How Much Should Running Hurt?

The line between a strenuous workout and hamstring pull can sometimes be tough to decipher. You want to run hard and it’s going to stress your muscles. It’s not supposed to be easy. But it’s also not supposed to leave you limping, and even the most experienced Olympians have a hard time knowing how to gauge the severity of pain: is there such a thing as good pain?

“I often run through ‘hurt,’ where my leg muscles are feeling sore, heavy or tired, or my mind is telling me to stop because it’s hard—doing four minutes at 10K pace, for instance, at the end of long workout in 30+ degree heat,” explains Kathleen Lawrence, an elite marathoner who had an eight-minute PB in 2023. “I think our mind sometimes interprets ‘general discomfort’ as pain, thus we get signals that we should stop or slow down. I consider this ‘manageable pain’ that you can develop strategies to work through.”

Lawrence says the difference between that—feeling sore or thirsty or like you can’t catch a groove—is separate from feeling something that might take you out of the sport for weeks. Oftentimes, it’s about where your body hurts. “Injury pain is often more localized in a certain part of the body and usually negatively impacts movement—like the range of motion of a joint—or weight-bearing abilities,” says the Six Star World Marathon finisher. “If this pain doesn’t improve after five to ten minutes of running, gets significantly worse or prevents me from running in my normal gait pattern, then I’d consider that ‘injury pain,’ and seek guidance from a physiotherapist.”

The rule of thumb I’ve always subscribed to was that if an injury is making you change your gait than something is wrong. And yet, like most runners, I constantly adjust my gait to accommodate my geeking body, especially when I’m tired. The times I have stopped due to injury, like at the Tamarack Ottawa Marathon in 2022, I simply could no longer run due to my calves seizing up.

Clearly when you can’t move, it’s time to stop.

“The amount of discomfort you’re willing to run through often depends on how motivated you are to achieve your goal. How bad do you want it?” asks Reid Coolsaet, two-time Olympian, ultra trail runner and current elite coordinator at the TCS Toronto Waterfront Marathon. “In workouts, you need to find a level of hurt that’s sustainable week in, week out, month after month. Going too hard too often will backfire.”

Backfiring during a training block is the last thing a runner wants to experience. And Cam Levins, running the marathon at the Olympics for Canada next month, says his training is always about finding that edge between hurting himself and getting stronger. “I’m doing everything I can to get in big workouts, but you have to blend that with caution,” Levins, pictured up top, told iRun. “You have to listen to your body and not cross that distress line.”

The problem with the distress line, is that it’s easy to miss. Or more accurately, easy to run through. Mike Anderson owns BlackToe Running in Toronto and has battled his own injuries as often as he’s raced to PBs. Threading the needle is in a competitive runner’s DNA, which Anderson describes like this: “There are different types of hurt,” he says. “Some good, like ‘growth hurt,’ so hurt from effort is a good thing. But pain as a rule of thumb is bad. You don’t want to run on an injury.”

Lots of us now are gearing up our training plans for fall races and a big part of our success will be measured on how consistently we can run between now and then. Running on an injury will make an injury worse, thus forcing you to miss workouts, thus putting you off from your goal. Sustained intensity, like Reid says, is what we’re striving for. It can hurt—difficult things often do. But you should be able to lightly jog after a workout and you should get a limp looked at by a physiotherapist. In Ottawa, it was clear I could no longer run. I couldn’t move. But generally I just need some time to warm up on a run and the process begins smoothing out as the run proceeds. If I can keep running, often I do.

Stick with your running this summer and keep track of your workouts and how you feel through the fall. Pay attention to your body and watch out for dangerous tendencies. Runners are edge-pushers by nature. So running can hurt sometimes. But it can’t hurt always.

There’s no way to reach your finish line like that.