By Mick Rice “You’ve got to know when to hold ‘em,
Know when to fold ‘em,
Know when to walk away,
Know when to run”
(The Gambler)
Maybe you’ve been in this situation before. Your training plan calls for a certain number of miles this week. The figure is there in little black numerals and doesn’t seem to change much no matter how often you review it. You actually like the plan. The plan is good. You’re doing all you can to stick to the plan but, unfortunately, there’s a problem. You have this irritating little pain on the inside of your left shin just above the ankle that you didn’t have yesterday. Nobody needs to tell you what the sensible thing to do is. You need to back off – take a rest day and heal a little. What do you do? If you’re anything like me you probably ignore the ‘niggle’ and go for a run anyway.
Running is a sport where you have to learn as you go along about how best to achieve your ambitions. There are rarely any ‘one-size-fits-all’ solutions to even the most common training problems. Sometimes, what works for me will also work for you, but that’s not always the case. Only in some very rare instances can we say, without any fear of contradiction, that there are ‘golden’ rules that will always apply. For instance, men will always and forever run in the Women’s Mini-Marathon ‘for the laugh’ and it’s practically mandatory that every year an iPod wearing woman with huge dark sunglasses and makeup six inches deep will start from the front line of the Dublin City Marathon. These things are immovable laws of nature that we cannot hope to change. Similarly, those of us who absolutely insist on going for a ten-mile training run with a sore leg can expect to return from that run with an even more sore leg. It’s like the rising of the sun and flow of the tide – it’s just going to happen.
Having accepted the basic mechanics of the situation – how do we convince ourselves not to go on that doomed training run? If experience were the key I’d have saved myself a lot of money and my wallet wouldn’t be quite so full of business cards for various physiotherapists. Many runners know quite well how to avoid injuries but fail again and again to put this knowledge to any practical use. In a way it’s like backing a horse today that ran, and lost, yesterday. You know you’re backing a looser but you still go ahead anyway. Unsurprisingly, this sort of carry-on confuses many non-runners, particularly doctors it has to be said, but what the uninitiated fail to take into account is the compulsive nature of both the sport itself and of many of those who have adopted it as their lifestyle. Other equally laudable pursuits like yoga, soccer or stamp collecting just don’t seem to have the power to completely take over an individual’s life in the way that I know running can.
So, what can we do? How can we temper the obsession and keep the show on the road, which is after all, what most runners really want to do. This is where the runner’s friend Kenny Rogers comes in. In order to avoid those spirit crushing conversations in medical surroundings where you’re solemnly told that only six to eight weeks of complete rest will cool your throbbing shins, you need to have a strategy and what better man to take advice from than good ol’ Kenny Rogers. The Country and Western King helpfully sets out each of the basic situations for us in his opus magnum which I’ve quoted above, but I suppose it’s up to each individual runner to decide just how far up shit creek you currently reside and whether or not you may possess a paddle.
In the first instance you certainly have to recognise the occasions when extreme caution is the order of the day and in response scale back your majestic plans for Olympic and World domination. This might mean going for a gentle five mile recovery jog rather than that monster 40 X 400m track session that you had pencilled into your schedule. On other occasions you just need to ‘walk away’ and realise that any further attempts at training will most likely leave you walking like a Cyborg for a week. For those of us who normally walk like a Cyborg this advice doesn’t really apply – you’ll just have to make that call for yourself. The most difficult and potentially the most dangerous decision of all is deciding when to ‘run and be damned’ because, in the majority of circumstances, this gamble will fail to pay off. You might get the hilly ten-miler at Tuesday lunchtime done but also have to sacrifice participation in a couple of nice juicy races to pay for it.
Looking back over my own injury-strewn running history, I’m not really in any position to offer sage advice to anyone. Having messed-up so many times myself it would clearly be foolish of me to think that I have the situation even partially sussed. The only wisdom I will dare to offer is the only time you should even contemplate the gamble of ‘run and be damned’ is when you’ve nothing left to loose and those occasions are very few and far between indeed. They say that a poker player should never play with cash that they aren’t prepared to loose and I suppose that’s the way I try to operate now. If I can’t bear to think of being on the sidelines for a week or more I won’t take a chance by continuing to run with a potential injury. I also try to appease the running gods by stretching a little and by visiting a Physio before niggles turn into show-stoppers. Until I develop a little more personal insight and self-control I’ll just have to remember that you can only hope to run if you’ve also learnt to walk away once in a while.
