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Expand your running knowledge, identify running misconceptions and become a faster, healthier, SMARTER runner. Let Brodie Sharpe become your new running guide as he teaches you powerful injury insights from his many years as a physiotherapist while also interviewing the best running gurus in the world. This is ideal for injured runners & runners looking for injury prevention and elevated performance. So, take full advantage by starting at season 1 where Brodie teaches you THE TOP PRINCIPLES TO OVERCOME ANY RUNNING INJURY and let’s begin your run smarter journey.
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On today's episode, when you need to rehab, but want to race. Welcome to the podcast, helping you train, rehab and run smarter. When I first started running in my 20s, I knew it would be something I'd be passionate about for the rest of my life. But, unfortunately, developing injury after injury disrupted my progress and left me undertrained at the start line on race day. Even with my knowledge as a physio, I still fell victim to the vicious injury cycle and when searching for answers, struggled to decipher between common running myths and evidence-based guidance. That's what this podcast is here to help you with. So join me as a run smarter scholar and let's break the injury cycle by raising your running IQ and achieving running feats you never thought possible. I hope this title has grabbed a lot of your attention. I know this will resonate with a lot of people and is a topic I've been thinking about doing for a while. It's just trying to grasp like how what direction I want to take with this because there's so many directions we can take this particular topic. But before we do that, let's welcome our new Run Smarter patrons for the week. We have Tasha Wallace, Karen Friend, who both have signed up to become Honours. patrons. So thank you very much for your support and signing up. And we have Sandrine Avec who has upgraded her patron tier to the PhD tier. So we'll get access to not only the q&a or ask me anything episodes, and the patron exclusive episodes, but also the research reviews where I'll find a research paper, research topic and cover those. cover that particular paper and also send a PDF to you so you get access to it. If you are listening to this and you're very science minded and love the posts and episodes that I do on research. And if you want your own copies of those, um, that's what the PhD tears do get alongside, you know, um, the books, um, for free, the audio books and a whole bunch of other stuff we have. I have a whole. website landing page for that. So it's in the show notes if you ever want to look at all the tiers that are available and the benefits you get with it. But thanks Tashark, Karen, Sandrine. Thanks for jumping on, supporting the show. Um, today's topic when you need to rehab, but want to race this, like the idea for this essentially comes because a lot of injured runners. work with me or reach out and jump on to free injury chats. It is just constant and I see a lot of patterns and a lot of common reasons why people do it. A lot of common mistakes and would like to get my two cents and at least give you an idea of ways you can self-reflect, some tips to help if you are trying to navigate the balance between the two and also, It's really good that comes out this week because it ties in really well with next week's episode, which is going to be another success story. And yeah, hopefully these two kind of compliment one another. Um, how often do we say it? Like the people, runners, you who are listening, um, how often do you want to race? I'd say, you know, the majority of you enjoy doing some form of races. Well, you know, even if it's once or twice a year, that might be a marathon, that might be an ultra, that might be a park run, 5k, 10k, half marathon. I would say people who don't really want to do races are in the minority. And how many of us are injured? You know, we can follow the research. The vast, vast majority of us will be injured. The research will show up to 80% of runners will be injured in a given year. So, you know, kind of looking at this, um, if we were to look at these two overlapping populations between races and injuries, they sort of overlap quite a lot. And so this will resonate with a lot of people. I want to start by sort of discussing why people race during their rehab. Um, there's, if we can understand the reason why. you do want to do it. Maybe this can help give us some insight into whether we should continue doing it, or whether we need to change the way we're thinking, change our particular strategies or tactics, whether that is still race, but with modifications. But I just thought I'd just put a subheading on my Google, Google Doc and just put why people raise during their rehab or why people race when they're injured. That's probably a better topic, and I just quickly wrote down whatever came to my head. The first one I wrote down is just people are compelled to race. Some people are. And whatever reason that is, maybe it's habit, maybe it's just what you do. Maybe if you consider yourself a runner, you might have this illusion that, you know, runners have to race, and you might just love racing so much. So I've put first one was compelled, people are just compelled to do it. They're compelled to do it with friends, compelled to just do it for family or like for your own personal gains or a goal. So first one was compelled. Second one is like just the habit of doing it. So if you do two marathons a year, and then all of a sudden you're injured, you're still wanting to do that. You're still thinking that this