Published: 1st March 2025
I’ve had my fair share of injuries (maybe more than my fair share?), as I listed here. Looking back, I think I could have spent much less of my time injured if I managed things a little better. For me at least, there seems to be a mental aspect to being injured that I really struggle to manage. I’ve been running since my early teens; it’s very much a part of my life. I use it as a tool to manage stress – it’s often a bit like moving meditation, offering space to think through a tangle of thoughts and organise them neatly. I’ve never found something that comes close to running for helping support a happy mind. But the flip side to that is, when I do become injured and can’t run, what do I do to stop myself descending into that dark web of disorganised thoughts and feelings? I don’t have the answer; if I did then maybe I wouldn’t deny being injured and continue to run until the pain becomes unbearable, in the hope that the little niggle will just go away on its own if I just ignore its existence. It rarely does…
I think another aspect that doesn’t help me is the instant access to the apps that track our progress. My watch rarely leaves my wrist, and the display telling me my current training status is just a few buttons presses away. It currently reads “recovery” as I’d collected a few long runs over the past few weeks, which has lead to a protesting foot and I’ve actually listened to it this week and taken a few days off. As a result, Garmin tells me I’m no longer maintaining my fitness and it gives me a brain itch that seemingly only heading out for a run can scratch. The temptation is almost overwhelming. In addition to the Garmin training status, I have Strava where I upload all my runs for my followers to see, and in return, I can see their runs and progress. This is a wonderful motivator when things are rosy, but when you have to pull back to manage a niggle, and you can see all your friends still out there on the grind, it once again becomes overwhelmingly tempting to lace up the trainers and add to the feed. The little graph they have on the Progress page, showing your weekly mileage, also gets me. I love seeing that graph in an upwards trend. A visual representation of how well training has been going for the past 12 weeks. Oh how that graph is easily spoilt by a “rest” week, creating that dreaded dip in the otherwise perfect upwards slope. I could take a break from the running social media, after all, that is essentially what Strava has evolved to be. But did a run really happen if it isn’t on Strava? And what about when times are good again? Those stats suddenly become a massive motivator again.
These are just some of my personal feelings around injuries and the mental aspects that I battle with every time. Perhaps there’s something I could learn from the so-called “naked” running; leaving the tech at home and just running for the simple love of it. It is what I used to do, back in the days when GPS watches were not the norm, and Strava was in its infancy. I’ve still got a lot to learn when it comes to pulling back to stop a niggle from becoming an injury, but I’m trying not to let the apps get in my head. I’ve still not found something that comes close to clearing my head like a good run. The search continues…
Distinctly Average Ultra Runner 