Today on the Doc On The Run podcast we’re talking about the injured runner underdog advantage.
Training for a marathon and ironman or an ultramarathon, you make a decision and set a goal. You started think about what is possible. Maybe you talk to some of your running buddies to see what they think you can do. Maybe you read articles and decide what is an appropriate goal for you.
In the process of setting an appropriate goal for your next event you think about what it will take for you to make it happen.
Three key things come to mind:
How bad do you want it?
What are you willing to do that others in your position are not willing to do?
What are you able to do, but just not doing right now?
Once you get a clear idea of what you think you might be able to accomplished you pick a number. You pick a time. You pick a race. Then you figure out what you need to do to get to that finish line within the time that you have determined is your goal for that race.
You hire a coach or create your own training plan. You schedule your workouts.
It seems for most runners, something interesting happens on a psychological level when you create a training plan.
Once you make a decision about what the goal is and you create your plan to get stronger, get faster and achieve that goal, you start to believe that if you do not complete every single one of the workouts on that schedule that formulates that plan, accomplishing your goal will be impossible.
But if you think about it that doesn’t really make sense.
You’ve never tried to run that fast for that far. You don’t know if you can do it or not. You just have committed in writing to accomplishing a specific number of tasks leading up to that event that you think will give you the fitness and the speed you need to accomplish your goal.
But again, you really don’t know. You don’t know that you can do it. You don’t know that you can’t do it either.
But in the pursuit of any running goal you really are only in competition with yourself.
When you become injured, you immediately give yourself an underdog status.
You start to think about all of the problems that your injury presents to prevent you from completing the workouts that you previously believed would make it possible for you to achieve your goal.
No working out.
No training.
No more fitness gains.
No more getting faster until you heal.
No insurance.
No antigravity treadmill.
No bone stimulator.
No team of specialists.
No help.
No clarity.
No direction.
Of course, none of that is true. All of those “reasons” are really just excuses. There is always a way.
So if you’re feeling like an underdog because you’re missing some of these pieces, three key things come to mind:
How bad do you want it?
What are you willing to do that others in your position are not willing to do?
What are you able to do, but just not doing right now?
Maybe need need to figure out what exercises you can do without stressing the tissue that is injured.
Maybe you need to forget about all the difficulties you may have with going to a doctor in person or trying to figure out how your insurance company can pay for it and just find a true expert on running injuries who can give you the clarity you need, and still heal, right now.
If you think you have a metatarsal stress fracture maybe you just need the information in the stress fracture course for runners I created.
If you think you have a partial rupture of the plantar fascia maybe you need a runners heel pain book.
Maybe you just need to check out some of the YouTube videos that explain all of these things to you on the Doc On the Run YouTube channel.
Maybe you just need to talk to a coach or a doctor who understands running injuries and can help you get back to training and back on track right now.
I don’t have any way of knowing what is missing for you right now.
But if you’re listening to this right now, I do know there is some small piece that you are missing they can help you get back on track.
Your job as an injured runner is to figure out where you can find your underdog advantage. Figure out what you can do right now that you are not doing or haven’t been willing to do or just haven’t been aware that you could do.
One thing I know for sure. Every runner I have ever worked with who got injured and then set a new P.R. was working from an underdog advantage.
Every underdog comes from behind and wins because they have maximized every advantage even when they seem to be at a disadvantage.
If you look for it, you can find it. Somewhere, right in front of you, right now, is your underdog advantage.
Go get it!
One easy way to do that is to let take a look at everything you know about training figure figure out how to apply it to healing and recovering as quickly as possible. I wrote the Runner’s Rapid Recovery Journal to help walk you through some exercises to figure out exactly what you are ready know that you can do that you’re not doing right now to accelerate the recovery process and get back to full training. This is really the same process I use when I work with runners in person through a phone consultation or a WebCam virtual doctor visit.
Any over training injury is really nothing more than an exaggerated version of the same thing you do to your tissues during your normal workouts. You just want little too far. So what you need to do now is really and truly look at all of the things that made you recover faster when you were training and apply them to your recovery and your healing.
Right now the Runner’s Rapid Recovery Journal is on sale and you can get it at discount. You can get an instant download version today. You can find a link in the show notes at the bottom of this episode at docontherun.com under the podcast tab.
Go check it out!
After years of lecturing to doctors at medical conferences and helping injured runners start to recover when they stagnate, the one thing I have learned more than anything else is that the runners who get back to running faster are those who take what they have learned in training and apply it to their healing to create an active recovery plan.
Get the Runner’s Rapid Recovery Journal…