is what I need to do. The other is just love. The third one I put is just people really love doing races. People love enjoying doing the races and this ties in well with next week as well as a couple of other things here. Motivation, people, some, not all, I'm not one of these, but some people really struggle to continue with their momentum, training consistently, running consistently if they don't have a race. forecast in the future. So, you know, races are a good motivating factor. It's good to stay on task. It's good to stay on a plan. And when you're injured and you still have that race, you know, you need to keep that motivation. So people do that. Identity was the other one. Like some people just think because you're a runner, you have to enter races. And some people identify themselves as a marathon runner or a, you know, ultra runner. And so if you're not doing those races, then it's really conflicting. It's really hard to face reality that you might not be able to do races. And so they go against what their body's telling them in this. Continue in that nature. I have had a few people, not too many, but I have had a few injured runners that just keep going through races and tell me, oh, it's just because you know, I'm getting older. Um, I just want to do as much as I can while I'm still, while I still have this youth and strength and fitness, um, even though there's a bit of pain, I just want to get through these next years while I still can, you know, I don't see it that often, but I think because I've seen it on occasion, that's why I put it down on here. Um, sometimes you have permission to run. Like if you listen to this, this podcast and you listen to the rehab rules and guidelines and restrictions and all those sorts of things. If you are injured, based on your symptoms, you probably can still run. And so maybe people overstretched that and say, okay, well, if I can run, well, maybe this race in the future is still okay. Maybe that falls within acceptable limits. Maybe my injury allows me to do that. Um, and maybe people convince themselves that it is okay to do it, but Um, yeah, maybe that's stretching it a little bit. The other one, which definitely ties in next week, what is just keeping a streak going. Some people say, Hey, I run two marathons. I've ran two marathons every year for the past 10 years. I'm not stopping that. Or I have raced. Um, I have had, uh, I've improved my marathon time every year for the last three years running, and I just need to keep that streak going. Um, They don't, you know, people don't want to travel backwards. This is why some people run too much when they're injured in the first place is cause they don't want to lose fitness. They've spent all this time building up their fitness and with consistency and momentum and hard work, they've managed to find themselves at a certain level of fitness that when they're injured, they just want to hold onto that. They want to hold onto that hard work. And that's why they continue to run with an injury, even though the injury isn't getting better. in fact can sometimes get worse, but they're just compelled to do that. Um, so that's another thing. So people just convincing themselves that, um, they're not moving backwards. Some people can like, you know, trick themselves into thinking, if I do this marathon with this injury, um, it shows that I'm still progressing in my running journey. So, um, th there, you know, if I spent an extra half hour to come up with more dot points, I'd probably have twice the amount here. But people are compelled to have a habit, have a love for it. They want to keep their motivation, their identity while they're still young, permission to run within certain pain rules. Like they feel like this injury, they give themselves permission to still run. They think it's still okay. They want to keep a streak going and they want to convince themselves that they're not moving backwards in their, their running journey. Who knows? Did I hit the mark with you? If you're or if you have in the past been injured and started racing. Sometimes I know a lot of people reach out and say, you know, it's like you're talking about me when I'm listening to your episodes. And it's only because I talked to so many injured runners and we all go through the same process. We're all, I find a lot of common patterns, a lot of common personalities, a lot of common excuses, a lot of... Um, yeah, common situations and scenarios that people find themselves in. And that's sort of where these ideas strike for doing these episodes. So if it is resonating with you, Tony, cause there's so many others that are in that same situation. The next sub category I have down is the dangers with racing during your rehab. Because it might be okay. Uh, it might be successful, but these are the dangers. If you choose to still race, still enter these races while you have an injury and you're trying to negotiate that injury. I see it all the time. Let me know if I'm on the mark here. So when your injury is bad, you really keep to your rehab protocols. You do your exercises at the right amount that you should, like if it's two times a day, three sets of 10, this way to this. TheraBand, you know, you're really diligent, really dedicated. Um, when things are, when the injury is still dictating a lot of what you can and can't do, so, you know, you might not be able to run at all. You might be able to run very, very little. You might be only able to cross train or, um, do some form of strength and you're desperate to get back to running or desperate to at least keep this momentum moving forward. So you're really diligent. then as that injury improves, all of a sudden you're starting