Search Results for: injury

Two Whole Running Legs: Gratitude and kicking motivation lulls in the @$$

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Far too often we take things for granted. You wake up feeling ‘meh’, the run for the day not looking like the most appealing option. I mean running was there for you yesterday, in today’s motivation lull you assume you can blow it off today and running will still be waiting for you tomorrow. It happens with everything, the random lamp in the house that’s just always been there. You don’t even notice it anymore. It just blends right in, ignored, the act of flipping the switch an unconscious act. You don’t even REALLY care about the lamp, say, until the power goes out. You flip the switch and suddenly think, “WTF?!?!” Taken for granted. Never treat your running like a stupid, random lamp. I was having my own ‘meh’ moment not too long ago. I was about 1 minute into my run, forced myself to at least that point, but the endorphins had yet to really kick in, you know? Then I passed a house where a man in a wheelchair was working to get himself into a car. He didn’t have legs from the knee-down. BAM…it hit me, I was too lucky to be feeling ‘meh’ about my running. I was so freaking lucky I COULD use my two legs in such a way. On my way back home I ran past the man’s house; he wasn’t there, but his car was. I could see the wheelchair lift rack in the back. Now every time I run past that black van I say a thanks to my two, whole legs. I remember to be grateful I am able to use them in suck a way and run. Don’t feel guilty about your own ‘meh’ moments. Runnerchicks and runnerdudes, we ALL get them. Feeling complacent versus lovey-dovey and excited Continue Reading →

Good Pain, Bad Pain? Too Hard, Too Easy? Running Along the Fine Lines

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One of the trickiest things about running is it’s wrought with ambiguities. So many fine lines: how hard is too hard, what is too easy, when to push rather than pull-back, and differentiating between what kind of pain requires you to put your big girl/boy pants on and suck it up versus the kind of pain where you need to stop. That’s not even the full list of running ambiguities. For a runner that’s training, in order to improve there are plenty of times where it just plain hurts. Part of training becomes callousing your mind to that pain, using mental tricks to dull the complaints from your mind and muscles, and getting used to the discomfort. But then we also are told of the importance of easy days, recognizing the signs of burn-out, or days when the legs just don’t show up and the workout needs to be adjusted. Paramount of all kinds of pain for runners to be able to correctly identify are the ones signaling an injury. Catch that pain early enough and you could avoid a chunk of time off and lost training, or push through that pain, keep running, and wind up going until you’re literally broken. The conundrum only goes further as no one can really EXPLAIN all these wrong pains and fine lines. Tired versus lazy, too easy versus too hard, etc. because everyone interprets pain differently and has a different pain threshold. When one runner says their leg hurts, depending on the person that could mean their calf is sore or their hamstring was torn and it’s balled up down near their knee. Sometimes a runner needs a swiftkick in the butt, other times a runner faces an even harder reality and they need to cut themselves a break. Get doing this Continue Reading →

3 Ways Running Can Fly By and 500 Reasons to Update Your Running Shoes

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Oh I’m so proud, I’ve been diligently helping spread the running infection. Last night I ordered my cute little high school friend a pair of running shoes. I’ve been working on her for months, when she told me she wished she could be a runner. “Be a runner?” I said, “Anyone can BE a runner.” That’s the funny thing, most people think you either pop out with your Nike running shoes on or you don’t. The ones who don’t are sadly shunned from society, left to wallow away through life sans any endorphins via miles. 😉 Just kidding. But I told her anyone can become a runner, at any age, and regardless of starting fitness level. Probably the greatest thing about our sport, regardless of genetics, if you are consistent with your running you WILL improve and get better. The beauty of running a PR (personal best for any of you newbie runners) can be felt by ANYONE. You just have to work for it. Earning that sweaty, glorious time is tough but so worth it. It becomes tougher the longer you run, the improvement curve doesn’t always sky-rocket away like it does soon after you become a runner. That just means you have to work harder AND smarter. 😉 Back to my friend though, I’ve been so proud watching her go from barely making two miles and now busting out 6 miles. I was, however, APPALLED…I mean appalled at the raggedy-@$$ shoes she was running in. When I say I was appalled, I’m not in ANY way judging her or disappointed in her AT ALL. Most new runners just really don’t have any idea how crucial it is to have the right kind of shoes. Also the age of their shoes. “My foot kind of hurt after my last Continue Reading →

