Today on the doc on the Run podcast, we’re talking about why runners get re-injured 1 to 2 months into healing.
This morning I was on a consultation call with a runner at 4:30 a.m. and he’s been injured. He’s been having trouble. He’s been suffering with a plantar plate injury. And the specifics of what that means doesn’t really matter.
But, he’s been doing pretty well. He actually just finished his first run!
During that call this morning, we were talking about the ways that he could most safely ramp up his running, increase his training, increase his fitness, start to work some things loose, and confirm that his plantar plate ligament is indeed healing and strong enough to withstand all of the forces of running you might expect when you’re actually resuming ramping up for something like a marathon.
Now, what I asked him about was his plan for his next run.
What he said, made me uneasy.
It seemed risky, and I started kind of squirming as he was describing his plan to me. It wasn’t really a bad plan. It wasn’t really a crazy plan. But based on all the experience I have working with injured runners, I knew it was riskier than it needed to be.
Everything about returning to running with an injury is all about mitigating risk.
What we’re talking about here was a very small and subtle deviation from the plan that we had actually developed together and that we had discussed, and this is why I decided to record this episode. Because it happens to almost every injured runner!
And when I start pointing out that someone makes a mistake like this and they’re returning to running. They always feel like they’ve done the wrong thing or something. But I’m also trying to reassure you that it’s common.
You have to keep in mind that unplanned experimentation is the one thing that I see more than anything else that happens to runners somewhere around six weeks or so. Why six weeks?
Well, everybody is super cautious after you first start running again. You’ve been off your foot, you haven’t been doing anything. It’s been terrible. You try some things, you mess up.
Then once you start getting better and you start running again, you start feeling a little better. You start running a little faster. You start getting a little more confidence in your own ability to move across the ground without your foot starting to hurt again. All of that confidence takes about a month or so to develop.
And then somewhere between 1 and 2 months, maybe around six weeks after getting back to running, you just decide to push things just a little bit more, and you don’t plan to do that. It just happens.
You know, you’re out on a run. The sun is shining. It feels like the wind’s at your back. You’re feeling strong. Everything seems to be going great. You’re kind of elated, truthfully, because you’re actually finally back to running. And incredibly, almost always, it’s about 75% or 80% or so of the way through that run is when you feel like you’re kind of approaching the final stretch. You just try to kick it up a notch and kind of increase the pace a little bit right at the end, just to see what it feels like to see how it feels.
And that’s when disaster strikes.
It’s crazy the number of runners that I’ve started working with after some doctor told them they really couldn’t run. And with a few small modifications, they start running weeks ahead of schedule and they’re doing great. And that’s awesome. Except there’s this little voice that tells you you could probably just run a little bit faster, that’s lurking in the back of your mind, and it’s waiting to catch you off guard. And it does catch you off guard. And it is dangerous.
Think about it. The most dangerous time that that’s going to happen is at the end of your run.
At the beginning of your run, you don’t know how things are going to go. You’re nervous, you’re sheepish. You start running, you feel all wonky and wobbly, and you start running and you kind of get warmed up and you start feeling better.
Then as you get to the middle of the run, you’re actually like, okay, this feels okay. My foot’s okay. I feel like I’m fine. And you start feeling confident.
Then around three quarters or, 80% into the run, when you’re nearing the end of your run, you’re comfortable. And that’s when you think, oh, maybe I could just run instead of eight minute miles, I could run seven and a half, or instead of ten I could run nine. You start thinking or, you know, or the sort of the one that affects all of us who are marathon runners. You start thinking, well, if I’m running ten and it’s okay, maybe you could try a 9:09 pace, because that’s what a four hour marathon would be.
But that little voice that tells you why not right when things are going well, that also almost always corresponds with the point of the run where you start to fatigue. So your form is actually going to be more susceptible to degenerating, falling apart, loading things asymmetrically, and actually reentering that one injured part that got you in all this trouble in the first place. So you have to really watch for that.
You have to exercise restraint when you’re returning to running.
The issue is not discipline. The issue is not getting off the couch and going and exercising. The issue is restraining and holding back the throttle. When you get in those moments where you have a very clear plan of you’re going to ramp up in a specific way, but then you’re tempted to run just a little bit faster, just to test it out, just to see if it’s okay. That’s a terrible idea.
And that is the thing that messes up runners more than anything else, after we’ve been working together and they start getting back to running.
Now, if you want to get on a call with me and try to figure out what you could be doing differently, you can get on a strategy call, with me (not an assistant or sales person or an AI chat bot) but a real 10 minute conversation to help you figure out which pieces you’re missing, and what strategy you should really be considering to make sure you start moving, stay fit and don’t unnecessarily lose all your running fitness while you were waiting for that one injured piece of tissue to completely heal.
You can block my calendar for your free call at DocOnTheRun.com Just click on Talk To The Expert tab.
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