forecasting yourself to, Oh, what about if I do this race or how far away is this race? Maybe I can get there. And this is where your injury starts getting worse or your progression and your, um, yeah, your recovery just halts. If anything, it can go backwards or just plateaus because you now have this race. that you're looking forward to, you're excited about because this injury, you're starting to see the recovery trajectory on the back end, you're like, okay, I can see myself now running without pain now that it's still there, but I can see that I'm on the right track. Let me look for a race. It's very similar to the episode that I did several months ago now. It was something along the lines of why, why getting better can be dangerous. And it's essentially this like, As soon as you start noticing, okay, I can see myself now without an injury, you start doing too much, you start running too fast, you start running too far, the races that you enter pretty much like a stretch, there's very little wiggle room or leeway in there. And when like, I see it all the time, you have like some bad weeks of a lot of symptoms, a lot of flare ups and everything's not going well. Then you have maybe one good week and you sign up for a marathon. It is, Oh my God, it does my head in sometimes. Um, and I sort of need to remind myself that yes, this is because people are compelled, people love doing it. It's the motivation, it's the identity, you know, um, it's a lot to do with human emotion, human psychology and that sort of stuff. And, you know, it's, I don't want to blame people or, um, condone them in any way. But the. idea being that you're just setting yourself up for a really tough road that, you know, has a lot of risks associated with that, which I'll get to in a second. So the dangers, the dangers are if you sign up for a race, you are compelled to, you've put yourself into doing too much too soon, or you have a bit of a reference point that you're constantly referring to. And it can lead you. to returning back too quickly. You rush your rehab. Some people just do the bare minimum rehab to feel like they're back into, okay, I can get to this race and then it just, the rehab's out the window. They've done two or three weeks of really diligent rehab and they've got better. And this is where I need to remind you that you got better because you stuck to the rehab plan when things were bad. Let's continue sticking to the plan so that you can continue seeing this momentum. It's not as simple as doing two or three good weeks, injuries a little bit better, or I would say significantly better, but not out of the woods. You can't just throw that map out the window and jump into race preparations because that's when symptoms return. Then you go back to that diligent stuff that you did, you know, three weeks ago, and then you come good again, you race or run too fast, symptoms come back, and then you just repeat this cycle by the time you know this race is only three, four weeks away. And you know better than when you started or when you signed up for the race in the first place. So. It's something really fascinating talking about in the back of your mind, having this reference point, you might not think of it consciously, or maybe you think of it consciously. It might be unconscious though, that you know that you have 42.2 kilometers to do in this race and I am 12 weeks away. I should be doing this as a long run. I should be doing 12, 13, 14 kilometres or, you know, seven, eight, nine miles. That's my, that's your reference point that you're constantly referring to. And that's just talking distance. It could be a race that has hills. It could be a race that you want to run fast or outperform your personal best. So this reference point of, okay, I need to be this fast. I need to do this many hills. I should be doing. this amount of distance, this long run, this mileage per week. So that when your injury is getting better, you try and leap to that reference point, which is often too much. It's often, um, abrupt because your race that you signed up for was too soon in the first place. All you've gone through that vicious cycle of getting better, getting worse, getting better, getting worse. And by the time, um, before you realize it, that race is way too soon. And. Your expectations haven't really adjusted yet and you continue repeating that cycle. And it either leads to you enter the race and your injuries way worse off afterwards because you've just overdone it, or you abandon the race altogether and you feel quite, um, defeated. You feel like it's never good when it comes to your emotional state of your rehab. When you have to defer a race or cancel it all together. Um, so just bear that in mind. It's something, these are the dangers. We can have successes. I'll talk about successes later. Um, but these are the dangers that we sign up for when we consider races during your rehab. The next category, what to consider if you are currently injured. So if you're injured and you haven't signed up for a race yet, but you're thinking about it, these are the things you need to consider. I've only got three things here. Number one, do you really have to race? Just ask yourself that, because a lot of times people tell me, oh, this is something that means a lot to me, is this what I need to do? And I kind of like, if I dig a little bit deeper, I think to myself, if I was in their shoes, I wouldn't race. Um, just based on there's not enough reason for me to take on that. Um, but some people do some people like, look, I've raised money for this charity or I'm doing this with a friend who really needs my support. Um, it's a, it's something that really means a lot to me