3 Ways to Avoid a Running Injury

Training update:
Achilles continues to heal well, virtually no pain/sensation this morning with first steps.  Headed to the gym to do a leg workout - Squats, Bulgarian Squats and Straight Legged Deadlifts followed by a 60ish minute ride on the stationary bike for ~19 miles.  Legs felt fine through the squats, with a little bit of sensation in my achilles.  Treatment continues with heat, stretching and ice as well as a follow-up physio/acupuncture treatment on Friday.  Plan is another week off of running, pending that appointment and hopefully back the week following.  If Friday goes well, I will start to get excited.


3 Ways to Avoid a Running Injury
These are all from personal experience as I have thought long and hard over what I have done to aggravate my leg, with no prior history of this type of injury.

1) Increase your mileage too quickly:  Apparently a no-brainer, but in my case I went from 50ish miles to 80 in virtually a week with Week 3 at the sustained mileage being when issues started up.  Probably a better increase would have been 10ish% which would be 5-10 miles per week.

2) Too much hill work, too quickly:  At the same time I increased my hill running to incorporate 800-1000m of vertical climb daily from a typical 200-300m vertical climb.  Plus I through in some hill repeats for good measure.  While this type of work is generally less strenuous than speed work, the incline of the hills likely caused additional stress/stretching of my calf/achilles.  Yes, I win the prize for intelligence.

3) Change your stride/shoes: Probably a better approach would be to phase each of these in over a 4-6 week cycle.  My life is about extremes, so why should running be different.  I changed shoes to a very lightweight and comfortable pair that had a drop of 4mm instead of my usual 8mm.  While this has improved my efficiency and mechanics, in addition to the drills and focussed approach I was taking, it also stressed my calves.  Which strained my achilles.

Hopefully the average runner can learn from my stupidity.  Though I will likely repeat this again, I am certainly more aware of the smaller causation type relationships to my training approach.  I will try to do better.  I will try to do better.  I will try to do better....