Imagine thatyou have planned a series of workouts that will take you 14, 18 or even 24 weeks. Imagine that each of those workouts is a brick, one more step toward a goal called the Marathon. For the first few days everything is fine, you really feel like your body is making good progress and you are improving both in your stride management and on the speed front. One morning, however, you wake up and feel that there is something wrong with your right calf (but it could very well be your hip, gluteus, or whatever, it doesn’t change the gist of it). Despair? Of course, in the first moment it fits, it is normal. But, while it is true that we should by no means take the signals coming from our bodies lightly and
Stopping is not at all dishonorable
, maybe it is just a momentary blockage and we can still use our bib in the scheduled race and not put it off.
SETS A HEALTHY ROUTINE
It is almost trite to write it down, but to run well it is necessary for our whole system-body to function well. I am not saying to perfection, because that is built with time, but at least harmoniously and in balance. This means that in addition to a personalized workout plan, possibly designed with a coach and based on our physical and performance parameters, we need to pay attention to almost every other element that makes up our day. Meals, for example, are obviously crucial, just as it is of utmost importance to rest well and keep our minds free of bad thoughts. In addition, and this is something we have talked about before here on RunLovers, it should be understood that there is no point in doing all the workouts to the maximum of our ability; on the contrary, pushing our bodies too far to the limit is the easiest way to lead them toward breakdown. Remember that good preparation for a Marathon, or for a race in general, is made up of 80 percent easy runs and only 20 percent training where you try to push your body to the limit (and not even for the entire duration of the training), and that if one day you don’t feel like finishing a run you had planned, the world doesn’t fall apart and you don’t lose anything of the state of fitness you’ve arrived at. Repeat after me:
Preparing for a Marathon means first of all taking care of your body.
WHAT IF I STILL GET HURT?
If you have seen
Forrest Gump
(I can’t believe you haven’t seen it!) you will know.
SOME THINGS…happen!
and sometimes you just can’t help it, even if you’ve been paying attention for all of our preparation training. If we suffer a muscle or joint injury, there is still an opportunity to keep our bodies toned and prepared to handle an endurance effort by using a bike when possible, or by doing free-body exercises or even through the use of weights and gym equipment. No, it will not be the same, this should be clear, but the benefit of this change of type in workouts will still be evident. The nerve stimuli in intense muscular exertion are closer together and cause there to be an increase in muscle mass and explosive strength, whereas during running the body tries to dose energy in such a way that it can keep the machine-athlete going as long as possible, somewhat as if automantically enacting the saying that He who goes slow, goes steady and goes far.
ASK AN EXPERT
And no, sorry.
Your cousin who ran a Marathon in less than three hours, unless he is a sports doctor or an orthopedist ,
you can’t consider him an expert
. If you have an injury, it is to these two figures that you must rely. Clearly, we’re not talking about going to the sports doctor if you get a bump on your thigh for which you already know you’ll just need to put some ice on it and take a few days of rest, but for all those discomforts or pains that you can’t figure out the cause of and that recur or last over time, the advice is to go to a doctor, who will first be able to diagnose your problem and then direct you so that you can achieve full recovery as quickly as possible. When you read about someone telling you that “I am my own doctor” or that “I know my body better than anyone else,” well, stay away from them for advice about your health, listen to your uncle.
(Main image credits: Gajus-Images on DepositPhotos.com)