and. You know, I'm really dedicated to rehab after this race. I'll dedicate six months if I have to, but. this is something I need to do. I'm not going to argue with that. So but you just need to ask yourself that question. Do you really have to race? Is it something that you it's a must? Or can we give ourselves a little bit of time to focus on? Can we prioritize the rehab? The next thing, if you do decide to race, how far away is this race? Because I've seen so many people sign up for marathons when they're injured. And it is way too soon, way too soon. And I put it out on paper. Like, you know, you might think three, four months, you might think that is ages away. I've got so much time. Um, and then I put it down on paper for them and see what that long run needs to look like week by week, what that mileage needs to look like week by week. And they're like, Hmm, okay. Now that it's on paper. It looks, it comes around pretty quickly and those jumps, those long runs and those weekly mileage does look like it's ramping up pretty quickly. So that's the other thing that you need to consider. First one, do you really have to do it? Second one, okay, how far away is this race? Or if I do pick a race, how much time should I leave myself? And the third thing that I wrote down, which is really important, is just weighing up the risk versus reward. Because like I said, I'm not, if someone says they really, they really need to do this race and have a really strong reason, I'm not going to argue with it. We're all adults here. I'm not going to say, I'm not going to tell you off and say, no, you're not doing this race. I'm going to say, okay, let's weigh up the risks and let's weigh up the rewards. And let's let you make the justified decision. And if it pays off great, but if it doesn't, you need to. accept the consequences because we've got all these risks, got all these rewards like laid out on paper and this is what we've signed up for. This is the danger and this is yeah sometimes people need an authority figure like a coach or a health professional or me to tell them don't do it and then they say oh my god thank you for telling me that that's exactly what I need to hear and that doesn't happen too often but it does. Um, sometimes people just need that permission, which I find quite strange, but in my rational mind, I think, look, we're all adults. We all sort of make these choices. Um, these are choices that we make, but we can't be too annoyed at ourselves. If we say, okay, this is a risk. This race is quite soon. This ramp up is quite aggressive. Um, but I really want to do it. And then they're just kicking themselves and really annoyed, really frustrated when the injury flares up and they can't make it to the start line or they make it to the start line, they have a horrible day and suffer the consequences afterwards, Hey, this is what we sign up for. Um, while I'm on that topic, I know I'll get to a bit later, but if think about, if you've done this a couple of times, think about how the last If the last few times have gone, we're going to dive into this next week in the success story. But if you've had an injury, if you've got knee pain, ITB pain, let's use ITB pain. And every time you prepare for a race, it ramps up and it gets really bad. And then you race really bad suffering the consequences afterwards really aggravated for three, four weeks and really hinders your fitness levels really hinders your strength running and those sorts of things. Then it gets a little bit better and then you sign up for that next race and then it just, that pattern repeats. And every time after that race, you're like in misery. Don't repeat that same mistake. Like look back, look back on the last several months, even years, have you made the right decisions? Have you weighed up the risk versus reward? And in hindsight, have you been okay with that decision that you've made? because I know a lot of people that once I lay it out, once I get their history, their like injury history and their race history and their outcomes, I sort of just repeat it to them. I say, I really don't wanna repeat this again. I don't wanna do that same cycle of what I've done for the last two years. How do we break this? How do we break that cycle? Well, we start by weighing up the risk versus reward and then you make that decision. If you are sensible enough. Most people would say, okay, let's let rehab be our sport right now. Let me be a recovering athlete so I can bounce back stronger. So that next cycle or next year, the next 12 months, I'm actually starting to race without injury and feeling really good because the last two years I've been racing in every race, I feel miserable. Let's break that habit. Let's break that cycle. So ask yourself. Do you really have to race? How far away is that race? And let's weigh up the risks versus rewards. The next little subcategory I have here is, if you do decide to race, if you have done all these things so far and you've enjoyed yourself, you've decided, okay, I've got it, I feel like I have enough time. I feel like my injury is okay. I feel like, you know, my rehab fits into this. I've decided to race, I've signed up. What should I do? Or actually before the sign up, I've decided to commit to a race. Number one, leave plenty of time. If you sign up for a race because this is a habit, because it's motivation, because it's identity, because you wanna keep a streak going or whatever those reasons I talked about at the start, make sure that you leave enough time. Give yourself enough time and that motivation will still be there. you'll still enjoy it, you'll still have that motivation, you'll still have that, you know, your identity is