Monday, October 6, 2008

Are You Injured . . . Or Not?


Many serious runners are preparing to depart for marathons as many of the major events occur throughout the next couple of months. Or maybe you’re preparing for your first 10K race when IT happens. You feel a pain in your ankle, your calf, your knee or hamstring.

It’s inevitable that as you become more serious about your fitness activities, the risk for injury increases. But many people will ask themselves, “Can I just work my way through it?”

Well, in some cases, that is perhaps true with some rest, ice, compression and elevation (We’ll discuss more about RICE in my next blog entry). However, if you’re feeling acute pain in a targeted area for 48 hours straight or more, it’s probably time to get it checked out with your physician.

I’ll discuss more strategies for dealing with injuries in my next entry. I’m also going to write about some strategies to use that will help reduce the risk of injury in future entries.

What I’d like to be the takeaway for this entry is the following – don’t let an injury overtake your focus on long-term goals. Certainly an injury preventing you from participating in a planned event is not a good situation. But don’t allow your focus on your short-term goals to overtake your attention to long-term goals by being careless about treatment for an injury. If you’re really hurt, you need to give the injury the proper care in order to heal up and be ready for the long-term.

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