five ways to mess yourself up running

I'm not a coach.  I'm just a runner who has made lots of mistakes in her running.  I have finally seemed to have found a bit of a groove, running injury free for nearly two years.  Here are the lessons I've learned along the way.

1. Run every training run like a race.
When I first started running with any sort of regularity, I would find myself racing my last performance. If I was running a route I had run before, I knew my fastest time on the course, and I would run that training run in such a way that I could set a new PR. Every time.  There weren't easy days; only days that I didn't feel so good.  And that didn't really help my training at all.  It did help me mess up my hips and knees though.

I run a lot of easy runs now.  I will push a run when it feels good, but never in competition with what I've run before.  Most of the time, I don't even have the watch going.  I run by what I feel that day, and that has made a huge difference in keeping me from walking that injury line.

2. Be inflexible with the training plan.
If the plan called for 20 on Saturday, that's what I would run.  Even if I didn't feel good.  Or if the plan called for 20 on Saturday, and my schedule wouldn't work for that, I would just skip the workout entirely.

These days, I don't really have a day to day schedule.  I sketch out in my mind the major workouts I want to hit in the build up to a race, and then I fit those in when I can.  I could be more structured in my approach to training, but I find that less structure works better for me overall.

3. Run through the injury.
So I have stabbing pain every time I step with my right foot...running six miles on that will make me tougher, right?

Nope.

I take a day off right away now when something doesn't feel right.  And I wait until it is feeling better before I start up again.  I ignored this wisdom and few weeks ago and ran when my back didn't feel great; five days later, I could finally run again.  Had I followed my own hard earned advice, I probably would have only lost a day or two.

4. Run your ass off when you've only been training slow.
I recently learned an important lesson about going fast when all you have been doing is training slow.

It hurts.

Not just while you are doing it, but in the muscles that you rarely recruit when most days you are running at a leisurely pace.  If you want to run a really fast pace, you need to train your "really fast" running muscles - the hip flexors and the psoas in particular. Occasional speedwork is crucial in keeping those muscles strong if you are going to want to bust out a run every once in awhile.  I will be incorporating some weekly speed work just in case I want to throw a 5k in to the mix in the upcoming months.

5. Tie your happiness to a performance goal.
This one can be a doozy.  I worked really hard to run a sub four hour marathon at the Rock and Roll Seattle race last year.  I knew heading in to the race that I might have some trouble, since I had been sick during a few key weeks heading in to the race, but I really wanted to nail that goal and "prove" myself as a runner.

I didn't run well.

The first 18 miles were on track, but I fell apart after that...and then for months following.

There were a few weeks when I wasn't sure that I wanted to run anymore.

Slowly I began to change my thinking about running. Was I really going to let it be all about how well I did at a race? Was this the only reason I would lace up my shoes every day? Or could I allow my running to be about the journey over the performance? Could I let myself slow down and enjoy the people, the energy, the moments that make up a race?

The problem with tying your happiness to how well you run is that so many factors can throw you off.  How well you run should be a by-product of your joy and enjoyment of the sport - not the focus.

Learning that has been the best lesson of all.