Injury and pain bug runners more often than the disappointment of bonking during races and trainings. In a perfect world, we want to comply with our rigorously planned training modules so that we could achieve our most common goal in races: PB (personal best). However, it is not an ideal world and we are always looking for ways to sustain our endurance with minimal impact from injury.
I run with the Kyserun Krew. There are currently about 40 to 50 active members in the Krew. I’m sure I can find 1 out of 2 members is currently suffering some sort of ongoing pain or injury, severe or mild, acute or chronic and that is just one small cohort. There are tens of thousands of people running in KL in a weekend. We can observe many people walking into ortho/physio/chiro/TCM clinic complaining about the pain they have due to running. I have been running injury free for almost a year and I would like to keep it that way.
Improve your running form. Old habit dies hard, especially the bad ones. When I first started, I struggled with frequent ankle and shin pain. Thanks to the advice of some friends in the running crew,
I found the optimal form to carry my body weight over long distance run with decent speed. I transformed from heel strike to mostly forefoot-midfoot strike during my runs. The transformation involved a lot of reading and viewing Youtube videos. Plus, my friends were willing to help me observe and comment on the changes I made along the process.
Most of the time we were clueless after so many miles training. Even with a new pair of shoes, we still suffer the pain. Pain is not acceptable. Ask a friend to record videos or pictures of yourself running and you might just find the answer. The adjustment you make do not reflect on your form overnight. It takes some time to become a habit although some people are lucky to experience the changes immediately. The correct form also might be different from one individual to another. You just need to spend some time reviewing on your running form using the tools you already have and get feedbacks from your friends.