still in check. But if you leave enough time, there's less and less pressure and less and less risk of you getting back in and doing too much too soon, which is the biggest mistake that people make. And then you've just got, you've lost a couple of weeks. When you're injured, you have to take a back step, you need to dial back the intensity or the distance rest for a couple of days, a couple of weeks and then now you have even less time to prepare for that. The gap between you and that reference point you have in the back of your mind just keeps getting larger and larger and larger, leading to a likelihood of jumping too much into it as soon as it starts feeling better again. So leave plenty of time. I can't give you some examples. I can say like for most marathons it takes like six months. Um, depends on your baseline, depends on your reference points, depends on your strength, depends on the stability of your injury, but that's just without an injury and you know, setting some, someone up from the ground up, it does take six months for someone who's like, you know, really experienced already doing a fair bit of running, um, has been running for years, but still injured, you know, it's less than that, but This is what it is. Sometimes rehab for tendons, if you've got a chronic tendinopathy, sometimes that rehab is six to 12 months. And so this is what we need to factor in. Okay, number one, leave plenty of time. Number two, have a good rehab plan. If you've been going through doing body weight exercises and banded exercises and stretches and massage guns and foam rollers and you've been doing that for several weeks and not getting any improvement in your symptoms, you need to change your plan. We need to have a good roadmap. If you've got a race and we need to get there with a plan, we need to have the right plan. We need to have the right exercises, the right strength training. We need to enhance your recovery, maybe get some good sleep, focus on your managing your stress levels, progress your strength. I don't really want to dive into it too much because I've done so many podcast episodes on it. if you have a specific running injury like plantar fasciitis or ITB syndrome or calf strains or any sort of tendinopathies. I have certain episodes for that in terms of what strength exercises to do, how to progress mistakes with people's rehab, all those sorts of things. But we just want to make sure that you're, you've got a good rehab plan when you also have this race and we stick to that plan. We're progressive with your strength, progressive with your rehab. Yeah, that's what I put down. have really strict protocols or rules or restrictions when it comes to the running side of things. Or I guess like the rehab strength training side of things as well. But the more gray zone or leeway or, you know, the less defined these rules are, the more you are going to sort of do too much. If we say, you know, let's progress your run every Saturday, but only by a little bit, see how you feel like that sort of terminology. You know, you're gonna do too much. As soon as you feel good, you're gonna do too much. Or if we say, you know, let's do five, let's do a 20 minute run on Saturday, see how you go and then if that's fine, the next Saturday, we're gonna do 25 minutes. Sure, that's a bit more defined, but. No one's talking about speed. You could be feeling great that second week and run 25 minutes, but so much faster because the protocols, the rules, the restrictions aren't there. I have rehab rules, I have pain rules. Like we have discussed this on the podcast quite a lot, but for most overuse injuries, for most running related injuries, a little bit of pain's okay, but we need to define what it is. So when I'm working with clients, depending on the condition, I'll say, look, you'll run The pain during your run should not get to a three. I'm happy with a zero, a one or a two. If it gets to a three, we need to stop, slow down, walk for five minutes before resuming. And if it's still a three after that, we're calling it quits. If it's a one or a two, but then increases symptoms later such as later in the day or the next day, we are then learning that run that we did previously was too much and we need to go back to the drawing board. Uh, things like terrain or the shoes that you wear, um, your cross training rules, the strength training rules, like pain rules or range of movement stuff. We're really honing in and we're being really specific, particularly for those of you in the past who continue continuously flare up your injuries because you do too much and, um, yeah, just overloading yourselves or jumping the gun or diving back into it too quickly. We really need to put some, some guidelines, some barriers onto you just to make sure that you stay on path. Any little leeway, any little ambiguity or room for interpretation. It's just going to lean more towards the over training side of things. Keep everything nice and consistent. Keep those rules in check. Um, and yeah, that's what we need to do. The other thing that we might consider, the fourth thing that I have written down is a cross-training alternative, just to make you feel better in terms of your fitness levels. Because like I say, sometimes people jump back too quickly and they're compelled to do too much because of the fear of losing fitness. They've done all this work building up all this momentum and all this fitness and then they're injured and then really struggling to balance out trying to manage this injury, but trying to maintain the fitness because you don't want to lose all that hard work and progress. But cross training can be really nice. Like you could get a really hard workout on a