Take it away Kenny……….
Maybe you’ve been in this situation before. Your training plan calls for a certain number of miles this week. The figure is there in little black numerals and doesn’t seem to change much no matter how often you review it. You actually like the plan. The plan is good. You’re doing all you can to stick to the plan but, unfortunately, there’s a problem. You have this irritating little pain on the inside of your left shin just above the ankle that you didn’t have yesterday. Nobody needs to tell you what the sensible thing to do is. You need to back off – take a rest day and heal a little. What do you do? If you’re anything like me you probably ignore the ‘niggle’ and go for a run anyway.
Running is a sport where you have to learn as you go along about how best to achieve your ambitions. There are rarely any ‘one-size-fits-all’ solutions to even the most common training problems. Sometimes, what works for me will also work for you, but that’s not always the case. Only in some very rare instances can we say, without any fear of contradiction, that there are ‘golden’ rules that will always apply. For instance, men will always and forever run in the Women’s Mini-Marathon ‘for the laugh’ and it’s practically mandatory that every year an iPod wearing woman with huge dark sunglasses and makeup six inches deep will start from the front line of the Dublin City Marathon. These things are immovable laws of nature that we cannot hope to change. Similarly, those of us who absolutely insist on going for a ten-mile training run with a sore leg can expect to return from that run with an even more sore leg. It’s like the rising of the sun and flow of the tide – it’s just going to happen.
Having accepted the basic mechanics of the situation – how do we convince ourselves not to go on that doomed training run? If experience were the key I’d have saved myself a lot of money and my wallet wouldn’t be quite so full of business cards for various physiotherapists. Many runners know quite well how to avoid injuries but fail again and again to put this knowledge to any practical use. In a way it’s like backing a horse today that ran, and lost, yesterday. You know you’re backing a looser but you still go ahead anyway. Unsurprisingly, this sort of carry-on confuses many non-runners, particularly doctors it has to be said, but what the uninitiated fail to take into account is the compulsive nature of both the sport itself and of many of those who have adopted it as their lifestyle. Other equally laudable pursuits like yoga, soccer or stamp collecting just don’t seem to have the power to completely take over an individual’s life in the way that I know running can.
So, what can we do? How can we temper the obsession and keep the show on the road, which is after all, what most runners really want to do. This is where the runner’s friend Kenny Rogers comes in. In order to avoid those spirit crushing conversations in medical surroundings where you’re solemnly told that only six to eight weeks of complete rest will cool your throbbing shins, you need to have a strategy and what better man to take advice from than good ol’ Kenny Rogers. The Country and Western King helpfully sets out each of the basic situations for us in his opus magnum which I’ve quoted above, but I suppose it’s up to each individual runner to decide just how far up shit creek you currently reside and whether or not you may possess a paddle.
In the first instance you certainly have to recognise the occasions when extreme caution is the order of the day and in response scale back your majestic plans for Olympic and World domination. This might mean going for a gentle five mile recovery jog rather than that monster 40 X 400m track session that you had pencilled into your schedule. On other occasions you just need to ‘walk away’ and realise that any further attempts at training will most likely leave you walking like a Cyborg for a week. For those of us who normally walk like a Cyborg this advice doesn’t really apply – you’ll just have to make that call for yourself. The most difficult and potentially the most dangerous decision of all is deciding when to ‘run and be damned’ because, in the majority of circumstances, this gamble will fail to pay off. You might get the hilly ten-miler at Tuesday lunchtime done but also have to sacrifice participation in a couple of nice juicy races to pay for it.
Looking back over my own injury-strewn running history, I’m not really in any position to offer sage advice to anyone. Having messed-up so many times myself it would clearly be foolish of me to think that I have the situation even partially sussed. The only wisdom I will dare to offer is the only time you should even contemplate the gamble of ‘run and be damned’ is when you’ve nothing left to loose and those occasions are very few and far between indeed. They say that a poker player should never play with cash that they aren’t prepared to loose and I suppose that’s the way I try to operate now. If I can’t bear to think of being on the sidelines for a week or more I won’t take a chance by continuing to run with a potential injury. I also try to appease the running gods by stretching a little and by visiting a Physio before niggles turn into show-stoppers. Until I develop a little more personal insight and self-control I’ll just have to remember that you can only hope to run if you’ve also learnt to walk away once in a while.
Take it away Kenny……….
