How To Avoid Injury Whilst Marathon Training

It’s the time of year when you’ve probably noticed more of runners on the pavements in the evenings and at the weekends. Yes this year’s London Marathon is now less than just three months away. Those of you that are currently training for the event or another marathon in the spring will be well into you training by now and starting to build up your mileage. As the big day starts to draw closer, you will begin to be upping the mileage and putting your body under much more stress than you have been doing in previous weeks. It’s at this stage that I notice more runners are coming to see me about aches and pains from training. In this blog I am going to run through my main tips on the best ways to avoid injury during your training programme.

• Stretch off and cool down after every run. Failure to do this increases your chances of a muscular injury and reduces flexibility and performance.

• Gently increase your mileage. You should only be increasing your distance by 10% for every run you do. Too much of an increase will place too much stress on the body and lead to injury. It is also very important to have rest days to allow your body adequate to recover.

• Train on a variety of different surfaces. Running on concrete is tough on your joints due to the level of high impact. Mix it up by running on softer surfaces such as grass and treadmills which place much less pressure on those joints.

• Get regular sports massage. I normally recommend a massage every two or three weeks whilst training. There are many benefits of doing this, it increases flexibility, reduces the level of muscle pain and fatigue and helps to improve your running performance.

• Make sure you have at least one run in the vest/top you are going to wear on the day. You need to make sure that it is comfortable to run in.

• Make sure you replace worn-down trainers. Due to doing a lot of running in the same pair of trainers, they are going to wear down quicker than usual. I don’t believe that you should replace your trainers after a certain number of miles as everyone is different. If you start experiencing irregular foot, calf, shin or knee pain during your runs then that is the main sign that your trainers are worn down.

• Run in proper socks. You should be running in athletic socks designed to be used to do running in, running in normal socks or no socks at all will be very uncomfortable on your feet and cause blisters.

• Practice using energy gels that you plan on using on the day. Some ingredients in certain energy gels make some people feel very ill.

• Swimming is an excellent way to train. Swimming is perfect as there is no impact on your body but is still very tough physically and gets your continuous system working.

• Whenever you do go on a run, make sure you take fluids with you. It is very important to make sure that you stay hydrated during any run.

These are my main points for avoiding injury during your training programme. To book yourself in for a sports massage or to ask any further questions then please do not hesitate to get in contact.