Back In The Running

Almost always, it’s load. Too much, too soon, without enough recovery in between.

It’s rarely the dramatic thing runners expect. Most injuries I see didn’t arrive in a single stride. They built quietly over weeks, and the run where it finally hurt was simply the one that tipped it over.

That matters, because it changes where you go looking for the answer. If the cause built up over a month, the answer is in that month — not in the shoes you happened to be wearing on the day.

Capacity versus demand

Think of your body as having a certain capacity to handle running. Every session you do makes a demand on it. Run within your capacity, recover properly, and your tissues adapt — they get a little stronger and your capacity grows. That’s how training works.

Ask for more than your current capacity, repeatedly, without giving it time to catch up, and something eventually becomes sensitive and complains. That’s the injury.

So there are two levers, not one. You can reduce the demand, or you can build the capacity. Most runners only ever think about the first, which is why so many end up in a cycle of stopping, feeling better, starting again and getting the same problem back.

Load isn’t just your mileage

This is the bit most runners miss. Your training load is the total stress you’re placing on your body, and running is only part of it.

A bad month at work, a new baby, a house move, broken sleep, a heavy week in the gym, a stinking cold — all of it eats into the same recovery budget. I’ve had runners come to me baffled that an injury appeared during a week when their mileage actually went down. It usually turns out everything else in their life went up.

What about technique, strength and biomechanics?

They play a part, and I’ll be honest with you about how big a part, because this is an area where confident claims outrun the research.

We don’t have good evidence that there’s one correct way to run, or that any single feature of your gait reliably predicts who gets injured. Runners of every conceivable shape and style stay healthy for decades. So be wary of anyone who watches you run for thirty seconds and tells you they’ve found the cause.

What technique and strength do influence is where the load lands and how much of it you can tolerate. If the same calf, the same knee or the same hip keeps flaring up, that’s worth a proper look — not because you’re running wrongly, but because that area may be taking more than its share, or simply need more capacity than it currently has.

Strength work is the more solid ground of the two. There’s reasonable evidence that a well-built strength programme reduces injury risk in runners, and it’s the one addition to your week I’d argue for most confidently.

What to do this week

Open your training log and look at the last four to six weeks. Not the run it started hurting on — the weeks before it.

Ask three questions. Did the mileage step up? Did the hard sessions get harder or more frequent? Did the easy days and rest days survive? Then add the rest of your life to the picture: sleep, work, stress, anything else physical.

More often than not, the answer is sitting right there. And if it isn’t — if you’ve been sensible and it still keeps happening — that’s exactly the point to get someone to look at the whole picture with you rather than guessing.

One last thing, because it’s the thing that helps most. A running injury is a sensitive, irritated area asking for a change in how it’s being loaded. It is very rarely a sign that you’ve broken something permanently. Pain is very rarely a measure of damage.

Run happy and injury free.