Dealing with Injuries While Training

Audio Transcript

Coach Tony: Hi everyone. Welcome to the Runners Connect, Run to the Top Extra Kick Podcast. I hope your day is going well and thanks for tuning into the show.

Today we have a great question from Carlyon.

He says, “I’m training for a half marathon this October 15th. This is my second half marathon and training isn’t going nearly as smooth as it did, from my first half marathon. I got up to nine miles when I started feeling pain on impact, in my hip.

I decided to take a couple of weeks off still doing other cardio activities, but no running.

My hips still slightly hurt, but much of the pain is gone. I did a couple shorter runs three or four miles and I felt okay. Then I decided to try to get back to my training program and went out for a long run [Inaudible 0:01:01.3] miles.

My hips started hurting around four miles, but I decided to run through it. I went to urgent care to make sure that I didn’t have a stress fracture and they said I didn’t. What do I do now?

Do I try to run until it feels better and probably just reinjure it? Or do I just do other cardio workouts that don’t cause me pain and tossed it out on race day?

Or do I drop out of the race altogether? How do I bounce back from an injury with such little time left?

Tony: That’s a great question Carlyon and there’s several things I want to discuss in this.

First and foremost, I think is important is if you’re not sure if you have a fracture or something more significant, it’s really important that you go to urgent care or a doctor.

Make sure there’s no fracture or something else more significant going on in there. I give you credit for that and it’s good that the results came back and said that you did not have a fracture.

Now here’s where I want to point out a mistake that I think you made and that was jumping right back into training.

As much as you want to get right back on that schedule, you should have slowly got back and maybe done just a few miles first, versus jumping right in.

You shocked things if you will; I think you pushed it too much and I’m sure you probably realized that.

It’s just important to slowly get back in from injury. There’s two points I really want to discuss.

One is the concept of expected behavior and the other is the concept of building confidence.

What I mean by expected behavior is when you’re dealing with an injury and you’re coming back, I think a lot of times people expect that as soon as you get back, it’s going to feel perfectly fine.

There should be zero pain and if there is any pain, that’s a huge warning sign.

People start to get nervous, and not necessarily make the best decisions.

I think it’s important to understand when you’re going to go out for a run, coming back from an injury, expect pain. It’s normal.

You may be dealing with tendonitis. Some form of tendonitis is a common injury.

Typically, with tendonitis, you’re going to feel pain when you first start to exercise because you haven’t loosened your muscles and tendons yet.

During exercise, it’s going to start to go away but then towards the end or after, it’s going to start hurting again, as its muscles and tendons start to tighten.

It’s important as you go out, that you know those first few runs coming back from injury, and understand that that’s normal behavior.

You should feel pain as much as you’d rather not.

It shouldn’t get worse and worse with runs, but it should be there and it should be diminishing over time. Expect it.

That way you’re not going to be shocked by it; it’s going to be understood, and it’s going to be normal. It’s expected behavior.

This leads into the next thing and that’s the question of building confidence.

In all my years of helping people with injury, I found that you should build confidence in terms of what you can do.

So the last time you did a run was eight miles and you had a lot of pain so much so that you went to the doctor.

Now you’re going to go out for your very next run and the question is, what can you do? Can I run a mile, half a mile, or three miles? What am I supposed to do?

You have to go out for that run and try to build some confidence.

The goal being that you want to go out and you want to just do two miles. You tell yourself, “I know there’s going to be some pain because of expected behavior but I want to get two miles under my belt.

Then maybe I’m going to take a day off and then I’m going to try three miles.”

When you start to find that balance of where normal pain is and then where maybe you’re starting to push it and you always stay on the side of normal pain.

You don’t try to push it where you exacerbate things but you really must build confidence. I think that is so critical in coming back from injury.

Once you start to get more confident in what you can do, then that’s where the injury really starts to just disappear; not just physically but mentally as well.

I think a lot of us when we have an injury in the back of our mind, it’s hard to really block that out.

Two things I really recommend is to understand expected behavior before you lace the shoes out.

Think to yourself, “All right. I’m going to go out in the first half mile and it’s probably going to hurt. When it hurts at that first half mile, great. That’s what it’s supposed to do. If it doesn’t hurt, even better okay? “

Then build confidence.

Don’t jump right back into it. Slowly push, find that boundary of where you can keep going and going and going, before you start to cause too much pain or possibly do something permanent.

The next question then is your two weeks out.

Unfortunately, this audio is coming out just in time. You’re two weeks out and what do you do? Do you drop out of the race? That’s a tough question.

The answer to that really depends on what is your goal. This is your second half marathon and you understand what you’re going through which is muscle memory if you will.

There’s a good chance depending on your training, that you can muscle through without hurting yourself but you should be careful.

First, you can’t necessarily decide today if you should run that half marathon or not because it can’t work.

What you’re doing is you’re trying to build that confidence. You need to do some more research if you will with your runs to see if you can you safely run that half marathon and not hurt yourself.

The last thing you want to do is finish that race and then end up with a fracture. You can’t necessarily answer that question today.

Do some runs, don’t push it, and see how that feels. If you feel like you’re able to get to eight miles or ten miles and that pain isn’t there, then I think there’s a good chance that you can consider running it.

Then that begs another question.

What is your goal with the race? Are you just trying to finish or are you trying to set a P.R.? If you’re trying to set a P.R. then don’t do that race. Make this race a training race. There’s so many half marathons.

What you can do is make this a training race and find another race maybe four or six weeks out. It gives you some time to recover from the 30-mile race and continue with your training.

The answer to your question is first, not to decide today. I don’t think you’re in position to make that decision. Do some more research. Let your body understand what it’s capable of doing or not.

The final question is one only you can answer and that is what is your goal?

Again, if your goal is just to finish, then there’s a chance you can do it based on the fact you’ve already done one.

If it’s to set a P.R. it’s a high probability you’re not going to set a P.R. just based on the setback that you’ve had.

I think I would not go into that race with the goal of setting a P.R. because I think you’re setting yourself up for not the success that you’re hoping for.

Hopefully that answers your question.

It’s a tough decision and a tough period to go through. A lot of us have been there and you can feel alone when you are going through that.

Know that you’re not alone. Reach out to friends, groups, and different things like that and know share some [camaraderie 00:08:11.] think that can help you as well.

That’s it for today’s show. If you haven’t already done so please consider heading to iTunes or your favorite Podcast directory and subscribing or leaving a review.

It will help us reach more runners like you thank you for tuning in and I hope you have a great day. We’ll see you on the roads.