How your race training program can cause injury

As we start making our way through January, most of us are picking and choosing which races we’re going to sign up for

Maybe some of you have already started training for Spring races

And maybe some of you have yet to start training for spring races…

Regardless, as we start looking at the calendar and mapping out our year, now is an important time to set up success for 2024 and avoid one of the most common mistakes runners make: doing too much, too fast 

Doing too much, too fast is a type of training error that manifests itself in multiple different ways

• Ramping up weekly mileage too fast
• Hitting interval training really hard to make up for lost time
• Running faster than we know we should because we want to achieve our pace goal
• Running back-to-back days because we need to get the miles in

These types of training errors can easily be avoided by establishing a base level of fitness early

For example, if you know you’re going to do the Chicago Marathon this year but haven’t ran a marathon in a few years

Or if last year you got injured while training for the marathon

Start your training for the race EARLY

Most people do an 18 week training program for the Chicago Marathon which starts in about June

It would be a great idea to start establishing a base level of weekly running mileage in April or May

1-2 month before everyone else

And those 1-2 months would NOT be filled with hard, fast, or super long runs

They are slow, easy, comfortable, and CONSISTENT

The important thing is that you’re establishing a consistent weekly mileage and handling it

No pressure or strict schedules

Listening to your body and doing what you can as you can

That’s how you set a solid base

So that by the time you actually start your 18 week training program, you’re already feeling good about your running

Find a training plan for a race you wanna do and give yourself a month or two lead up to establish a consistent running base

That’ll help you get through your training season without making one of the most common mistakes in all of running: doing too much, too fast.

Happy runnin

Dr. Michael