Can You Run Every day?

I've always heard that running every day was bad for you. It seems that so many running magazines, articles, sites, etc. stress the need for days off. And I can see the wisdom in that. Running is hard and it's a lot of stress on your body.

In previous years, I've tried to build running routines, but I've often been training for an event, or to get stronger, and so I've pushed hard. Too hard I think as I've often had issues in the 6-8 week period where my shins start to hurt and my body breaks down a bit.

However most of us walk every day and use our bodies, so can running every day be that bad? I wrote in my Inspiration post that Jim Garrett had been running for 28 years. When I went looking for streaks, to see if he was unique, I found runeveryday.com, with some 30+ year streaks! It's neat to see, especially as the lowest person on the list is 384 days. I wonder if I can get to that.

This time I'm going for the low denominator, shooting for between 1-2 miles each day, at a reasonable pace. I might run some longer stretches, perhaps a few 5k races, but really I'm going for a steady, long term pace and then using baseball, karate, weight lifting, etc. to build my body.