Virtual Challenges and avoiding injury

It is easy to get frustrated about times from virtual challenges or time trails. There’s a common perception that we need to get quicker after each one and this isn’t a healthy mentality and sets up a dangerous loop of disappointment and frustration. Stresses that really aren’t worth having.

Time trails shouldn’t be approached with the view to keep beating your previous time. Instead being able to run a distance at a similar time, but with a reduced level of effort, is a truer gage of fitness.

Injuries shouldn’t be something we normalise, not in our club or anywhere else. It’s a sign that we are approaching our running from an unsustainable angle and it’s time to dial things back and start focusing on the fundamentals: sleep, recovery, nutrition, getting the right volume of speed work in at the right intensity, making sure our easy runs are easy, our long runs easy, not running too much, making sure our training is consistent, running to feel, limiting extrinsic stresses. Jeopardising our health should not be a consequence of running.

These points are crucial if we’re looking to stay healthy and strong for when races do resume, and we can move into doing that with confidence we can do well.

From virtual challenges to races we need to make sure our health, mind and body is up to the challenges they present. We do this by ticking off the fundamentals mentioned and being sensible about things. Otherwise it’s going to be a dangerous never ending loop of spending time recovering from injuries (and thereby never actually getting fitter) Time which could otherwise be spent building on fitness gains and moving forward. Cameron Harris- Head Coach