From the March 2010 issue of Runner’s World
Testing My Heart On A Wounded Knee
Well, I’ve injured myself. I passed the tipping point of pain and plunged headlong into an injury to my tibia, just below the right knee. It feels like a bone bruise and I was afraid it might be a stress fracture, but apparently not, not yet, anyway. I will admit that I’ve been bummed for the past several days, limping on my gimpy limb, wondering what I had done to my leg, how serious it was, and if this could be the end of my track and field season before it even begins.
I was worried that the pain was a stress fracture, or something joint-related. But my doctor and chiropractor both said my knee joint is fine. It feels like I have a painful bone bruise, on the Medial condyle. I haven’t been able to run or even walk without a limp, for a few days now. The culprit seems to be a combination of falling arches, worn-out shoes, and simply over-doing it, running-wise. As part of my cure, I have taken a week off, ordered a new pair of Brooks shoes and got fitted for a pair of orthotics. My medical support team says I will be fine, if I don’t overdo it, and I can look forward to pain-free running on a more stable foot-strike platform.
Nevertheless, a lot can happen to one’s psyche when one gets injured, if one is consumed with master’s track and field, as I am. This setback has been a heart check, a faith test, and an opportunity for me to plug back into the positive podcasts of Joel Osteen, which I had stored on my mp3 player. Osteen has a very positive mind-set on spiritual matters, and life. He is a good coach, in this regard. If you haven’t listened to Osteen, don’t believe the critics who say he isn’t Christian enough, or that he is just another a name-it-claim-it TV preacher. He has distilled the Gospel to its most positive elements, which isn’t a crime, nor a sin, not in this day and age. Although his Texas accent takes some getting used to, and his jokes are painfully corny, exposure to his mind-set never fails to uplift my own.
Speaking of helpful voices, I came across the following article, posted on Runner’s World Online, “The Ten Laws of Injury Prevention.” My only regret is that I didn’t come across it 10 days earlier! Maybe then I would have stopped short of taking the extra strides that led me from being just kinda sore, to having a full-blown injury.
Claire and I have been training for the Heartland Open/Masters Indoor Track and Field Meet on Saturday, March 13. We still hope to compete there, but I will have to be smart in my comeback workouts, working primarily on our trusty TRX Trainer, these next few days to get back in shape, and will need to scale back the number of events I planned to participate in.
It will be a real celebration for us, just to be out there, doing it.
From Runner’s World Online
THE 10 LAWS OF INJURY PREVENTION
Follow these time-tested principles and you’ll spend more time on the roads—and less in rehab
By Amby Burfoot
In the mid-1970s, Runner’s World medical editor George Sheehan, M.D., confirmed that he was hardly the only runner beset by injuries: A poll of the magazine’s readers revealed that 60 percent reported chronic problems. “One person in 100 is a motor genius,” who doesn’t have injuries, concluded the often-sidelined Sheehan. To describe himself and the rest of us, he turned to Ralph Waldo Emerson: “There is a crack in everything God has made.” With all the amazing advancements in sports medicine, you’d think that our rates of shinsplints and stress fractures would have dropped since Sheehan’s era. But 30 years after running’s first Big Boom, we continue to get hurt. A recent runnersworld.com poll revealed that 66 percent of respondents had suffered an injury in 2009.
Still, I figured medical science must have uncovered lots of little-known prevention secrets. So I went searching for them. After reviewing hundreds of published papers, I was surprised to find few answers. Most of the studies are retrospective, looking back. A few are prospective, looking forward. Even then, they’re not the gold standard, which are randomized, controlled, double blind experiments. And conflicting results make it difficult to draw meaningful conclusions. I learned, for example, that running injuries can be caused by being female, being male, being old, being young, pronating too much, pronating too little, training too much, and training too little. Studies also indicate that the “wet test” doesn’t help shoe selection, old shoes don’t offer less cushioning than newer shoes, and leg-length discrepancies don’t cause injuries (but too-little sleep does). Oh, here’s good news: To get rid of blisters, you should drink less and smoke more.
Clearly, the medical studies wouldn’t offer much help. So I switched to Plan B: I interviewed nearly a dozen of the best running-injury experts in the world. They come from the fields of biomechanics, sports podiatry, and physical therapy. Like the medical studies, these experts didn’t always agree. But the more I talked with them, the more certain principles began to emerge. From these, I developed the following 10 laws of injury prevention. I can’t guarantee that these rules will prevent you from ever getting hurt. But if you incorporate these guidelines into your training, I’m confident you’ll be more likely to enjoy a long and healthy running life.
I. Know Your Limits
It’s easy to get injured; anyone can do it. Just run too much. “I firmly believe that every runner has an injury threshold,” says physical therapist and biomechanist Irene Davis, Ph.D., from the University of Delaware’s Running Injury Clinic. “Your threshold could be at 10 miles a week, or 100, but once you exceed it, you get injured.” Various studies have identified injury-thresholds at 11, 25, and 40 miles per week. Your threshold is waiting for you to discover it.
Of course, your goal is to avoid injury. Runner and sports podiatrist Stephen Pribut, D.P.M., warns runners to beware the “terrible toos”—doing too much, too soon, too fast. Every research paper and every expert agrees that this—”training errors”—is the number one cause of self-inflicted running injuries. The body needs time to adapt from training changes and jumps in mileage or intensity. Muscles and joints need recovery time so they can recover and handle more training demands. If you rush that process, you could break down rather than build up.
Running experts have recognized this problem, and long ago devised an easy-to-use 10-percent rule: Build your weekly training mileage by no more than 10 percent per week. If you run 10 miles the first week, do just 11 miles the second week, 12 miles the third week, and so on.
Yet, there may be times when even a modest 10 percent increase proves too much. Biomechanist Reed Ferber, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the faculty of kinesiology and head of the Running Injury Clinic at the University of Calgary says that he sees a lot of newly injured runners during that third month of marathon training, when a popular 16-week Canadian program pushes the mileage hard. Meanwhile, his clinic’s nine-month marathon program for first-timers increases mileage by just three percent per week. “We have a 97 percent success rate getting people through the entire program and to the marathon finish line,” Ferber says.
ACTION PLAN
Be the Tortoise, not the Hare. Increase your weekly and monthly running totals gradually. Use the 10-percent rule as a general guideline, but realize that it might be too aggressive for you—especially if you are injury-prone. A five-percent or three-percent increase might be more appropriate. In addition to following a hard-day/easy-day approach, or more likely a hard/easy/easy pattern, many top runners use a system where they scale back their weekly mileage by 20 to 40 percent on a regular basis, maybe once a month. And remember that mileage isn’t the only issue. Experts point out that an overly aggressive approach to hill running, intervals, trail running—indeed, any change in your training habits—can produce problems. Keeping a detailed training log can help you gauge your personal training threshold. Record your weekly mileage and how you feel after your runs. Look for patterns. For instance, you may notice that your knees ache only when you’re logging more than 40 miles a week.
Another major bugaboo: You used to run 30 miles a week, you got injured, now you want to get back to your old routine as quickly as possible. Don’t. Take your time. The same applies to that upcoming race—if you missed some training time, don’t accelerate the pace and distance of your remaining workouts in an effort to “catch up.” Instead, adjust your goals as needed.
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Tags: Fitness Over 50, Injury Prevention, Joel Osteen, Masters Track and Field
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