It’s not ‘just running’

I have a number of leftover biker trash friends from my cycling years, and Ric Stern is among the best of them. In no particular order, he’s a terrific cycling coach (with an excellent group of assistant coaches to boot), a doting father, an irrepressibly cheerful personality – in short, the salt of the earth. His frequent refrain of ‘no worries’ has become my own.

Knowing my history (as a cyclist) of multiple car attacks that converted me to running, every now and then he asks, “Still just running?” It feels like he’s tweaking me a bit, perhaps subtly pointing out the lesser time commitment of running as compared with cycling: whereas an elite runner can typically get by on as little as 8-12 hours of training per week, an elite cyclist needs more like 20, the pros nearly 30. Yeah, runners are slackers. :-)

Now, I see running as a somewhat more complicated activity, where injuries can appear out of nowhere; indeed, their prevention, management, and rehabilitation would seem more important than the precise structure of training itself. After all, even a sub-optimal training program, consistently followed, will produce more improvement than no training at all.

The challenge of avoiding and working around (as well as through) setbacks actually makes running more interesting, even though it has necessitated a multi-pronged approach that adds complexity to workouts:

1. Gone are the days when I paid no heed of running surface, starting each run out the back door; I now avoid pavement like the plague, putting in at least 98% of all miles on softer dirt trails, with most of the other 2% on a local track with a nice, even, rubberized asphalt surface (I abandoned grass surfaces last year, since they didn’t seem to do any better than the trail in reducing impact forces, but have a more irregular surface). This adds ~30 minutes of back-and-forth travel to each run.

2. In early 2007, I visited Dr. Tom Zak, a chiropractor in Westlake trained in Active Release Technique (ART), seeking relief from recurring groin pain. His manipulations provided some immediate relief, but of more lasting importance have been stretches he prescribed, based on a simple visual inspection of my running technique. I do them religiously before every run, and the problem has not returned. Another 10 minutes or so added to each run.

3. With targeted weight training a few times a week, I’ve strengthened the muscle groups that stabilize the hip and knee joints.

4. As described in the preceding post, aquarunning is both an effective means of rehabilitation once an injury does occur, and of maintaining fitness throughout the rehab period. It is also very effective as supplemental training, even when no injury is present.

5. Finally, while I’ve always been careful to apply increases in training load in an incremental, progressive manner, the hip flexor injury provided a reminder of the importance of this training principle.

Factors 1-3 contributed to a complete lack of injury throughout the entire 2008 season, while 4 & 5 helped me cope with what arose this year.