One week on, and I’m still injured. I have a strain in my Tibialis posterior, the muscle that runs inside your calf and helps stabilise the ankle. Initially, because of the location of the pain, I was worried about shin splints or, worse, a stress fracture. Luckily, the physio confirmed that it was a muscle issue. I was initially happy because I figured I could run through a soft tissue injury. Wishful thinking, right? After a couple of runs, 20 and 30 minutes, I thought I was on the quick Road back to full training. I was humbled on my third run, where both my posterior and anterior tibialis were fatigued, and I struggled to run with good mechanics. I only made it 10 minutes. I'm now accepting that returning to running program will take more than a couple of weeks.
My injury management programme
I have a relatively simple plan to manage my injury back to full training. I’ll work on a combination of strengthening, massage and progressive load.
Strengthening will consist of the specific exercises that the physio has given me, which are all designed to Target the posterior tibialis and the supporting muscles.
The massage and Trigger Point will be mostly self-administered with a foam roller and massage ball to break up any muscle tension.
My progressive load plan will be determined mainly by pain feedback. I will start at a manageable workload, i.e. 20 to 30 minutes and only progress to higher workloads as my pain dictates.
Maintaining Fitness
One of my biggest concerns is to “lose” the fitness & conditioning I’ve built up over the previous eleven weeks of training. To avoid a loss of aerobic capacity, I’ll continue to train with a focus on threshold development using the bike and mountain bike. The conditioning will be something that will diminish over time due to a lack of specificity in running impact loading. I can’t fight that.
How did I get injured?
It's a confusing injury because it's not specific to a running overload. The physio said if I were likely to injure any lower limb muscle, it would be the soleus because of my forefoot running Style. From my analysis, it is a combination of A Series of Unfortunate Events. There's the ongoing fatigue of my running volume from the previous eleven weeks leading up to the injury, then there is the issue I had with the upper of my shoe ripping away from the soul, which caused the initial ‘niggle’, and then there was a 10 km race and rock climbing (a new stress). All of these events happened over the space of a few days, culminating in a failure point in the Tibialis posterior muscle. Before that weekend, I hadn't had any indication that there was a potential for injury. However, I was pushing my limits regarding continuous running load. In week 10, I mentioned how I had hit my biggest training load of the year. So, it is not too unsurprising that I would succumb to an injury a week later. So, while the running may not have caused my injury, it was a major contributor.
What will I change moving forward?
Moving forward, I will continue to revert to the system. I know of 3 weeks on and 1 week off. I sometimes think that when my intensity in training is lower, I can roll through on a longer continuous training block. However, I am continuously reminded that is not the case!
Avoiding Burnout
It's timely that I just discussed burnout with Dr Matt Miller on the Performance Advantage Podcast. We discussed how the fear of rest can sometimes be the undoing of many athletes' long-term progression. If you are in a position where you're falling out of love with your training or sport, listen to see how our experiences may be relatable to your current situation.
Week Twelve - Strava Link
📊1:15 hrs total (TSS 65)
🏃3x Run = 1:14hrs (14.5km), 63m 📈
Mon - Rest
Tues - Rest
Wed - Rest & Physio
Thurs - Rest
Sat - Easy Run 33min
UPDATE: I ran after writing this, and I lasted 8 min before it felt like my leg broke. I think it may be worse than a muscle strain 😢. Stay tuned.