Why I Got Injured

My Injury

It's now been a week since my failed attempt to BQ at the Ogden Marathon on May 4, 2002. I wanted to run a 3:35 (8:12 pace), the BQ time for men in the 55-59 age group (I'm 57), but between mile 13 and 14, I felt a sudden sharp pain the area where the Achilles tendon attaches to the calf muscle. I continued running, some miles fast and some miles slow, for the next 8 miles until the pain made it absolutely impossible for me to run. So at mile 22, while still on pace to BQ and still feeling strong and fit in every way except the excruciatingly painful lower calf muscle, I threw in the towel and walk-jogged the rest of the way in, to finish in 3:53:09 (my official chip time).

Injuries Don't Just Happen

As I've hobble around the last few days, trying to recover from my injury (a muscle tear in the right calf, not a ruptured Achilles tendon as I first feared), I've been thinking of all the reasons why I felt so strong and fit and yet got injured. Here is a list of things I did wrong that might have led to my injury. I publish them here so you can avoid a similar fate.

• Two weeks before the marathon, I removed cushion inserts from running shoes because I was getting blisters on my little toes. Removing the insert solved the problems of blistered and bloodied toes, but it also meant that the heal was 1/8 to 1/4 inch lower than for most of my training, which meant that I was stretching the Achilles and calf muscles more than usual.

Rule #1: Don't make changes in your shoes within the last month or two before the marathon.

• Also in an effort to solve the toe blister problem, I stopped wearing thick athletic sox and started wearing thin, anti-blister running sox. Even though I'm convinced that thinner sox are better, I should not have made the change within two weeks of the marathon. Rule #2: Don't make changes in the type of sox you wear either.
• I had been experiencing a sore left hamstring for about a month. I cut back my training a little bit, but probably not enough. The hamstring wasn't sore on the day of the marathon, but it might have been a little tight. So to maintain marathon pace, I probably understrided with my left leg and overstrided with my right leg, putting additional stress on the Achilles and calf muscle.

Rule #2: If your marathon training causes an injury, cut back training immediately and treat the injury aggressively.

Rule #3: It's better to cut back on your training and hope that the previous or subsequent training is sufficient rather than keep training hard and hope that the injury won't end up bothering you.

• At the starting line the morning of the marathon, the temperature was about 35 degrees F. As I waited in line, I started to shiver uncontrollably. To keep warm, therefore, I did a bunch of jumping jacks, which puts stress on the cold calf muscles. Doh!

Rule #4: Warm up by doing normal running, not by doing jumping jacks.

• I ran the first two miles of the marathon at a 7:47 pace, 25 seconds per mile faster than my marathon pace. As it turned out, I still had plenty of fitness at the end, so these fast miles at the beginning didn't cause me to hit the Wall, but they might have put too much stress on my leg muscles and tendons.

Rule #5: Start the marathon at your projected marathon pace. If you feel good toward the end of the marathon, pick up the pace then.

• Worried that I'd needed every ounce of energy I had, I didn't want to "waste energy" warming up before the race started. I now realize that I should have had confidence in my fitness, and warmed up for a mile before the race. That not only would have solved my problem of doing jumping jacks, but also got my body ready to run 7:47 for the first two miles.

Rule #6: Warm up before the start of the marathon.

Rule #7 (Someone sent this one to me): Don't get old.

Comments on these six rules would be greatly appreciated.

--Scott Zimmerman (scott@zimtech.org)