bike or an elliptical, or you set up your own cardio routine. Like sometimes you might do a circuit of five stations where you're doing bodyweight shoulder press, like these sorts of things. Um, and you do like five rounds of those as fast as you can, you're going to be gassed and you're going to get a good leg strength exercise, depending on your injury, we'll pick, pick certain exercises that doesn't aggravate your symptoms. So if you have, uh, let's just say knee pain, uh, some exercises that you could do, uh, the cross trainer, you could swim, you could, uh, Do jump rope, I guess, for most people. You could do say calf raises, you could do star jumps, those sorts of things. Plenty of things that you can do that can still maintain your fitness levels. Just bump up the intensity and you should get that cardio workout. Some people who do have knee pain, cycling can be okay. Running can irritate, but cycling can be okay for some. If cycling is okay for your knee pain, let's smash it out. Let's do a 60, 90 minute cycling efforts. Let's do interval training on the bike. You know, plenty of ways we would be creative and get you feeling like you're still heading in the right direction. Or there's actually a carryover of fitness for running. So nothing there to help plan. The, the other thing I have written down is. Like write it all down, write down this plan and see, like I was mentioning before, what your long runs need to look like, what your weekly mileage needs to look like to, to get to this race, um, to get to this race without any big jumps in or abrupt changes in your mileage or volume or speed and those sorts of things. Write it out and trust yourself to stick to it. This comes to race day as well. Like on race day, you know, some people can say, look, Brody, I'm happy to, I know I'm injured. I know I have this marathon that I need to do, but I'm just happy just to get to the finish line. And I say, great, all right, let's do a walk run strategy. And let's see what walk run intervals work for you to successfully get you to the end in the best scenario possible might still be a little bit irritated, but we're in the best scenario possible. Or we say, okay, let's cap your pace, or let's just walk the hills. Or like we put some sort of, um, guidelines in there and we were sort of planning on what race day might look like. And then on race day, you need to trust yourself that you'll stick to it. Because I cross my fingers and toes because some people are like, yep, here's our strategy. And then they come back to me after the race and say, Brody, I felt so good. Um, there was a. I just wanted to push myself a little bit. Yeah, I ran a little bit fast, a little bit. I didn't walk those hills. There was a couple of hills that I ran up. I was just feeling good. I loved the energy of the day. There was a guy in front of me that I wanted to chase down or I wanted to see what my final time could be. And they suffer the consequences afterwards. Again, this is risk versus reward, but plan what the journey looks like to that race. plan what that race day looks like and then stick to it. Once we can also need, we also need to be flexible. I'm going to put in. Um, bear with me. This is why I write down all these things in dot points. And then I have more ideas and want to add in some dot points. Um, be flexible with this as well. You could have a plan, write it all down, but you know, unexpected things happen. I can't predict exactly how things go. I can make best assumptions based on my experience, based on your history and details and based on. making sensible adjustments. If things are sensible then it's a little bit more predictable but sometimes unexpected things happen, flare-ups happen and we need to deviate from the plan. So the plan looks good on paper but subject to change subject to flexibility based on unforeseen circumstances. So we might need to defer that race, we might need to change the half marathon to a 10k, might need to change the marathon to a half marathon. but keep in mind that flexibility needs to be there. But another thing that we can do is have these buffer weeks. So when we are thinking, okay, I wanna sign up for a race, how far away is that race? How many weeks do I have? I would always put in like two or three weeks based on the injury, but two or three weeks just as an example of just empty space. Let's just leave that as some buffer weeks, just to allow for some of these unexplained, unexpected circumstances. That way, if you have this reference point in the back of your mind, and you encounter a flare up, and that flare up takes two weeks to settle back down, we don't have that reference point further ahead than when we started before that flare up. We're like, okay, well, let's put in those buffer weeks and continue moving forward. If you don't have to use those buffer weeks, fantastic. We can just do some maintenance weeks where we're just repeating what we did the week before and good as gold. So keep that in mind. Let me go through those again. If you decide to race, leave plenty of time, have a good rehab plan. So all your strength training is in check. Really hone in on strict protocols, parameters, and keep to them. That might be distance to rain. pace, all that sort of stuff. You might need to consider a cross training alternative to keep your motivations high and make sure like keep your mood quite high and just have an alternative, always good to have. Make a plan, plan out this journey from where you are now to race day and then plan out race day. And lastly, be flexible with the outcome. Be flexible with these unexpected circumstances might happen and race day might need to change. We might need to