5 Rules for Runners and Self-Massage: Stave off injuries, don’t cause them

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The longer that you’re a runner the more time it takes to keep yourself healthy to run. I know I’m not the only one with a laundry list of to-do’s to keep this creaky body on this side of moving. Soon it becomes that the time you actually spend running is outpaced by the outside ‘extra’ work you do to keep you running! My latest article up on Competitor: “3 Things Under 5 Minutes Every Runner Should Do Daily” explains the importance of including these strength, flexibility, and injury-preventative work into your day. But let’s be straight-up, lots of people have lives and getting the time to just RUN is pushing it. (I’m boring and don’t really have a life, juuust kidding…I have to work and pay ‘dem bills too, bummer. And I think I still have one or two friends rolling around this green Earth.) But I’m betting you can find a spare 5 minutes SOMEWHERE during the day…waiting in line at Starbucks could take longer. Am I asking you to bust out some planks right there in line? If you do and take a picture of you rocking the core routine in line I’ll totally post it, so send it my way! Injury issues aside, getting a stronger core and increasing your flexibility will translate into running faster too. Get stronger = Get more efficient = Get faster. I harp on that enough around the blog too. The self-massage part of the injury prevention is also really important, it gets more-so the longer we run too. I may be 27 but I’m strapped in the body of a geriatric, I’ll probably be rascal-bound by 30…but I’ll take getting my miles fix up until I’m legless. I wish I could afford a professional massage therapist on my ‘staff’, but Continue Reading →

Bring It: Runners live for a challenge

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Runners are tough, we thrive under challenges. —– Need more reasons why runners are tough? No shortage HERE, HERE, and HERE! More cartoons HERE! —- 1) What challenge are you working towards? 2) What is a memorable horrible weather run you have? 3) How do you make it through really though moments in a run? Tell myself to make it 5 minutes more…just keep going.

Runner’s Are Wont to Worry: Make sure you’re stressing over the RIGHT paces

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Runners seem to like to worry. Perhaps it’s a bit of the self masochism in us, on some level we must like to hurt, so it makes sense the same attraction is there for worrying. Our brains never seem to never be happy, or feel quite right, unless we’re preoccupied with something troublesome. [Why it has to be a negative is a topic for a post of another day!] Am I doing enough? Is that a ‘new’ pain? Is that an INJURY?! Did I go out to fast? Am I doing too much? Should I ice that again? etc…etc. A common one is worrying about paces. Well that’s only natural, of COURSE runners worry about paces…and they should. Paces are numbers, they are concrete, they are the benchmarks that tell us if we’re heading in the right direction, if all of this work is paying off. For runners, numbers are what show us progress. Paces, times, the black and whites of our sport are what feed that runner’s OCD-neurotic monster. It fuels our motivation. Runners thrive on numbers. So paces and miles, naturally. The problem is worrying stressing over the WRONG numbers. Let’s make a deal: DO worry about the paces of your hard runs, races, and workouts. DON’T worry about the paces of your easy runs. Ahhh, there we go. Easy in concept but quite a different beast to wrestle when applied to the never-logical runner’s brain. 😉 It’s far too easy to get sucked into thinking all paces are created equal. They AREN’T. They don’t hold races for ‘easy’ days…they could but then why not just make it a real race? You see, it’s the hard running that counts. It’s the fast running that counts for PR’s. Let’s force logic onto our running brains here: If you want Continue Reading →

Brain Warp: Running mentally tough by changing how your brain interprets those pain messages

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A runner’s brain is constantly being flooded by sensory input information. Feedback from the muscles, skin, lungs, eyes, ears, feet, nerves from everything. It’s a matter of taking all of these messages and warping them into what is in the runners’ best interest. The Physical Messages Typically the loudest feedback responders are going to be from your muscles and lungs. Here comes relays from your cardiovascular system and lactic threshold responders. The muscles announcing they are being worked, those mitochondria are breaking down glycogen and supplying your energy to run on; they are attention mongers demanding to be credited for their work. These are pretty basic, primordial messages to your brain. Instinctual. You can’t change that these messages will be sent and that they are mostly containing shouts of pain, complaints, and fatigue. You can’t control what messages are coming in while you are running but you CAN control how you interpret them. A runner that is mentally tough is able to manage and get as close to ignoring certain sensory feedback as they can. * Anticipate: Incidentally the ability to manage what your legs and body are telling you while you run starts before the first step. This is anticipating the uncomfort in pain. It is a reality, but it is one we must both accept and deny. Accept the race and workouts will hurt but deny that we will let that pain break us. Anticipating the pain is a lot different from fearing it. * Realize: Once you realize that EVERYONE will hurt when they push themselves running, not just you, a runner doesn’t feel alone. Admitting pain is present is not a weakness, admitting that these workouts are tough isn’t a weakness…it only becomes a weakness when you start to believe you can’t do the workouts. * Continue Reading →

