{"id":13555,"date":"2011-03-17T08:43:32","date_gmt":"2011-03-17T15:43:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/?p=13555"},"modified":"2011-03-14T14:43:31","modified_gmt":"2011-03-14T21:43:31","slug":"8-mistakes-i-made-while-injured","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/?p=13555","title":{"rendered":"8 Mistakes I Made While Injured"},"content":{"rendered":"

Guest Post by Steena<\/h3>\n

from Finding My Happy Pace<\/a><\/h3>\n

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\nLet me give you my quick background story pre-injury:\u00a0 I was 28 years old, it was my first year running long distance, spent the entire summer training for the Chicago Marathon 2010, ran it, was not happy with my finish time, ran a second marathon four weeks later, was happier with my finish time but finished with a new found injury.\u00a0 All caught up?\u00a0 Okay!<\/p>\n

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\nLet\u2019s move onto the eight mistakes I made while injured:<\/p>\n

Denial<\/strong>.\u00a0 No way after an entire summer of marathon training injury-free was I now injured.\u00a0 Nope.\u00a0 Nuh-uh.\u00a0 Not possible.\u00a0 I refused to accept it, and attempted a few failed runs.\u00a0 Failed runs that probably made recovery that much longer.\u00a0 If I had to tell an injured runner only one thing it would be to accept it.\u00a0 Which leads me to the next mistake\u2026<\/p>\n

Fighting it<\/strong>.\u00a0 I refused to rest.\u00a0 I feared rest would lead to weight gain<\/span><\/strong>.\u00a0 So I continued to work out like mad.\u00a0 I was spinning, cross country skiing, did dance aerobics…etc…etc…It never hurt the injury, but it wasn\u2019t giving the injury the rest it needed to fully recover, thus costing me more time on injury status.\u00a0 The funny thing about not running regularly is that your appetite does decrease.\u00a0 I was certain my runner\u2019s appetite would continue on, and pleasantly surprised when it was suppressed.<\/p>\n

Over foam-rolling<\/strong>.\u00a0 True story, you can over foam-roll and irritate the injury!\u00a0 I was foam-rolling three times a day.\u00a0 A running coach told me to lay off for a week and see what happens.\u00a0 Magic!\u00a0 The theory here is that foam-rolling too much can be like picking at a scab.\u00a0 After just two days of not foam-rolling I was feeling better.<\/p>\n

Google Diagnosis<\/strong>.\u00a0 Sure webMD.com is pretty good at pointing you in the right direction, but a good Sports and Medicine doctor is your better bet.\u00a0 I was convinced I had IT Band Syndrome.\u00a0 After seeing a Sports and Medicine doctor I learned that I had a different injury, called Patellofemoral Pain Syndrome<\/a> (lucky me).\u00a0 Lesson here:\u00a0 go see a doctor, get a proper diagnosis, and treat the injury you actually have.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Refusal to get to the Pool<\/strong>.\u00a0 I had every excuse in the book as to why I couldn\u2019t get to a pool.\u00a0 Fact is, I could, I was just being stubborn.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t want to pay for a gym membership.\u00a0 After a month of denial, I sucked it up and put down the money to join the big gym with a pool.\u00a0 If you think you can\u2019t afford getting to a pool, take a look at some of the luxuries in your life that you pay for.\u00a0 Cell phone, text plan, high speed internet, dinner out every Friday night\u2026Those items can be eliminated from your monthly expenses and be put towards a gym membership.\u00a0 And by the way, pool access has proven to be the best investment that I made for myself in recovery.\u00a0 By swimming laps I maintained my fitness level and discovered that there\u2019s a triathlete within me.<\/p>\n

I logged miles, not pain<\/strong>.\u00a0 In my injury I learned a little too late that it\u2019s so, so, so important to keep a daily journal of the injury and pain related with it.\u00a0 Write down when it hurts, what time, what were you doing, how bad on a scale from 1-10, how long did it last, what did you do to relieve it.\u00a0 If it doesn\u2019t hurt, mark that down too!\u00a0 Then you can compare and contrast the activities that might correlate with the pain.\u00a0\u00a0 The biggest benefit I found in having an injury journal is that on those days were I was feeling like I\u2019m never going to get better, I could page through my journal and see that I actually was getting better.\u00a0 Having a record will help the doctor at a follow-up appointment too.<\/p>\n

Tried to start too quickly<\/strong>.\u00a0 After a month of not running I went out for a test run.\u00a0 A three mile test run!\u00a0 Two miles too many.\u00a0 Though it didn\u2019t hurt at the time, it was a mistake\u2014then I woke up with pain the next morning.\u00a0 They say never increase your mileage by more than 10%.\u00a0 So zero mileage to 3 miles was reckless on my part.\u00a0\u00a0Instead I should have taken it slower, by starting with a half a mile and then increasing mileage slowly.\u00a0\u00a0 Patience is a virtue!<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t have an open mind<\/strong>.\u00a0 Running is\/was my life.\u00a0 It\u2019s the only thing that mattered to me; I even went as far as telling my husband I loved running more than him. \u00a0(He laughed at me and told me to stop being so ridiculous, no divorces have been filed).\u00a0 This called for trying new things.\u00a0 I went to a dance class (didn\u2019t like it, but hey, I tried), started swim lessons, went to the library to check out some good fiction, phoned some old friends that I hadn\u2019t seen in ages because my life was so consumed by running…Once I opened my mind I began to feel a lot happier in general.<\/p>\n

Those are the eight mistakes that I made while injured.\u00a0 It would be nice if there was a magic pill to fast forward through an injury, but there isn\u2019t.\u00a0 I wrote this because injury took a major toll on my emotions. \u00a0I hope that in writing this I will help at least one person in the world to get to recovery in a safer, smarter, and positive mind-set.<\/p>\n

\ufeffCheck out Steena’s website or follow her on Twitter here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Lisa’s Note:<\/em> Thank you so much Steena for sharing your story. I think injuries are much more common for runners than other sports and honestly us runners are pretty stubborn. I could relate with everything she wrote about in this post, having a running injury myself. Great advice!<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Guest Post by Steena from Finding My Happy Pace Let me give you my quick background story pre-injury:\u00a0 I was 28 years old, it was my first year running long distance, spent the entire summer training for the Chicago Marathon 2010, ran it, was not happy with my finish time, ran a second marathon four […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13562,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[29,43,101,581,2250,138,715,148,316,1335,224,1468,250,298],"tags":[2571,1714,2570,2572,976,8810],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/knee_sq.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13555"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13555"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13555\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14930,"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13555\/revisions\/14930"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}