Stress = Injuries

Good morning!

This week: 5 things we wish we knew sooner, stress = injuries, and how to keep running on vacations.

Don't forget to check the meme of the week and the fast news at the end of the newsletter.

We wish you a season full of love and running 🎁

TRAINING

How to Schedule Your Training Around Vacation/Travel

For many of us, it’s March break right now, which might involve traveling and being away from home. This can often disrupt training for spring races. You might be tempted to skip or move runs.

Here are three things to avoid doing: 

Moving your long run earlier in the week because you can’t fit it in on the weekend. 

• If you have a long run that’s over 2 hours in length, you want to have a full week to recover from this effort before you tackle another long run. If you do your long run Wednesday, you’ve only given your body 3-4 days to recover. This can potentially cause injury troubles or just make your 2nd long run really challenging because you’re running on tired legs. 

Skipping your rest days leading up to your vacation. 

• Your rest days are there for a reason! If you normally run 5 days/week but the week before your vacation you run every day so you don’t miss any runs, you’re going to lower the quality of your runs. Especially your speed and long runs. 

Sticking 100% to your running schedule while away. 

• Sometimes it’s easy and enjoyable to run while on vacation. Other times it’s stressful to fit in runs, and it can cause tension between family members/friends you’ve traveled with if group plans are interrupted or on pause while you run.

Our advice?? 

 It’s okay to miss a couple of runs! It won’t ruin your training cycle if you’ve been consistent up until now. 

And if you schedule recovery weeks (which you should every 4th week), just move your recovery week, so it falls on the week you’re away. 

Enjoy your trip! And enjoy running if it fits in. But don’t stress out if it doesn’t! 

INJURIES

Did you know Stress can Lead to Running Injuries? 

Most of the time, running injuries are caused by doing too much too soon with regards to running frequency, volume and intensity.

But sometimes runners truly haven’t changed much in their training load leading up to their injury onset. 

This is when different injury causes should be explored; like stress. 

High levels of stress, whether work or family related, can cause cortisol levels to increase. And increased cortisol levels can lead to tissue breakdown and inflammation. Stress has actually been shown to delay healing by up to 60%!

If you've recently gone through a separation, lost a loved one or got a new job and are dealing with an injury, be aware that your stress levels might be contributing to your problem.

This can be hard for some people to hear as sometimes there's no way out of the stressful situation. But then you want to focus on what you can control.

Can you get an extra hour of sleep?

Can you improve your nutrition, fuelling and hydration?

Can you scale back training so that your stressful situation doesn't lead to burnout?

Can you improve your stress management skills by incorporating things like meditation, yoga, reading, going for walks or listening to music?

Life can be stressful! And often, we use running to "run away" from our problems. So be aware that stress can lead to overuse injuries and scale back accordingly rather than running more and more to try to cope. And please seek help from an expert if you can!

PODCAST

5 Things We Wish We Applied Sooner to Our Training

Are you looking to improve your running game and avoid common mistakes?

In this podcast, we'll be discussing the top five lessons we wish we had known sooner when it comes to training and running. Starting with the importance of form and diet, we'll move on to setting realistic goals and sticking to a plan. We'll also dive into the long-term mindset needed for success in distance running, emphasizing the need for patience and understanding the value of rest and injury prevention.

Join us as we share our insights and experiences, inspired by the likes of Eliud Kipchoge and Cam Levins, and help you reach your running goals with confidence and efficiency.

Listen today!!!

Meme of the Week

Fast News

• I Ran 11 Marathons in 11 Days – Here is What I Learned

• A Five-Second Test to See Whether You’re Aging Well (I'm not apparently)

• The battle to boost our deep sleep – and help stop dementia

• 5 Ways to Get More REM Sleep

Share the LOVE

Spread the word. Your support will help us grow and help the running community.

Forward this newsletter to your runner friends, or use the buttons below to share it on social media.

Or share this link:

https://chasingprs.beehiiv.com/subscribe