Sleep may be the most valuable, most abundant, least expensive, and yet most underutilized resource available to a recovering or injured runner.

If you are a runner, you are always recovering. You do tissue damage every time you run. If you run a little too much, or you run a little too far, you might get an over training injury. That overtraining injury is really nothing more than an exaggerated version of the intentional injury you are attempting induce when you are training.

Sleep Helps You Heal, Running Doesn’t Help You Heal.

Sleep is crucial for proper immune function, tissue healing and consequently healing after any hard workout or running injury. Sleep disturbances reportedly occur in one third of the U.S. population. Problems with sleep are so pervasive and detrimental that the Centers for Disease Control has declared insufficient sleep as a public health problem.

Interestingly, elite athletes have actually been cited as a group having poor sleep quality and reduced quantity of sleep in comparison to the general population. Why is that?

Today on the Doc On the Run Podcast we’re talking about how sleep is the recovering runner’s secret weapon.