Running Hurts: 5 Lessons I Learnt From Injury
It's time to talk about every runner’s greatest fear — injury.
We like to think that one day we’ll be able to run injury-free — putting in training block after training block and making linear progress month after month. But sadly, it’s not a reality. Injury is part of the game.
Most runners (myself included) struggle to accept this. We rush back from injury too soon, leading to more time on the sofa and less time on the road in the long run.
An injury doesn’t have to be a big deal. It’s just feedback from your body. It’s a sign you’re doing something wrong. Recover, correct your course, and go again.
I’ve suffered my fair share of injuries over the past five years. Here’s a few I can remember:
- Tore my achilles (playing touch rugby, yes, touch rugby)
- Shin stress fracture when training for my first half marathon
- Metatarsal stress fracture when training for my first marathon
- Plantar fasciitis from running in shoes with an aggressive forward roll
- Shin splits from doing too much speed work
Looking back now, I’m grateful for those injuries (except the achilles tear, that was not a fun 12 months). Each one taught me a lesson, helped refine my training approach and made me a better runner in the long run.
Here’s a few of the things I’ve learned.
#1 The approach that works for strength training doesn’t work for running.
Like many people, I picked up running during the first Covid lockdown. Before that, pretty much all I did was gym. And I was pretty good at it.
I liked training as hard as possible as often as possible, and it paid off. At my peak, I could squat 190kg and deadlift 230kg whilst weighing 75kg.
When I started running, I knew nothing, so I applied the same approach as I did with strength training. Go hard, and try to go one better than I did last time.
But, I quickly learned that this approach does not work. About two weeks in, I pulled my calf.
It forced me to do my research. I scaled down the intensity of my running and started taking more of an 80/20 approach. But it took me a few more injuries to finally learn my lesson.
#2 It’s infinitely better to undertrain than it is to overtrain.
The majority of running injuries are ‘overuse’ injuries. They come from training at a higher level of volume or intensity than you’re capable of recovering from.
Running is one of the few sports where doing more can result in a worse outcome. Because it’s a high-impact sport, you can almost guarantee you'll get injured if you overdo it for a couple of weeks in a row or more.
The best way to make progress running is through long-term consistency. And injuries are the biggest barrier to being consistent. Because of this, it’s better to undertrain than overtrain.
Aim to make a little bit of progress week after week, month after month. You’ll make way more progress long-term than trying to maximise each week, accidentally pushing it too far, and then needing to take a month off to recover.
#3 You can’t force fitness.
How do most of us runners pick our training paces? We pick an arbitrary goal race finish time and work back from there.
We think that if we train at our goal race pace, we’ll be able to force our bodies to adapt and catch up with our training. In principle, it sounds like it should work. But it doesn’t.
After my spring marathon, I decided to focus my attention on running a sub-20 minute 5km. All my intervals were run at 3:55/km or faster, and I pushed it close to the limit in most of those sessions.
The first attempt, bailed at 3.5km. The second attempt was very close, 20:03. Third attempt, strained my calf, finished in 21:35.
I was so focused on making that sub-20 time that I failed to consider whether my body could regularly train at that high a pace. It wasn’t, and injury followed.
I learnt my lesson. We can’t force ourselves to get fitter. We can only adapt as fast as our body allows.
#4 Movement is key
When you get injured, keep moving and training as much as you can without pain.
If you avoid moving the injured muscle or joint, it can get stiff and weak.
But more interestingly, moving an injured area helps teach the brain that all is okay, so it can start dialling down its pain response — pain is signalled by the brain, not by the injured tissue. If you want to understand more about the relationship between pain and injury, you can watch this TEDx talk.
It’s likely that if you pull your calf, walking or a bit of light running won’t make it any worse. But your brain is likely to signal pain if you attempt to do either because it perceives a threat, not because you’re tearing the muscle more and more with each stride. The body is nowhere near that fragile.
Moving the injured area within a pain-free range teaches your brain that “no more damage will occur from movements like this, so I don’t need to signal pain anymore”. This allows you to return to light activity and start the rehab process faster.
#5 Don’t push through pain
Pain is your body’s way of telling you that something is wrong, or that something might go wrong if you keep going.
It’s easy for us runners to ignore pain. We don’t want to face that we might, once again, be injured. I learned the hard way that ignoring pain can turn a minor issue (shin splints) into a significant injury (stress fracture) that sidelines you for weeks.
We all go out and feel random pains or areas of discomfort sometimes, and we don’t need to stop every time we feel something. But we need to listen when pain is persistent or worsening. It’s our body's way of telling us we’re doing too much.
Appreciating that pain is feedback shifted my approach from “push through” to a more balanced mindset: backing off and taking an extra day or two’s rest when I notice pain on multiple runs in a row or if the pain gradually gets worse.
Although this approach may lead to me missing out on short term gains, it will pay off big time in the long run. And as we all know, road running is a marathon, not a sprint.
Hopefully, you found this insightful and that maybe, it’s changed your perspective on injury.
