Injury v. Pain

How can you tell if that feeling is discomfort and the body growing stronger or the beginning of an injury?

Check in Regularly During any run, take a few moments to just scan your body and tune in to the sensations. If something is beginning to hurt on every stride or showing up on every run, it’s time to take action.

Re-Focus If you divert your attention to another line of thinking, like what’s for lunch or doing a hard math problem does that pain suddenly stop interrupting your thoughts? If so, it’s likely more mental than an injury.

Pain Tolerance Levels We can all handle pain at different levels, once you are familiar with yours it becomes easier to distinguish what is serious.

Tightness that Dissipates If your stride feels off or uncomfortable in the first few miles, but fades the longer you run it may simply be a signal to extend your warm up and include some dynamic stretches to activate muscles.

Joint Pain If the location of your pain is at a joint and occurs repeatedly it’s time to get things checked out. Occasionally {often during taper week} you’ll have a random ache that never occurs again.

Sharpness and Intensity A dull ache can often be overridden with changing our thoughts, sharp shooting pains that force you to stop are a sign that something larger is happening. It could be a stress fracture or it could be caused by poor alignment.

Gait Change Any pain which causes you to change your gait needs to be addressed. If it is not an injury, then it will create one quickly.

Constant Need of Anti-inflammatories Our bodies are designed to send out pain signals to protect us, taking an anti-inflammatory after each run is a sign that something is wrong and needs to be addressed.

Red Flags Swelling, painful to the touch, numbness, difficulty moving, radiating pain