I made a very big mistake this week. A co-worker asked me to go with her to a step aerobics class on Saturday morning at 8am. Sure! Sounds fun. So I went and it was TOUGH. I've never done step before and by the end I was wiped out. I was a little sore, but felt like I had a great workout. It was my scheduled day to run C25K week 4 run 3 and I figured I'd be up for it no problem. Spent the day with my family which included taking our son to the transportation museum and a LOT of walking. I was a little sore but nothing major. Dropped the little one off at mother-in-law's house for the night and went home. My husband was going to go running with me. We left around 7pm and did a different route than I usually do. I normally run a flat circuit around a school parking lot or on an indoor track at the local rec center. This time we ran through the neighborhood which involves quite a few hills. By the end I could tell my pace was slower than usual (not by a large margin though - only about a tenth of a mile less than my other week 4 runs) and I was definitely tired. But still nothing major...or so I thought. Came home, changed clothes, sat down in front of the computer to log the run. When I tried to stand up, my legs declared a revolution against my body. My calves are in AGONY. All day yesterday (Sunday) I was in misery. I can barely walk or move. I am following the RICE method to treat my legs and that seems to be helping, but today I am still incredibly sore. My question is how long should I let my legs recover before I try to continue my training program? Should I start with week 5 or should I go back and try to do week 4 again if I miss a week of running? If I can't run for several days/week what type of cross training is it safe to do to keep from regressing? I feel like an idiot that I went running because I didn't want to miss a day despite a little voice in my head telling me I should let my body rest after the step class and now I am probably going to miss more running because of that decision. UGH! Thanks for any advice =) Steph

Thanks Today is day 3 and there is marked improvement. I am still mildly sore, but nothing like the agony of the past 2 days. Using some advice from the other main forum, I had my husband massage my calves with a rolling pin last night and I think that helped a lot. Whew! I figure I'll take the rest of the week off running and resume next week with week 5. This week I'll just walk and swim until my legs are without pain. Steph