Running injuries usually come in the form of pains in the joints, pulled muscles, twisted ankles, stress fractures (such as shin splints), and tendinitis. And when you start to do longer distances, you may also get blisters and chaffing, (and chaffed nipples, which can be rather painful!).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvvRnu3GoeA

One of the important things I’ve learnt over the years is that the real key to avoiding injuries is to listen to your body. You need to learn to be aware of what your body is telling you.

Most of injuries are preventable, if you pay attention to your body. For example, when I started getting a pain in my knee, I didn’t slow down and let it heal properly, subsequently, it became worse and I had a much longer recovery period.

Another time, I got shin splints (a stress fracture in the shin) caused by training too hard on a hard surface after a long period running abstinence.  Shin splints are rather nasty and can take six months or more to recover from, depending on how you manage it.

One of the things I’ve noticed with any injury is that one injury almost always leads to another. My worst injury occurred when I stacked water skiing in 2007. My left leg was forced up over my head causing my bicep hamstring to detach from the hip and tearing tendons and my gluteus maximus (my butt).

My torn hamstring the next morning. By the end of the day the brusing went from near my foot to part way up my back.

I’ll spare you the details, but the end result is that I received very poor attention in hospital and it wasn’t until many months later when I still had no power in my leg that my physio diagnosed the hamstring as being a detached. Further investigation revealed that should have been operated on at the time and now I just have to live with it.

The result is that I have very poor strength in my left leg with certain movements. And in fact I still have difficulty wiping my left foot on a doormat without some muscular pain.

When I started jogging again, I had a dreadful limp which is still obvious when I pick up my pace or when jogging uphill. This limp initially put my body out of balance and this led to a dreadful cramp in my right calf along with some other aches, many of which still recur at times when I put a bit of effort into my running.

But you don’t have to have a dramatic accident to find yourself with running injuries.

The big message here is listen to your body, if you start to feel a pain or an ache, ask yourself, ‘what could be causing it?’. Since my water skiing accident, I’ve become much more aware of listening to my body. One of my realisations is that most running injuries are preventable with a change in running action or better running shoes.

Have you ever tried sitting still with your eyes closed and just listening. You’ll hear a lot of sounds that ordinarily you aren’t aware of such as birds, maybe dogs, water, wind, cars in the distance etc. Using the same principal, try running without distractions such as your iPod and try to focus on the feelings coming from the different muscle groups and joints in your body as you jog or run.

You’ll be surprised how much your body is telling you if only you listened.

Related Articles

View this training schedule on Google Calendars
or download it and add to your computer’s calendar.

City2Surf Training Plan – Lifting Your Game – Overview

• City2Surf Training Plan Stage One
• City2Surf training plan ‘“ Stage Two
• City2Surf training plan ‘“ Stage Three

• Week 11 – Introduction to a routine (Rest Day) (First gym day)
• Week 10 – Start off Nice and Easy
• Week 9 – Continue at an easy pace
• Week 8 -  Noticing changes in yourself
  Jogging and Running : what’s the difference?
• Week 7 – Step it up a notch
  Calculating your Ideal Training Level
• Week 6 – Focus on Breathing
• Week 5 – Arm Power
• Week 4 – High Effort
• Week 3 – Steady as She Goes
• Week 2 – Focus on Endurance
• Week 1 – How to Cut minutes of your City2Surf time with 24 Hours to go
• City to Surf 2009 – We are off

This is the last week of the warm up period of my training plan. If you have been following along with my routine, you should be starting to feel pretty conditioned to getting out and doing your regular morning activity.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRm-7Z6UsBU

of the things you’ll notice about my training plan is that I refer to some activities as a jog and others as a run. There is a very important difference. Running takes more effort that jogging.

Someone asked me this week how to tell if they were running or jogging.

The answer is quite simple: When you are running, you lift your heels up fairly high behind you, this in turn helps you to take longer and faster strides. When you are jogging, your heels do not lift particularly high and you tend to move along without bending the knees very much.

Jogging can also be more jarring on the body than running as you tend to have a straighter leg and the momentum of your body is more up and down rather than forward with a rolling rhythm.

Related Articles

View this training schedule on Google Calendars
or download it and add to your computer’s calendar.

City2Surf Training Plan – Lifting Your Game – Overview

• City2Surf Training Plan Stage One
• City2Surf training plan ‘“ Stage Two
• City2Surf training plan ‘“ Stage Three

• Week 11 – Introduction to a routine (Rest Day) (First gym day)
• Week 10 – Start off Nice and Easy
• Week 9 – Continue at an easy pace
• Week 8 -  Noticing changes in yourself
  Jogging and Running : what’s the difference?
• Week 7 – Step it up a notch
  Calculating your Ideal Training Level
• Week 6 – Focus on Breathing
• Week 5 – Arm Power
• Week 4 – High Effort
• Week 3 – Steady as She Goes
• Week 2 – Focus on Endurance
• Week 1 – How to Cut minutes of your City2Surf time with 24 Hours to go
• City to Surf 2009 – We are off

They say that a medium serve of fries will take 35 minutes to run off or 1.5 hours to walk off. (And that is just to get you back to where you were before you ate the fries.)

Plus, if you had a hamburger instead of a home made chicken and salad sandwich, you’d also put on an extra 100 calories, which would take a 28 minute walk to burn off.

So next time someone says to you ‘Do you want fries with that?’ just remember that in addition to the extra 28 minute walk you have to do because you had the burger, what they are really saying is ‘Do you want an extra 35 minute run or a 1.5 hour walk with that?’

And if they say ‘would you like to upsize?’ what they are really saying is ‘would you like to be fat or really fat?’

Hasn’t fast food industry got a lot to answer for?

Also see my article on fruit juice and simple rules for healthy eating.