LLM* Summary: Injuries like stress fractures and tendinopathies are common among runners, and proper diagnosis through a physio or sports doctor is essential to guide recovery plans. Stress fractures require complete rest for at least 4 weeks, while tendon injuries benefit from controlled loading using pain monitoring systems to avoid overloading or underloading. To recover effectively, ease back into running with gradual increases in distance and maintain aerobic fitness through cross-training, such as cycling, to prevent setbacks and frustration during recovery.
I genuinely have injured myself, I'm not quite sure how, as is always the case, you can be as sensible as you like, building up your weekly mileage slowly and then for some reason, out of the blue you get an injury...
I've had a vast array of injuries during my time running (and cycling, although that was mainly due to various crashes) and thought I would mention two that I've had to deal with; stress fractures and tendinopathies.
If you're training for an event, being injured can be the most frustrating experience. Initially you start out motivated to try and get better with some good physio exercises and rest, but as the weeks drag on and every time you go out for a jog you get a small niggling feeling the frustration can really start to dig in.
My main piece of advice is to know what you're dealing with (if that means accessing a physio or a sports doctor, and you have the means to do so, I would definitely recommend so they can do a proper assessment and work up)! Some injuries are the result of a simple muscle strain, perhaps you went too quickly on a training run and it'll just need a day or two to get better. Some injuries are more serious and require a more thorough work up with a very different recovery plan.
Stress fractures are small cracks in the bone which happen due to repeated overuse or force through that bone and were originally noted in soldiers doing long marches. They commonly occur in the metatarsals (small bones in the feet) and can present as a dull aching pain when you're running which usually gets worse the more you run on it. However, they can also happen in the tibia (shin bone), femur, pelvis and even the lower part of the spine. If some of these bigger bones are getting small breaks in them, it would be very sensible to have a proper work up with a health professional since it might indicate an underlying deficiency.
Stress fractures are really important not to be missed and are commonly mis diagnosed as tendon injuries or 'glute weakness'. However, without taking load off the bone for the right amount of time, usually at least 4 weeks, stress fractures just won't get better.
Tendinopathy is a condition that affects tendons, causing pain, swelling, and reduced function due to overuse, degeneration, or small tears in the tendon fibers. Tendon injuries are, in many works harder to manage than stress fractures as they often need a degree of loading to help nudge them in the right direction of recovery and strengthen them such that when you do start running again, they don't get irritated. Runners find they have to tread quite a fine line between overloading their inflamed tendon and under loading it. A lot of physios recommend using a traffic light system or an out of 10 score while building back up with a tendon injury. If the pain score is ~3/10 then it's ok to keep going, but if it gets above this, rest up until the score returns to 0/10.
Over the years I've had my fair share of all these injuries and more. There are two key ways I manage the frustration of them. Firstly, don't try and get back running too fast, hard and far too early. This is incredibly difficult! It's really important to take adequate time to rest the injury and then slowly start building up again. Say you've taken 4-6 weeks off for a stress fracture or maybe 2-3 weeks for a tendon injury. Don't start with a hard 20k, start with a very light 500m to test it out. Everything ok? Then the next day see if you can go to 1k. Then the next day 1.5k. This way you're going to be giving your body a chance to recover, whilst also ensuring you don't re injure yourself and need another 5 weeks off! The second key point is to try and do some cross training to keep your aerobic fitness up. I used to find this really difficult when I was younger as I didn't think cross training would make me faster or better at running. However, after a few years doing many miles on the bike and then finding I could run pretty well off that I was convinced the aerobic benefits are worth it. Sometimes it takes a couple of weeks for your legs to adapt back to running after a decent amount of cycling, but you can use that period to slowly build up the distance to ensure you don't injure yourself again. Additionally, you can get that exercise high from pushing yourself on the bike...sounds like a win-win-win.
Hopefully that's of use, and good luck!
*LLM - I'm saying LLM to mean large language model here, because everyone's calling them AI, but I'm not really convinced they're that smart yet