Trail Mix | Avoiding running injuries by putting consistency over ‘epic-ness’ in training
- It may be tempting to push yourself to your limits, but you should listen to your body and pull back in training even when you’re desperate to fly
In my first year at college, I was naive as a runner. I paid for this naivety with injuries and weeks of having to literally put my feet up.
I remember feeling a tugging tightness in my left hip over the winter break in 2013. I would have trouble standing up after sitting down to dinner. It would go away after walking around for a bit but the tightness persisted. I pushed on, thinking it was just a sore hip flexor. Besides, I was already one of the slowest runners on the team. If I took a break from running, I thought, I would fall off even further and never catch up to my teammates. So I gritted my teeth and kept running.
Strangely, the pain only surfaced when I was running slowly. If I ran fast enough, it was almost imperceptible. One afternoon, we ran a hard workout on the indoor track.
I felt fit and fast, and excited that I could keep up with at least some of the others. Then it came time to cool down, and a teammate asked me why I was limping.
I had dealt with sprained ankles before, but otherwise had no frame of reference for interpreting pain, soreness, tightness, and the difference between the three.