The Big Picture – Runners and Injuries, Part 2
For Part 1, I asked you to be honest with how important running is in your life, both for the short and long haul. To the extent running is an important part of your life, you should be ever more vigilant about lowering your risk of injury. Otherwise, you’ll end up like the masses who are FORCED out of running that becomes more pain than gain due to ongoing injury and burnout – both areas that, sadly enough, could have been avoided.
For Part 2, I’m going to assume that you would rather run for as long as you’d like rather than be forced to stop before your ready to. As such, I think it’s essential to have a couple of paradigm shifts to increase your odds of staying in the ‘driver’s seat’ longer.
Paradigm Shift #1 = Make Staying Healthy Your #1 Goal. Most runners talk about this, but don’t truly live this out with their actions. Instead of making your top priority to complete your first marathon or achieving a PR or knocking out a race in all 50 states or qualifying for Boston or simply running your local race for fun, you need to make all pursuits of these worthy goals secondary to staying healthy.
If your actions start showing a greater emphasis on more of the things you need to make part of your running routine to lower your risk of overdoing, THEN your actions will increase the likelihood of staying healthy. We’ll get into what the most effective tweaks are at a later date. For now, it’s important to first make this shift so that all future goals will be stated something like this “While doing what it takes to stay healthy, I hope to ______ (fill in the blank with your secondary running goal)”
Paradigm Shift #2 = Place more priority on the risk over the reward. Although this sounds all fuddy-duddy, it’s precisely this brazenly naive bravado attitude of focusing on the reward at the expense of the risk to achieve it that basically seals your fate of getting injured ever more frequently as the miles, scar tissue, and broken down body parts start to accumulate.
Moving forward, whatever training program or workout you read or hear about, ask yourself how risky it is regardless of how much it can improve your running. Anything beyond a moderate risk (a ‘5-7’ on a 1 to 10 scale) is not worth you attempting to train or work out to eke out just a few minutes faster time. Stick with low to moderate risk ways of running and training and stay away from high risk ways which are NEVER worth it when it’s all said and done.
We’ll get into the types of running, training, and workouts that are low, mid, and high risk at a later date. For now, stop yourself from being allured by the promised ‘potential’ reward of certain training schedules and workouts. Instead, focus more attention on the risk involved to complete them and let that determine your course of action, not the reward side of things.
According to the law of diminishing returns, after a certain point, your performance will plateau leading to ever less bang for your buck for those trying to do ever more mileage at an ever greater intensity. The great news is that if you put this in reverse, you will lose less fitness even as you scale back noticeably – all while lowering your risk of injury and burnout and peaking too soon in direct proportion to the scale back. All this to say, more runners should aim for optimal volume on the conservative end rather than maximal volume.
Making these 2 paradigm shifts will pay off in the short term and ever more in the long term, increasing your chances to be a happy runner for as long as you’d like – all because you’ll be a healthy one who is not also burnt out!
Ordinary People Achieving the ExtraOrdinary – Jennifer Elliott achieved something that the rest of us will never do. She was able to run on the actual Olympic Marathon course in Paris in between the men’s and women’s races. This is her account of the race!
How did you gain an entry for this once-in-a-lifetime event?
I read an article in Runner’s World sometime in late 2022 or early 2023 and saw this opportunity. I registered with the Marathon Pour Tous app and began doing the challenges. At some point in August of last year, my name was drawn for a bib after completing nearly 50 challenges. The bib distribution was made evenly between men and women, so each challenge had a fixed number of assigned bibs for both men and women as the intent was to make this Olympic games equitable between male and female participation, including the Marathon Pour Tous.
The course was also reportedly designed specifically with the intent to incorporate the Palace at Versailles in commemoration of the march of women on Versailles in 1789 during the French Revolution. They forced King Louis XVI to return to Paris where the people were starving. This ultimately led to the signing of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizens, which the King had previously refused to sign. This essentially ended the absolute monarchy and began the process of turning France into a constitutional monarchy.
How many people started this race?
With this race being in 2024, 20,024 bibs were assigned. I am not sure how many started the race, but 17,390 finished
What time did you start? I started around 9:55 P.M. Paris time.
Did they only have kilometer markers? If so, how was it to try to follow those compared to mile markers?
They only had KM markers, though they did mark the half marathon. I kept thinking in 5/10 KM increments so I could keep a general idea of where I was as I went along.
How was it to run through Paris at night?
