Getting My Endurance Back

Almost all accidents and injuries happen when an individual is not being present and not paying attention to what they are doing.

Tobe Hanson

Since my return from injury, I can run my base of 7 miles without much issue. However, going beyond that has become difficult, as my legs begin to feel weak and I start to feel phantom pains. I have managed to go 10.5 miles once and haven’t passed 9 miles since. I think that the reason that I am struggling is the lack of a race to train for and my fear of re-injury. I have a half marathon in April, but do not have a time goal for it and have too much time in the interim. I have found that I need a deadline to do my best work, which means that I have been looking for races before April to get my training back on track. The fear of re-injury is something that is more difficult to deal with. Every little thing has me doing a double-take, because it would mean a significant amount of time off from running.

Using my previous experience of coming back from injury is a help. In the summer/fall of 2018 I was running with a stress fracture in my knee. I had kept running through the injury until I couldn’t run more than a few miles without having to stop and call for a ride. I thought that I could rest it for a couple weeks and run my first half marathon, which was an awful idea. I ran the race and had to stop multiple times trying to loosen it out. I finished the race, but literally couldn’t walk for the next two days. I took another two weeks off and then tried again, which was even worse than before. I could only make it around a mile and a half before having to stop. It led to a doctors visit and two and a half months off of running.

Returning from this injury was annoying, but when I was able to run again I got my endurance back relatively quickly. I was able to start running again in December, and by January I was able to run around 10 miles without stopping. Now the current injury is passed, and I have been running again since around November, but my legs have been feeling heavy and tired often. I am unsure of what to do to counter this, and it is really demoralizing. I have good runs and each of my 7ish mile runs is usually right in my goal pace, but after that distance I start to slow and my legs start to give.

I think that I will have to cross-train more diligently and find some better podcasts to push me further. One thing that has helped is my new shoes, my Brooks Launch 7’s. I feel a lot faster in them and the times have reflected it. If anyone else has ever dealt with this issue, let me know what helps!