Take it and Run: ... If I knew then what I know now

In their weekly installment of take it and run, Runners Lounge has come up with the theme of ... If I knew then what I know now.

I only really started running a couple of years ago. The first attempt, the year before last ended with a bad case of runners' knee. This lead to a renewed effort in March of last year which has gone quite well. I think that over the course of this time I have learned a couple of running related things. I think there are two things that are most important, at least to me.

First, you have to go slower than you want to when you start. When I started, I felt good physically. But what I didn't know was that even though I felt like I could handle all the miles I was putting on my body early on, I really couldn't. I set myself up for injury and really didn't realize it. I learned that my body really wasn't ready for all the miles that I was heaping on it early on. I should have taken it slower than I did. I had the desire to go further and I did. I was happy to achieve the results. However, I injured myself by not backing off early on. First, I ended up with runner's knee. The pain was so bad that I couldn't make it 100 meters without feeling like someone was setting my knee on fire. Last summer, I ended up with a plantar injury that last for a good 6 months before it was completely resolved. I believe that if I had taken a full two weeks off at the onset I could have saved myself a lot of injury management time; however, this was not a beginning injury like the runner's knee was.

I have read since my aborted first attempt that your ability to handle more miles develops more slowly in the connective tissue of your legs. This is why you feel like you can go further when you are really setting yourself up for injury. So if I knew what I know now back then, I would have taken it much slower out of the gate, mixed more walking and run/walks in and really dedicated more rest time to get my body used to the punishment.

Second, running is a physical activity but there is a very large mental part to running. I did not give this much thought when I started and have only begun to understand how far it reaches. When I first started running, I thought of course I am slow, what else would I be. I think this really defined my running for quite some time. It wasn't until I ran a half marathon last September that I realized that I was capable of some speed. I was running in the 12:00 to 13:00 range before the half marathon and yet at the even I ran the first 7 miles sub 12:00. This was really a first. So then I was convinced that I could run under 12:00, in my mind.

Recently, I started think why it was that I could not run below 11:00 on any sort of consistent basis. My answer was that I harbored some fear of injury if I went to fast. Now I have been attempting to log some sub 11:00 pace runs. I have done it now for the past two weeks for one run (these are planned). In short, I had the ability but didn't think I could do it before. Now, I know I can and I also know that I have to watch the mental side of my running. If I knew at the start that the mental side of running was such a big part of running I would have paid more attention to it early on.