It was amazing to see all the landmarks like the Louvre and the Palace at Versailles lit up. I didn’t really need a headlamp for the most part. The spectators were incredible with their enthusiasm even long after midnight. Seeing the Eiffel tower lit up from a distance and then passing by it was awe inspiring. I was very glad we started as the sun was going down as it was 79 degrees at the time I started. I can’t imagine having to contend with full sun with how warm it was.
Talk about the dreaded monster hill
There was a hill of 16% grade at 29 KM mark (18 mile mark) that seemed almost vertical and was about a KM (6/10 mile) long. It put any hills on our weekly runs to shame (sorry Eladio!). I don’t think I saw anyone actually running this at that point in the course as I think most everyone wanted to conserve some energy for the last 10K.
Take us through the highlights of your marathon
The course was essentially the same as the elites ran the morning prior to and the morning after the mass participation event. It started at the Hotel de Ville (City Hall), passed by many landmarks to include to Opera Garnier, the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, along the Seine, the Place of Versailles, and ended at Les Invalides. There were bands and music along much of the course and lighting effects and playing of the Olympic theme music for 2024 as we ran under the overpasses of the highway passing through Paris along the Seine. The atmosphere was electric and the energy helped keep me going despite the heat and the difficult terrain.
What memories will make this marathon unique from all others?
I think the fact that this was included in an Olympic games and it covered so many historic areas of Paris at night made it a race for the ages.
What was the race swag you received?
The medal was the only swag other than a plastic cup handed out at the end that has the marathon course on it. I will cherish the finisher medal as I doubt this event will ever be repeated in another Olympic games. The race organizers also sent an electronic finisher poster that could be made into a print.
Did you get to watch any of the Olympic events in person?
I wanted to watch the Women’s Olympic Marathon in person, but since I only slept about 1.5 hours after completing my marathon, I was content to wake up and watch the live coverage from my hotel bed while the event ended within a mile of where I was staying. It was well worth waking up to watch, especially the race to the finish! I was only in Paris for 2.5 days, so I didn’t have time to attend any other events.
What else were you able to do while in Paris?
We walked to many of the attractions along the Seine and had some good pastries, Macarons, cheese, chocolate, and French cuisine. On our last night in Paris, we took a dinner cruise along the Seine and were able to relax and enjoy the sights. It was wonderful to see the Eiffel tower “sparkle” on the hour as we passed by. I enjoyed sharing this unique opportunity with my husband and son and being able to spend some time together to appreciate the beauty of Paris. We were also able to spend some time exploring Munich and then time with family who live near Stuttgart so we could enjoy a few days of relaxation before heading to Paris.
Streaker Update – Great job to the following people for keeping their daily exercise streaks going: Michael Andersen (34 days), Laura May (114 days), Scotty Todd (477 days), Megan Hamilton (600 days), Ryan Kimbrell (741 days), Karen Hayse (967 days), Sarah Johnson & Sylvia Davison (1,179 days), Eric Leigel (1,413 days), Greg Schultz (1,552 days), Kenny Miller (1,553 days) Amanda Bradford (1,575 days), Kallie Flexman (1,576 days), John Pitzel (1,590 days), Rebecca Kandt (1,602 days), Dawña Garza (1,616 days), Chau Smith (1,619 days), Micah Jacobsen (2,168 days), Stephanie Michaelis (2,667 days), Tomi Duffett (2,839 days), Ken Skrien (3,045 days), Emily Lott Viebrock (3,189 days), John Crum (3,195 days), Cheryl Lentz (3,646 days), Ben Chan (4,168 days)!
We invite you to consider crafting any type of streak that helps you release stress while boosting your health and joining us for positive accountability but keeping it simple with trusting in the ‘honor system’. I’m happy to add you to our list!
Runner’s Edge Fall Speed & Hill Sessions – On Tuesday evenings at 6PM from September 3 to October 29, enjoy a different kind of speed & hill workouts where the goal is to teach you to hit your ‘sweet spot’ of effort – not too hard / not too easy – just right while you enjoy the adventure and variety aspects missing from most of these ‘hard’ workouts. We’ll have folks of all ages and abilities that participate so anyone is welcome to enjoy a complimentary workout and go from there. Simply email me at [email protected] . Our first workout will be at Wilder Bluff Park (24200 W. 55th St., Shawnee, KS 66226).
Sign up by the early bird deadline of August 27 and save $10 off the regular $90 fee!
Have a great week!
Eladio Valdez III