Welcome to the 10th week of our program.

1) We meet again on Saturday, March 14, at 9AM, in the parking lot for Columbia Island Marina, in LBJ Park.

If any of our newer trainees are having difficulty finding our meeting location, please call me at 703-371-5171.

Our posted training distance for this Saturday [found at http://www.marathoncharitypartners.org/walktorun/calendar.doc] is 3.0 miles.

Unlike prior weeks, this Saturday we will run to and across Memorial Bridge to the large statue at the DC end of the bridge (our turnaround point). From there, it's a straight shot back to home base. Our route is posted at:

http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=2630032

As we did last week, our modality will be 2 minutes walking, 3 minutes running.

But if you are just joining us, or are re-joining us after a period of, er.....less than perfect following of the training schedule....please see me before we begin the run. I may proscribe a shorter route, that will still build your fitness, but with less risk of injury.

2) Warmup prior to run.

As we did last week, while you are waiting for your coach and fellow trainees to arrive at the parking lot, please warm-up by walking the length of the parking lot and back. Shake the cobwebs out of your legs with a simple warmup walk that should take you about 5 minutes.

After you finish the walk, do some *light* stretching, if you wish. Very gentle stretches, not of your prime movers - your hamstrings or your calves - but of the supporting cast, your glutes, hip flexors, ankles, or your abdominals. Prep your abdominals, as well as your legs.

3) Post-run brunch.

Anyone who wants to join the group for brunch after the workout can meet us at the Silver Diner in Clarendon:

http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&um=1&ie=UTF-8&q=silver+diner+clarendon+virgini a&fb=1&split=1&gl=us&cid=0,0,176813183584492688&ei=YbiZSZ2ZApPHtgfSka2lCw&sa=X&o i=local_result&resnum=1&ct=image

It is by no means a required activity of the program, but if you can join us, I hope to see you there after the workout.

4) Running Injuries

Many books have been written about running injuries. But 'tis late, and I don't intend to write another!

Here, I just want to outline some things you should know about preventing running injuries, recognizing an injury if you have one, care for injuries and when to seek professional medical care.

First off, everything I have tried to do in this program is to train you to run a 5K while minimizing injuries. Gradual increases in intensity and length of workouts,as we are doing, is far better than sudden spikes in mileage.

If, however, you haven't been able to keep up the midweek workouts, or have missed several Saturday workouts, trying to run 3 miles on Saturday may, in fact, risk injury.

Any running injury that is classified as "overuse" comes about either because of these spikes in mileage or intensity, or a training regime that is higher in mileage, pace, frequency, or any other stress, than the body can handle. The body needs rest to recover from workouts and to gain benefit from them. Push it too hard without rest, and it very well may break, at its weakest link.

Does a layoff from running, then, condemn one back to the couch? Of course not! Pick up from where you left off, and build back up. But please run multiple times per week, or your body might not think you're serious about it, and might not adapt enough to prevent injury.

Injury prevention is also why I was rather fascist about running shoes. A mis-alignment of foot-strike, repeated hundreds or thousands of times when your run, can have repercussions up and down your skeleton. Very often, the part of your body trying to compensate for a mis-alignment in your footstrike or toe-off - the ankle, or the knee, or the hip - is the part that's going to give way from repetitive stress that it just can 't handle.

And that brings up another important point about running injuries. The part that hurts may not be the part that causes the problem. In a street crime, is the screaming victim at fault for the crime? Most of the time, there's a perp off in the shadows that's to blame. So too with running injuries. Start with the screaming victim, but look for the real perp, or else you won't truly solve the problem.

And pre-existing injury often contribute to a running injury. We've had two trainees in our program this year who have had to lay off running in the past month due to a recurrence of an old injury. A third is fighting off recurrence of Achilles Tendinitis, but is still running with us.

But sometimes, you train perfectly, you wear the best shoes (for you) that any footwear expert can find, you have no pre-existing injuries, you do everything right......and you still have a running injury. That's because very few of us are bio-mechanically perfect. Even the professional athletes among us, get injured. Your body may have compensated for something over the last 25, 35, or 45 years, but it just can't keep up compensating with the intensity of running.

Most runners I know have had some running injury that they either cured, or are continuing to overcome, through training modification, strength or flexibility drills, orthotics, braces or other device, or continuing medical or home remedy. There are really only two types of runners: those who have had a running injury and those who will have one in the future.

But what does that mean for the beginning runner? To me, it means that most running injuries can be fixed, and won't prevent you from running. If an injury really does bar you from running, that doesn't prevent you from cross-training to maintain fitness, with a possible return to running after the injury is healed, and its underlying cause fixed.

[Better to find and fix a condition which prevents you from running now, than waiting for that same condition to prevent you from walking in old age.]

For what should you be on the lookout? I'll classify injuries in three categories - minor, episodic, and serious.

