Moving Forward

Overall good training this month in spite of a couple of glitches. Eventually you will learn to deal with those. You have to get creative sometimes when a run does not happen in the morning. Errands on foot, stroller, looping around a park, and if all else fails, then the evil of all evils - the treadmill. It OK to do a run in a few segments if you have to. A 2 mile errand, then an hour later another 2 mile errand, and then 2 more miles afterwards when you can sneak it it. That is just as good, if not better in some cases, than 6 straight miles.

Regarding sleep. If you lay in bed and just cannot sleep, you can try something like a physics textbook or the details of the law of Moses in the Old Testament (e.g Leviticus). Something you would struggle to understand.

Sasha

I have apprieciated all your advise and help that you have given me out here on the blog. It has helped me more then I can ever explain to you.

I have just found out that my running friend has three pelvic fractures. I was wondering if you can help me with any advise for her. She feels she will never be able to run again, and this is so hard for her. Running something she identifies to her and cannot bear the thought that it might be taken away. I have tried to be positive and let her know that as long as she is smart in her recovery it will be just a bump in the road. But do you have any advise to help me? And this is so scary to me... any advise on prevention of something like this? Thanks for any help/advise you can give.

Lori:

I (fortunately for myself, not fortunately for those I am trying to help) have very little personal experience with running injuries. From what I have observed, however, most running injuries heal eventually when you take time off running and cross-train in a way that does hurt the affected area, and then with a cautious and consistent approach you are able to run again.

I do have a lot of experience in the area of injury prevention. I found the following elements to be important:

* train consistently - it is the sporadic unexpected stress that injuries even if it is small

* train below your limits

* know what injures you and stay away from it - for me it is track and skewed surfaces

* be sparing with speed work, and do it only when your body is sufficiently fit

* eat healthy

* get plenty of sleep

* avoid cheerleader/high school football team type of ambition in your training and racing