool to help you avoid running your easy runs too fast by staying in Zone 1 and 2. As you increase your mileage, adding mileage onto your easy days will help you prevent getting injured while making you stronger.

3. Use your current fitness level to determine your speed work paces – not your dream race time. Just like running too much too quickly can cause injuries, so too can incorporating speed work too quickly and at paces that are too fast for your current fitness level. To predict how fast you should run your speed work, use your current 5K time to determine your paces, not a goal time that your body may not yet be in shape for. You can read more about how to determine speed work paces here. As your current fitness level increases (aka you run a faster 5K time), so can your speed work paces.

4. Incorporate a proper warm up and cool down into every workout. When we’re short on time, skipping a warm-up or cool-down seems like the easiest way to save time, right? WRONG! Following a proper warm-up protocol will allow you to adequately prepare for your run and help your muscular structure to work more effectively during training. This is especially critical before speed workouts and tempo runs where your intensity is high and your pace is faster. I did a warm up before every race I have run during the past year (as well as hard training workouts), which included about 10 minutes of very slow jogging and 5 to 10 minutes of dynamic stretching starting 30 minutes before the race. I continue to do dynamic stretches in the corral until the race starts. Likewise, stretching following a run will help your muscles begin the recovery process. Learn how to do an effective warm-up and cool-down and see what I do for mine here.

5. Reduce your weekly mileage every 3 to 4 weeks. After consecutive weeks of building mileage, drop your weekly mileage back every third to fourth week by 25 percent to deepen your recovery and help prevent the onset of injury. These reduced mileage weeks are commonly referred to as “drop back” weeks. Reduce the mileage/time for all three principal elements of your training – long run (endurance), intervals/tempo runs (speed) and strength training (force).

6. Listen to your body and don’t be afraid of extra rest days. There’s nothing that irks me more than coaches or athletes who are so focused on executing the miles written in a training plan that they are inflexible in their approach and don’t factor the way their bodies feel into that plan. Some weeks may be perfect. You will execute all your workouts and log all your miles while feeling spectacular. Other weeks you will suffer through your workouts feeling tired and sluggish. When fatigue or soreness sets in, be flexible to change and modify your plan to meet your body where it is. In some cases, that may be an extra rest day so you can get more sleep. In other cases it may be replacing a pace-based interval workout with an easy run when tightness crops up. There were many weeks when I changed what I had planned due to how I was feeling, be it the structure of a specific workout or adding a rest day. Three weeks before the Chicago Marathon, I was feeling so fatigued both mentally and physically that I took 3 consecutive days off to try to recover my mind and my body. This is OK! Your body will give you signs when something is off. Listen to that. Ignoring those signals is when injuries can rear their ugly head. (Listening to your body is different than making excuses.)

7. Make sure you’re running in the right shoes. The easiest injury prevention advice you’ll ever receive is to ensure you’re wearing the right shoes for your biomechanics and running gait. The wrong shoes can create lots of unwanted issues – from IT band syndrome and peroneal tendonitis to shin splints and tight calves. Get professionally fit at a local specialty running store, and make sure you replace your shoes every 300 to 500 miles depending on the average lifecycle of the shoe you prefer. I run in the Brooks Running PureCadence. From time to time, I will run my easy runs in the Brooks Pure Ghosts or other Brooks training shoes I have, but I do the rest of my training exclusively in the PureCadence. For more tips on running in the right shoes to prevent injury, read this.

8. Incorporate strength training. Incorporating strength training into your training regimen can enhance your performance by helping you maintain a stronger muscular structure. By identifying weaknesses in our biomechanics and movements, we can focus on strengthening those areas to run stronger. During my training cycle for the Chicago Marathon, I regularly incorporated barre work by going to classes at Barre3, focusing on my quads, hamstrings, glutes, hips, core and upper body. While 2 days is ideal, try to shoot for at least one day of strength training, and if squeezed between hard workouts, be sure to focus on different muscle groups. You can read more about strength training for runners here.

9. Seek softer running surfaces. Although our running options typically include asphalt and concrete, running on both surfaces have shown to increase the impact on our bodies. When possible, try to run on a flat, firm, smooth surface that provides absorption, such as a cinder track, artificial turf, smooth dirt trail, etc. I did many runs on a local trail that had packed gravel that was softer than the road. I tried to avoid banked (uneven/sloped) surfaces which can create a number of problems and issues. I also rely heavily on the treadmill for speed workouts during the summer and easy runs.

10. Sleep! Part of fueling our recovery process is getting adequate sleep. When we’re waking up at the crack of dawn to run or work out, this can sometimes be a problem. Strive to get 8 hours of sleep each night, or most nights during the week. Sleep will allow your body to function more effectively and keep your immune system stronger.

11. Eat for recovery. Did you know that what and when we eat can have an impact on our training recovery? We can speed this process by eating a mix of carbohydrates and proteins within 30-40 minutes after a hard workout. Carbs will help replace decreased glycogen stores to provide energy to your muscles, while protein will help repair your muscle tissue. Eating immediately following your workouts and restoring your fluid levels by rehydrating will better prepare you for your next workout and help you stay strong. Since I do most of my long runs away from my house (requiring a 20-30-minute drive), I would regularly take a recovery drink mix, protein bar or other easy-to-eat fuel with me during my training cycle to make it easier for me to eat right away. During the summer, I’d bring an extra water bottle that was frozen in the freezer the night before, and by the time I returned from my run it was still ice cold but de-thawed. I’d mix my recovery drink (Vega Sport Recovery Accelerator) in that and head home.

12. Give your body regular TLC. As part of my marathon training, I regularly incorporate sports massage, Epsom salt baths and stretching. I scheduled sports massages the Monday or Tuesday after a very hard training weekend or long run, and leading up to the race I got a massage 3 out of the 4 weeks before race day. I always get a massage on the Monday or Tuesday of race week if the race is on Sunday. You can feel fatigued a few days after a massage, so giving yourself adequate time to bounce back from that is crucial. Toward the end of this season, I introduced more regular chiropractic care, and I’m looking forward to continuing that to see improvements in my overall health and performance based on being better aligned. Foam rolling regularly is also a great way to reduce muscle tightness (something I am so bad about doing but need to be more consistent about). Finally, a soak in an ice bath after runs longer than 16 miles has shown to speed recovery for some athletes. You can read more about perfecting the art of the ice bath here.

What other tips would you add to this list to prevent running injuries while increasing mileage? How do you give your body some TLC (tender loving care) during a tough training cycle?