#injuryfree2017

[gobigorgohome2016]

Staying Injury Free

A few days ago one of Dave’s former college teammates stayed with us.  He and I talked shop, and he was especially curious about my high mileage and durability, given that he had been plagued with mileage-related injuries for most of his running career.  He made the comment that I must be very biomechanically sound, and I laughed.  While I have worked hard to fix a lot of my inefficiencies, 15 of the past 17 years of running I had pretty bad form.  

On a shakeout the other day, Dave and I were talking about possible reasons why I have been fortunate to be relatively injury-free, drawing upon my 7-years of being injury-free in middle school and high school, my 5 years of being mostly injured in college, and then the previous 6 years where I have had two injuries:  a calf strain that was directly related to rolling out of bed, hungover, and going immediately for a dehydrated run in high heat and humidity after 4 hours of sleep, and an “up the chain” injury that resulted from poor dorsii flexion in my ankle, causing compensations in my knee/hip.  I consider both of those to be somewhat freak injuries, different than if I were to have sustained a stress fracture or tendonitis.  

Anyway, I noticed that a lot of people have posted on social media that one of their new year’s resolutions is to be injury free in 2017.  Listed here are some of the factors that I think have helped me be pretty durable throughout my running career.

I Have Good Genes First and foremost, I’m sure genetics play a huge role.  If you know my family, you’re probably like, umm, really, good genes?  Isn’t everyone in your family sick?  While the answer is yes, my dad has regenerative super healing powers that have made him last much longer than he probably should have.  For instance, 5 years ago he had congestive heart failure.  This past year, cardiologists at mayo clinic announced the heart failure to be a fluke [this is not normal].  His primary mayo clinic doctor has also marveled numerous times that he seems to have super healing abilities when it comes to surgeries and other procedures.  I am convinced that I have some of his recovery abilities.  My mom is also pretty hardy, which shouldn’t be surprising considering she claims she was a pioneer in her past life and will be a farrier (horse shoer) in her next life.  (note:  my mom is afraid of horses).  If you don’t have good genes, it helps to figure out your deficiencies.  Do all of your family members suffer from low bone density?  Calcium supplements and strength training may be a good way to mitigate these issues.  

I Run on Soft Surfaces In middle school and high school I only ever ran on soft surfaces, thanks to the nearby Indiana Dunes and a coach who was willing to drive us out there every day.  My only injury-free year of college also consisted primarily of soft-surface running.  I do think that one reason for my injuries the rest of the time in Milwaukee was due to running on A LOT of concrete.  Post-college, I returned to trails and crushed limestone, and it was a great transition for my legs.  Now, 75%+ of my running is on trails or crushed gravel. 

I’m Lazy I have said it before and I will say it again:  I don’t love running for the sake of running.  For me, training is a necessary evil so that I can do what I truly enjoy, which is race.  Therefore, my brain is always looking for a way out.  If I have the slightest niggle, sniffle, or prolonged muscle soreness, I take a day off or cut my run short.  The focus is on being able to race for me, not painfully powering through a run just so that I can write it down in my running log.

Good Coaching The more that I talk to others, the more I am realizing how much a coach shapes the early stages of a runner’s development.  I was very fortunate that my high school coach (who is also my current coach) preached the importance of getting to the starting line healthy.  I have always understood that health > hitting all of your workouts.  I distinctly remember my junior year of high school going over my running log with my coach and being proud of the fact that I had run 100 days in a row.  I told him about how I almost didn’t make it because I had a week where my calves were absolutely destroyed and I didn’t really want to do my Sunday run, but didn’t want to give up my streak.  In my 16 year old dumb head I thought I was being smart and awesome, but instead he told me I should have called him that day and he would have told me to rest.  I don’t think it’s a coincidence that my junior track season was relatively my worst out of all of high school. 

Sponsorship One thing that has surprised me is that I’m more cautious with my training now that I have sponsorship and am on elite ambassador teams.  I truthfully would have thought it would be the other way around.  But, while no sponsor or ambassador program has said this to me, I know that I am worth more as an athlete to be running high level races than to not be running at all.  If that means taking a day off here or there to rehab an injury, then I am more likely to do so than I was 5 year ago.  I also realize that getting invited to run big events sometimes depends on whether I have raced recently, and staying healthy & racing often is as much a business decision as it is something I enjoy.

