Take it and Run: Overtraining

The Take it and Run Thursday this week concerns over training. I can say that I am very familiar with the dangers of over training. This is a small personal story. I successfully began my running in March of 2007; I unsuccessfully began running in May of 2006. Unsuccessfully, you say. Sadly it is true. I possess heart and strength in very unequal proportions this was the recipe for disaster.

(fat me in June 2007)

I was quite heavy in 2006 (about 280 pounds), not as bad as January 2007 (293 pounds), but still quite bad. I met a woman at work who was a runner and with her encouragement I went out and tried my hand at running. I was slow, quite slow as I put in my 14:00 to 15:00 miles. I thought that even if I wasn't fast if I got out there 4 to 5 days a week that I would progress faster. Train more and get better faster, that is what I thought. I was very wrong in my thinking. I was over training in a big way where I just thought I was toughing it out.

My desire and heart were in the right place but I wasn't thinking very clearly about the state that my body was in. Besides being overweight my joints were not up to the stress I was putting them under. I wasn't giving myself time to recover, sometimes I would run up to 4 days in a row. I was getting aches and pains but I just thought that it was just normal pain from starting to exercise again. It wasn't.

I didn't let myself rest and these small injuries piled up and piled up and before I knew it, I had a bad knee injury. By August, It was so bad after that after only a hundred yards of running I felt like my knee was on fire.

(not so fat me May 2008)

I simply couldn't run, it was devastating. I had registered for a half marathon but didn't even make it to the starting line. I felt so badly but there was nothing I could do but recover and learn from my mistakes. It took me the better part of 6 months before my knee felt right again. I learned later that the connective tissue in the knees, hips and knees develops much slower than legs muscles and the cardio system.

When I did come back to running the next March, I gave myself more time to recover between runs and almost never ran back to back days when I first got back. If I have to give one bit of advice, and I am not sure if I am qualified to give any advice on running given my newness to the sport, it is please respect the recovery time. When you start don't run on consecutive days, you might think your body can handle it but you are wrong and you might not get hurt right a way but an injury is waiting for you. Take it slow because training healthy is a lot more fun than managing injuries.