Recent Running Lessons
When I have a running injury, it’s not always the right thing to completely stop running and wait for it to heal.
Sometimes it’s worse to stop running altogether, because while the injury is healing, all the surrounding muscles are getting weaker. This actually makes injury more likely when I return to running. My current strategy is to keep running as much as possible as long as the pain is less than 3/10.
I’m probably racing too much.
Over the course of 2021-2022 I tried signing up for as many (mostly trail) races as I could. Racing takes a big toll on the body and racing too much can lead to injury. I now understand why my runner friends make their race plans a year in advance.
Trying to make up for low training mileage with intensity on race day is asking to get injured.
Running hard takes an exponential toll on the body. The better move here is to increase mileage, pick speed workouts sparingly, and race less often.
There’s even some people who say that speedwork doesn’t matter at all, and race performance is mostly a matter of weekly mileage.
Your running shoe size should be 0.5-1 sizes bigger than your normal shoe size.
To let your foot splay out on impact.
Overall,
if I could comment on my running in the past couple years, I realize I’ve been relying on a very strong cardiovascular system to carry me fairly well in races, even when running relatively low mileage. I have a strong aerobic background, and it seems like this has bitten me in letting me race fast without putting in enough training. This has resulted in being injured over and over again, because my skeleto-muscular system can’t keep up. I’ve realized that I need to put more planning and effort into building up bigger mileage in training to create a more sustainable foundation. After building that, I can go after much more ambitious goals.