Injury Provides a Chance to Start Over (Correctly)

Running injuries befall the best of us. It’s a fact of the road, track, or trail. When injury occurs, it is horribly depressing. It only takes about two weeks of inactivity to lose 50 percent of your fitness. As a result, fitness is lost, race plans are scrapped, and moods darken. Sometimes, however, an injury is a blessing in disguise.

Several weeks ago, I suffered a major ankle sprain. The injury had nothing to do with running. It was completely random and a result of my own clumsiness. At the time of the injury, I was beginning to ramp-up my mileage for an early fall marathon or 50k. Immediately after snapping tendons and ligaments in my ankle, my thoughts turned to running. How long would I be side-lined? Did I suffer any permanent damage? I became angry with myself for jeopardizing my running in a careless moment. I had a perfect base built and was ready to rock this fall – or was I?

While the ankle sprain interrupted my training for one month, something bad was brewing before the injury. I had been ramping-up training and building my base in an improper manner. All of the signs were present as my long runs lengthened from 6 to 12 miles over the course of several weeks. While my Saturday long runs were increasing, other facets of my training were being ignored. Due to family/job obligations, my mid-week training was inadequate. My core/strength training was non-existent. And my post-run stretching was sporadic at best. Tight hamstrings and discomfort under the knee-cap were the subtle signals - and I was ignoring those signals.

Sometimes life gets so busy that we only have time for the Saturday long run. In these cases, it’s best to be realistic and not attempt to train for a long distance or fast race. When we forget the basics (base building, stretching, strength training), we open ourselves up to injury.

Weeks after the injury my ankle is slowly getting better. Without the injury, I would have likely run into a hamstring and/or knee injury by this point in my training. Starting from scratch, I’m slowly increasing my weekly mileage. This time, I’ll remember to do it right.