Minor injuries include all the soreness, small aches and pains, and stiffness runners often have after hard or long workouts. Pain in muscles can be due to micro-tears in muscle tissue and blood vessels, causing blood to seep out around overstressed tissue. These minor injuries are part of the "breaking down" of the body which exercise creates, but without which improvement cannot occur. With normal rest, the body will repair all the soreness, aches and pains, and minor inflammation, and the body will become stronger than before.

I would classify "episodic" as any acute pain or weakness in a particular body part - foot, ankle, calf, knee, thy, hip, glute, etc. Apart from any general, overall soreness, this part really smarts. If may make running difficult, or even make you stop running altogether.

Episodic injuries may hurt once or twice, but they go away after a day or two. When they don't, or when they get progressively worse the more you run, that's when an injury is "serious."

You can self-treat minor and episodic injuries. For "serious" injuries, medical attention is required.

That self-treatment is summarized in the acronym, "R.I.C.E." which stands for:

Rest

Ice

Compression

Elevation.

REST is just as it sounds. Rest the injured part, don't stress it further. The rest could be passive - rest, sleep or inactivity - or active, which uses cross-training to maintain fitness while sparing the motion or impact that jars the injured part. For many running injuries, a non-impact activity working the legs can still be used while the injury heals - cycling, swimming, pool-running are several examples.

ICE means cooling inflamed tissue. Inflammation is the body's natural response to injury, speeding blood to the problem area. But too much inflammation can be problematic. Cooling inflammation is generally preferred to anti-inflammatory drugs, because cooling counters the _effects_ of inflammation while letting the underlying process heal. Drugs may stop inflammation altogether, inhibiting healing.

When cooling inflammation, never apply ice directly to skin, which will damage it. Rather apply ice to a covering, such as a towel, which will transfer the cold, but protect skin. Apply cold for 15-20 minutes, back off 15-20 minutes, then re-apply.

Many runners freeze paper cups of water, so their ice has a handle.

COMPRESSION means wrapping the injured part, so it doesn't swell like crazy. Unless you're trained and versatile with first-aid, don't attempt your own special tourniquet on an injury. There are compression tights and shorts which may do the same thing, and may help an injury in the legs or knees. Some knee braces also compress knee tissue, allegedly preventing or helping repair damaged knees.

ELEVATION means getting the injured body party higher than the level of your heart. It usually means lying down and propping up your leg, so blood doesn't pool down at the injury site. I have never heard of elevating an injured hip or glute - that might be awkward, incredibly funny, or both.

As with anything else, each runner is individual, and each injury can be idiosyncratic. The injury may respond better to ice than rest, or compression may be just the thing, and ice doesn't do diddly-squat.

And some runners swear by sticks you can roll over sore or injured parts. There are all sorts of gadgets which runners use to self-treat. They might work for you, too. But your mileage may also vary.

When an injury doesn't respond to rest, doesn't improve with self-help R.I.C.E. or over-the-counter treatments, gets worse, or starts to impact your running more than before, that's when you need to consult the professionals.

The best doctor to consult is one who practices "Sports Medicine," which is an emerging specialty. A doctor who is also physically active will not indiscriminately tell you to stop running, but may actually be more motivated to find the cause of your injury. Don't be afraid to get an X-ray or MRI. Even if those tests don't pinpoint the cause of your injury, they may rule out certain causes, preventing mistreatment.

Often, finding the cause is requires the skills of a sleuth, and experience dealing with sports injuries that may be beyond the typical primary care physician.

But specialists have their own foibles. Each favors the tools and methods of his or her own training, may be predisposed to find certain conditions, and may have a blind spot to the limitations of his or her discipline. Surgeons like cutting people open and "fixing" things with a knife and sutures. Chiropractors specialize in soft tissue injuries, and can be very helpful, but favor tactile therapies and are limited in the treatments they can use. Podiatrists will want to treat everything - even pneumonia - with orthotics.

If you are prescribed an expensive treatment, or one with a long recovery time, or if something just doesn't sound right - get a second opinion. Sometimes, it's worth getting seeing another doctor if the first one merely treats symptoms, but doesn't discern the true cause of your injury.

In a future newsletter, I'll run down some "common" running injuries and recovery techniques runners have used. But for now, if something hurts after the run, talk to me. I'm only a coach, not a doctor, but I can tell you if the symptoms seem familiar. And I will always tell you when I think you should seek a real medical opinion.

I hope to see everyone - healthy! - at Columbia Island Marina on Saturday! If you have any questions, please write back, or call me at 703-371-5171.

Till then, Happy Trails!

Coach John

John H. Steitz
RRCA Certified Running Coach
USATF Level 1 Certified Track and Field Coach
Arlington Cooperation Foundation
703-371-5171
http://www.marathoncharitypartners.org/walktorun/