Continuing with the same activity which caused the injury was one of the biggest problems for this runner, we took her off running as we were happy with the distances she'd completed in training and looked at the following aspects:
- Keep her cardio-vascular fitness levels up with different exercises
- Reduce the swelling and tissue adhesions
- Correct the problems which caused the problems
- Offered some mental coaching for completing the marathon, despite not finishing training
- Offered a race strategy to complete the marathon
Injury is not the end - but it deserves respect
Marathon runners are going to face injury at some point and there is a huge amount to deal with: the lost training; the unknown length of time to recovery and a looming deadline which can't be pushed back. Mental anguish is one of the hardest aspects to contain, we are very conscious of this and will deploy a training strategy to meet this deadline. In 8 years of treating, I have only had one client not complete the marathon, in fact they chose not to start after we discussed the foolhardiness of running a marathon on grinding knee joints. It's not an easy decision to make, but sometimes those injuries which need rest and recovery should be treated with respect. Details of the case study are in the PDF attached below.