I Ignore Pace I, like 99.9% of runners, don’t need to be told to speed up.  I will run the pace that’s right for me and my body on any given day.  So, unless I’m running a long run or a workout, I don’t wear my GPS.  I simply map a route for the mileage and run.  I see it way too often where people don’t like the pace they see on their watch (even though it’s the right pace for the day) so they speed up and stress their bodies unnecessarily.  If I am wearing  watch, I tend to run “Badger Miles,” where I just assume I’m running 8 minute pace.  Most times I’m running faster, but sometimes I’m running slower, too.  Since I run primarily on trails, it’s silly to keep a GPS going anyway.  

I’m Flexible Case in point:  over the weekend, I raced a 5k, lifted afterwards, and then ran a 20 miler in the mud the next day, which usually doesn’t bother me but left me very, very sore come Sunday night.  Instead of doing my planned 20 x 200 m on Tuesday, I am heading out in an hour to run the workout, feeling way better now than I did yesterday.  While there are times you should run on tired legs, I’m not at that part in my training cycle.  Being flexible in terms of when I train, and allowing myself ample recovery, is a huge part of staying injury-free.  This is also why I purposely don’t train with others.  If there were set workout days, I would have a difficult time putting the needs of my body over my ego.  

I Sleep I 1000% get that not everyone has the luxury to sleep as much as I do.  But, a lot of people could stand to cut back on mileage in order to increase sleep, and this wouldn’t hurt their fitness (it would do the opposite).  A rule of thumb that I love:  add 10 minutes of sleep for every 10 miles of weekly running.  Therefore, if you run 50 miles per week, add 50 minutes of sleep each night to your base level.  For me, even when I’m not running, I need 7 - 8 hours of sleep.  That means I need 8.5 - 9.5 hours of sleep per night, which is pretty accurate considering I tend to average 9 hours of sleep when I don’t set an alarm.  Figure out the best balance of sleep and mileage for your routine.

I Eat More and more I realize how lucky I am that my mother never restricted her diet, never restricted my diet, and planned our meals based on the dessert she wanted to serve that night.  Growing up, I subsisted on a midwestern diet based on the strict GI needs of my father (who no longer has a colon and can only eat easy-to-digest foods).  We ate a lot of simple foods: meat, potatoes, fish, cooked veggies, and gravies, as well as apple crisps, pies, and shortcakes.  Baking powder biscuits, of which the primary ingredient is crisco, was a staple in our household.  2% milk was served with every meal.  I grew up strong and well-fueled, with a healthy attitude towards meal time.  

I Get the Science A big aggravating factor I see in athletes when it comes to injury is not wanting to take a day or two off due to fear of losing fitness or gaining weight.  Both of these points are moot, and there is plenty of science to back them up.  For one, if you take 7 days off and do absolutely nothing, you will only lose a negligible percentage of your VO2 max, which won’t matter unless you are an elite athlete at the very peak of your training cycle.  Two, you are more likely to lose “weight”, in the form of decreased inflammation, if you take a short period of time off and rehab your body. 

I Make the Right Investments Self care is important, whether that means going to yoga, foam rolling, doing stretching/strengthening activities at home, going to PT regularly (and keeping up with the exercises), or massage therapy.  For me, all of these are important in keeping myself injury free.  While paying for all of these can be difficult at times, it is definitely worth it to me to take care of my body.

I Have Poor Pain Tolerance To go along with making the right investments, I have to pay for those things because my pain tolerance for every day training isn’t very good (races are another story).  I get legit depressed if I’m in pain while I run, so I just take a few days off so that I can only run pain free.

I Had a Long Build Up If you follow my blog, you only know part of the story.  I was NOT always a high mileage runner.  In fact, I never hit a 70 mile week in my life until 2011, and I didn’t hit a 100 mile week until late 2015.  In college I never got above 60 mpw.  Unpopular opinion:  I take issue with the year-end “I ran x number of miles this year” posts because, IMO, they cause more harm than good.  If you didn’t run your highest mileage ever, you’re going to be down on yourself.  It also perpetuates the idea that more is more, when more is not more.  I ran 600 fewer miles in 2016 than 2015 and was arguably more fit.  Mileage doesn’t tell the whole story, and starting the new year hell-bent to beat a previous mileage high is a great way to get injured.  

I Strength Train I will be the first to admit that I have never appreciated the art of strength training until recently.  I stopped doing any form of strength completely between 2010 and 2016, and I will be the first to admit that I was VERY lucky not to have more serious problems than some hamstring tendonopathy.  Now that I’m back to regular strength and core work, I can say with absolute certainty that it has helped me overcome some biomechanic issues that have contributed to aches and pains in the past.