One of my favoirte places to run is the C+O canal towpath. The painting on the left was done by a local artist of the canal. I love it and was excited to share. Enjoy!
To continue the thought on my recent leg injury, in hindsight one of the key mistakes I made, which you can learn from, was that I disregarded the basics of time required to heal. I let the runner side of me trump the clinician side. What I mean is that when you suffer an injury, there is a certain amount of time that needs to pass before the body can reasonably heal itself. This same concept applies to other areas of rehab. For example, it takes a certain amount of time before a weakened muscle can get stronger, no matter how much effort you put into it.
With my recent leg strain, I tried to rush back too quickly. I barely gave the muscle 24 hrs to heal which is simply too short. I iced, wrapped, and elevated the bugger. It felt better so I tried to get right back to it. As a clinician, I know that there are stages of soft tissue healing whihc were not being respected. The phases of healing are: 1) Inflammatory 2) Reparative and 3) Remodeling. The length of these phases will be different depending on what part has been injured. For example, an injured tendon might take a month to cycle through the reparative phase versus 2.5 weeks for a muscle.
With my injury, an injured muscle, the inflammatory phase happens quickly which is why the initial repsonse is key. As mentioned previously, ice and compression can help tremendously in this stage. I often encourage people to shy away from advil and the like. The reason for this is that inflammation is the first step of healing so we do not want to impede it from occuring. The healing occurs in a stepwise fashion so to block the step which initiates the other steps is not recommended.
New muscle fibers can appear in 18 days from the injury. By day 21 the muscle fiber is able to generate tensile force. So, when you think about the above information, you must consider where you are in the healing process. If you are one week post injury, realise that the muscle simply has not had enough time to heal to the point where it can be asked to perform. Consequently, a runner needs to focus not on running but rather the crosstraining to maintain the current base of fitness. 3 weeks into it is a distinctly different place as far as the healing goes. It is more appropriate to start thinking about actually getting back into the basics of running.
Each person heals differently based on age, sex, medical history etc. Use the above info to stimulate thoughts on managing injury. Obviously, when injured it is best to have a health care provider advising you on an indiviual basis. Happy trails.....
With my recent leg strain, I tried to rush back too quickly. I barely gave the muscle 24 hrs to heal which is simply too short. I iced, wrapped, and elevated the bugger. It felt better so I tried to get right back to it. As a clinician, I know that there are stages of soft tissue healing whihc were not being respected. The phases of healing are: 1) Inflammatory 2) Reparative and 3) Remodeling. The length of these phases will be different depending on what part has been injured. For example, an injured tendon might take a month to cycle through the reparative phase versus 2.5 weeks for a muscle.
With my injury, an injured muscle, the inflammatory phase happens quickly which is why the initial repsonse is key. As mentioned previously, ice and compression can help tremendously in this stage. I often encourage people to shy away from advil and the like. The reason for this is that inflammation is the first step of healing so we do not want to impede it from occuring. The healing occurs in a stepwise fashion so to block the step which initiates the other steps is not recommended.
New muscle fibers can appear in 18 days from the injury. By day 21 the muscle fiber is able to generate tensile force. So, when you think about the above information, you must consider where you are in the healing process. If you are one week post injury, realise that the muscle simply has not had enough time to heal to the point where it can be asked to perform. Consequently, a runner needs to focus not on running but rather the crosstraining to maintain the current base of fitness. 3 weeks into it is a distinctly different place as far as the healing goes. It is more appropriate to start thinking about actually getting back into the basics of running.
Each person heals differently based on age, sex, medical history etc. Use the above info to stimulate thoughts on managing injury. Obviously, when injured it is best to have a health care provider advising you on an indiviual basis. Happy trails.....
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