push it back, we might need to push it forward, we might need to change it, all those sorts of things. Okay, let me finish off with some other tips. Just like kind of final thoughts, things that I wanted to talk about that didn't really fit in with all my other subheadings. Other tips, look at the long game. This is tough for most people, not just runners, but just people in general. It's really tough to like, if you just live, live race to race, um, I would encourage you to look back on the other previous races and be like, do I want to repeat what, what I have been doing? Or do I want to break this habit? Look ahead to this race that you have, look ahead to that same race in two years time, where do you want to be? Look ahead to look back to this same race two years ago. Are you in that position where you want to be two years ago? Or have you repeated that same mistake over and over and over again? Cause if you have, I encourage you to review your scope that you have right now. Peel back that lens and sort of look at a greater scale of things and say to myself, do I need to change? Do I need to change this long-term game? Do I actually want to start entering your marathons without being injured or having to worry about an injury? Maybe, if that is the case, maybe I need to spend six to 12 months focusing on rehab, focusing on strength, focusing on doing the right things so that I'm able to get there. Number two, turn off Strava if it's not serving you because like I say, a lot of these mistakes are people jumping back in too quickly, jumping back into the game, back into training, back into race preparations too quickly. And if, but on the other side, like I guess, if I'm just thinking out loud, a lot of it is people don't wanna run too slowly either. Because when it comes to Strava and posting and all that sort of stuff, people are like, Oh, I don't want to post my 3k run, 3k walk run or 5k slow run. That's I want to, you know, post something up there worth posting. And if that pattern is repeating and you're doing too much purely because you know, you're going to be posting it, get off it because it's not going to help you in the long run. Again, thinking longterm. If you're not injured and planning on racing, again, these buffer weeks can be helpful. If I'm not injured and I have a race and it's a 12 week training plan that I'm following, I would look for a race that's 14 or 15 weeks ahead. Therefore I've got some buffer weeks. I can follow that same plan. Um, if I do get injured, then I take a week off or have a week dialed back in terms of intensity and duration and that sort of stuff. and then I'm back into it. And I'm not having to jump into, back into my training plan with a bigger gap because I have those buffer weeks. And finally, I just wanna say, like clearly drill this home. Don't repeat the same mistakes. Look back on your mistakes. That might be progressing too quickly. That might be signing up for races that are too soon, doing a distance that's too far. Um, I don't know you like your mistakes, your mistakes, look back on your mistakes and see if you have been repeating those mistakes and if you have been repeating those mistakes, change something. I don't know what that is based on your circumstances, but I see it so often on these injury chats, um, and I might suggest, you know, um, lean people towards suggesting that maybe we need to change this pattern. And as soon as I laid out for them, they're like, oh yeah, every race I get this injury. Um, I don't want that to happen again. So. Find, identify mistakes. If you ha if you can identify mistakes, be proactive about it. Come up with a plan to mitigate it or at least, um, break that cycle. You're going to thank yourself. You're going to be a smarter runner because of it. You're going to build up success because of it. Similar to every. marathon, like we can learn from every marathon, we can also learn from every injury, we can also learn from every rehab, just to make ourselves more resilient and stronger moving forward for the next injury, because you might have an injury in the future. But we're going to be more equipped, we're going to have a better mindset, we're going to have a better attitude and a better plan for moving forward. So I hope this will help. It's always tough with these topics, because You know, there's so many different injuries out there, so many different circumstances, but I think this kind of generic topic might land with you and at least spark something in you to say, all right, enough's enough, let's change something. And hopefully it has some tips here. Hopefully there's some tips to say, all right, I kind of have a few things now that I want to work on and that's going to help you in the future. So. Like I said, I've got a success story. It's Ashley next week, um, who has a longterm injury and also wants to race really compelled to race. And we talked through her success story of how we sort of negotiated that, um, fascinating conversation. So looking forward to bringing that next time. And as I sign off, remember Every new insight brings you one step closer to your next running breakthrough. If you are struggling to overcome an injury, you can jump on a free 20-minute injury chat with me which you can book through my calendar in the show notes. While you're in the show notes, elevate your running IQ by jumping onto my free email list so you can receive material to help rehab your injury, lower your injury risk and increase your performance. If emails aren't for you, consider my Facebook group. Instagram and YouTube channels. And remember, each insight you get from these resources brings you one step closer to your next running breakthrough.