Some thoughts on common running injuries, and the benefit of walking

These musings are not necessarily scientific, but may be based loosely on scientific conclusions that may or may not have been accurately remembered. It seems that running injuries come in two varieties: overuse injuries and violent injuries. The latter are less frequent and less easy to prevent. Ankle sprains or breaks from missteps or unexpectedly rough terrain are things that are hard to prevent without excessive caution. Few people, nigh Tigger, find these a common occurrence.

Overuse injuries may seem to appear out of-the-blue but instead build up over time. Stress fractures are the classic example and shin splints may fall into that category. Disorders of the plantar fascia and compartmentalized inflammation are a bit trickier, but probably also fit into this category. The real problem with this category of injury is that treatment often involves little other than rest and prevention often involves little other than specific strengthening and the sort of experience that guides you to understanding the subtle cues your body is always transmitting.

This proximal conundrum (it's probably not proximal at all, but i wanted to use that word) is not unlike that of education, which is given to the young but is only useful to those with wisdom, which is gained with age.

I would love to tell everyone anecdotes of my training and showcase your bad decisions (rather yours than mine), but this neither helps you nor strokes my ego. What may help you, actually, is walking.

As much as I hate to say it, walking can be an integral part of successful training. (If I see any of you fudgepackers Gallowalking the marathon, I'm out for vengeance.) [Now begins my official apology for using such a socially insensitive phrase as fudgepacker.]

Tim Noakes makes it clear that many overuse injuries are prompted by the cardiovascular system seeing training benefits ahead of the musculoskeletal system. What happens is that we feel faster and begin training faster when our legs literally aren't under us. And we often don't know until it's too late. That coupled with our psychological bent to push too hard and not wimp out (which is untrained to listen to our physiological cues until we gain the wisdom of a few races and subsequent injuries) leads us to many of the more common overuse injuries.

So Noakes prescribes walking in training to start and mixed in training to begin. Walking is beneficial to both systems but does not add the adverse stress of running and does not tempt us to progress to quickly.

And it may be that walking is a good recovery tool for runners coping with overuse injury for the same reasons. As with any injury, what you feel is what you get, so don't push through the pain, but walking may provide many more benefits than anticipated and can certainly get you out of the lack of training cabin fever mode that tends to settle with injury.

Happy trails.