If someone says, “I got hurt,” the first thing you say is probably, “Oh, no, I’m sorry!”
Because you’re polite and all.
But maybe it’s not all wrong to say, “Good for you!”
Okay, maybe it is. But hear me out. I’m saying an injury can be a good thing, sometimes, in some ways.
After my marathon last year, I came down with a nasty case of IT band syndrome. Having never had this problem before, it didn’t occur to me what it might be and I thought I just needed some more rest post-race.
Not so. Additional test runs even months later still resulted in pain. It became an enormous nuisance, especially when I realized I wouldn’t have the time to train for the marathon I’d signed up for, because the pain was still present.
So it made me do a lot of thinking. Can an injury be a good thing? I mean, I went through a horrible, frustrating period of anger. (I totally skipped denial. There was no way to deny it a mile and a half into the run when the pain made me stop running.) But now I’m calm and I’m looking at this differently. Here’s why an injury can be a good thing, or at least why it’s not the worst thing.
In addition to the whole badness of it, of course.
I’m Addressing the Issue
An injury makes you slow down. We don’t want to slow down, but sometimes we should. Otherwise, boom: injury.
IT band syndrome is not uncommon in distance runners, even though I trained progressively, smartly, and with yoga by my side the whole way.
I want to run more. So this issue is making me look not only at how to make it better, but also at what might have gone wrong to cause it in the first place.
I’m More Aware
I’M INJURY-PROOF! is what my former self believed. I have been lucky in that I’ve never dealt with sports-related injuries despite a lifetime of sports. At the same time, I’m getting older and my fitness life has changed. This injury is forcing me to realize that I might need to do a few things differently than I did when I was in my 20s.
It’s Teaching Me More About My Body
In the same way traveling to a new place helps me develop a better awareness of the geography of that area, this injury is giving me greater awareness of the geography anatomy of my leg.
I have Time For Other Things I Love
Pre-marathon training, I would run 2-4 times per week, 3-5 miles per run. After months of running in preparation for the race, I was eager to keep up my running endurance (while cutting back on mileage, of course). I was already looking at the race calendars and trying to decide on another marathon.
With the pain, I couldn’t run any more than a mile and half. But literally nothing else caused that pain. I could walk, do yoga, dance rumba, kickbox, and lift weights as much as I wanted. So I did and do. And truth is, I missed those things. When your Sunday run lasts three hours, you don’t have a lot of time left over for a kickboxing class.
I’m More Focused on Prevention
My personal figuring of what caused my IT band syndrome was that the second half of the marathon was all on a slight downhill (which can contribute to IT band issues), and I didn’t do any weightlifting during marathon training. There wasn’t a lot of extra time for it, and I was totally tired after all the running. I did yoga and pilates, but the practices were generally 15-30 minutes long and weren’t focused as much on strength (because my legs were tired).
But that, I believe, was part of the problem. Hip instability can also contribute to IT band syndrome, and my hips are used to being super-strong. When I dropped the lifting to focus on running, they were faced with doing a LOT of running without the support of that strength they normally have.
Now, I’m lifting again, with special focus on hip strength (including a lot of poses in my yoga practices to help with that).
There’s No Giving Up
Maybe you think it would be easy to say, “Oh, I’m hurt forever, no more running, what’s next on the group fitness schedule at the gym?” But if you’ve ever had something you enjoy taken away from you, you know it’s not easy at all. I have been taking short, fast runs, especially up hills, and I will try another distance (that is, more than a mile and a half) in another couple of weeks.
I will be back. And maybe that’s the biggest way an injury can be a good thing, after all: you realize what’s important to you, and you realize you’re capable of focusing and doing what you need to do to get it back.