Injury Prevention Is Key
Chris Jennings / Herald Democrat

Well I did it. I used last week to rest in hopes of preventing an injury brought on by my sudden onslaught of running. I ran every other day for just three miles and my Saturday long run was just seven miles. All was fine and dandy until the last mile on Saturday. I started out at a pretty good pace which was my first mistake but hey, I’m young and invincible.

At the end of my second lap at Waterloo my buddy showed up on his mountain bike. Without stopping I told him I was going to do another short lap. He rode along in front of me and we talked a little about dirt bikes both past and present like we always do. By the time I got to the cut-off for the short lap, I decided to go ahead and run a long lap instead.

I think if I would have done the short lap, all would have been fine. Not me though. I felt good and kept running. About a mile from the finish I started feeling a little something different in my left knee.

I would like to say I stopped and walked the rest of the way, but you know better than that.
That’s what makes rest weeks so hard. You need the reduced mileage to help your body recover but since your body is recovering, you feel pretty good.

Then you go out and run harder than you should. More often than not, you get hurt. I would like to say it was a good lesson learned but I’ve learned this lesson enough times that now it’s just a stupid mistake.

Most all running injuries can be fixed with time but when you’re on a training plan you don’t have a lot of time to nurse injuries. The best thing to do is prevent the injuries beforehand.
In my case, what happened was not building up the muscles in the front of my leg instead of just focusing on the back. This causes the knee to slide around a little because it lacks the support needed in the front.

Taking it easy for three days by cutting back on some mileage has seemed to make things better. In the big picture the few missed miles will not make a difference and if I would have kept going like normal it very easily could have been much more than just a few missed miles.

What can you do to prevent this? Warm up for five minutes and then stretch before you really start running. Stretching after a run is also good. If you don’t want to stop right at the start of your run you can jump rope or do something else to get your heart rate up and your muscles warm.

Like I said last week, a good pair of shoes can really help prevent lots of injuries.
If you feel pain or something that is not normal, don’t try and run through it. You will just be taking chances that are not necessary.

Taking it easy by building your distance and running speeds gradually over a longer period of time you think will be necessary can also help keep you from getting injured. If you do get injured or feel you have overworked an area, ice and elevation will keep the swelling down but only use it for about 10 minutes at a time and take a few days off. If you do not feel like the injury is getting any better, go see your doctor.

Injuries are another good reason to cross train. Riding a bike or swimming will keep your activity level up so your giving your running body parts a rest. If you do get injured it’s better than going out and prolonging the injury by taking it easy. I consider myself lucky since this happened early in my training. Hopefully I’ll take this old lesson to heart and keep myself in good shape leading up to marathon day.

If for some reason you want to keep up with my runs and make sure I’m really doing what I say I’m doing you can go to my workout blog at chrisjennings.bimblogs.com. There are all kinds of nifty little graphs and other things that show you what I’ve done.