Distance Runners Getting Their Speed Work On: The multi-level approach to getting faster

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Getting a runner to be faster is an interesting undertaking. It’s actually a concept that coaches and athletes have been trying to perfect for centuries. As science has improved, training has evolved, we’ve created training phases and workouts that push the runner and train their body. Simplistically it’s easy to sum it up like this: if you want to run faster, run faster. This is true of course, doing speed work and improving your base speed, is going to enable a runner to run a faster pace as the distance gets longer. As in, if you improve your mile time you’ll be able to run a 5k and 10k faster. If you don’t do speed work you’ll never improve your speed. Though as I said, that’s overly simplistic, and if a runner is truly wanting to see how fast they can be they need to open their eyes and expand their training logs to include ALL of the factors that make a runner faster. You see, the body is an interconnected machine, you can’t just concentrate on straight running workouts. I’ve been working on a series for Competitor.com tied to speed work and the other techniques that enable a runner to, well, run faster. There are drills, strength work, and a neuromuscular component to getting faster. Check out the series so far: What Distance Runners Can Learn From Sprinters The Neuromuscular Component to Speed Work Distance Runners Staying SHARP During an Injury In reading each of them you’ll see that the first step to getting faster is working on your shorter-repeat speed. You shouldn’t avoid those 200’s even if you’re a 10k and above runner. But that’s ONE step in the process. After that you’ve got to build the synapses and teach the nerves to fire faster; your brain is Continue Reading →

Runners Managing Emotions: When the human in you is being tested

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Running can be emotional. Ask the injured runner how it feels to be on the elliptical stationed behind the row of treadmills and you’re putting yourself at risk for a major @$$ whooping. 😉 On the contrast, approach the runner who, physically spent after crossing the line after a new PR is miraculously able to overcome full lactic acid overload and jump around like a giddy school girl. Something about all those endorphins coursing through a runner’s veins can sure bring out the emotions. Running just makes everything else feel more ‘real’. ‘Normal people’ can’t quite understand the unique ecstasy experienced after a run that was just ‘on.’ Conversely, ‘normals’ can’t wrap their heads around why a bad run can put you in such a crappy mood. “It’s just a run, right?” they ask scratching their heads. But it’s not…it’s more. At least it FEELS like more. Running isn’t most of our jobs, it doesn’t make us billionaires, it won’t snuggle us late at night (but we can spoon with our Nike running shoes), but dang-it it sure brings a nice sense of purpose to things. Running is black and white. It’s a constant when all other things may feel totally off the wall chaotic. It’s about working towards something, watching progress, seeing hard work PAY OFF. Not in the monetary sense, the worth of miles is, as MasterCard can tell us, ‘Priceless.’ I often say running keeps me sane. It’s reliable. You can always count on the run being there, it’s YOU that has to show up. Injuries are unavoidable, as are set-backs, but eventually the run will be there for you. It’s like the welcome mat that never gets tossed out. Dealing with the emotional side of running is what tests the HUMAN in us. Struggling with an Continue Reading →

Running Patient Keeps You In the Sport and WILL Reward You…In Time ;)

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Running is wrought with the ‘two steps forward, one step backward’ tests and trials. I’d call it logic, but let’s be honest, most runners lost all logic about 5,000 miles ago. 😉 Progress forward is HARD fought, once you’ve been running for awhile it then come in seconds and tenths rather than minutes. Each new PR ushers you into another realm, and in order to break through and run through to that next level it takes more work than before, and the cycle continues. Eventually you’re working to improve by 1 or 2%, and by that time it takes more than just running harder and running faster. One must run harder and faster of course, but also SMARTER, be more ATTUNED, and then PATIENT. All that patience sure does wear on a runner’s mindset. Typically we want those rewards, those PR’s NOW…but failing to be patient and look long term usually winds you up either 1) hurt or 2) limited. * Hurt: By running harder and faster smartly that means allowing the body to recover between those hard and fast workouts. If you don’t recover on your easy days then you start greying the line between HARD and EASY. You might think that going harder more often will help, but in fact you wind up being too tired to really NAIL those hard workouts. A bunch of grey running just leads to a bunch of grey racing, not sharp, quality races and workouts. Well, that is if you don’t wind up injured first. I’ll include overtrained under the hurt category, because watching your times slip really does hurt too. * Limited: By limited I mean you’re not looking at the BIG picture. To gain those ‘little’ percentages forward means you need to widen your scope beyond just running miles. It Continue Reading →