What was that, a twinge of pain in your knee?  Thoughts of delayed training or long term injury race through your mind.  You have worked so hard to have an injury sideline you and your training now!  Injury is almost inevitable for endurance athletes.  How you deal with it will greatly affect your training goals, your attitude, and your ultimate success in the sport.

 

The mental aspect of an injury can be a huge hurtle.  While most elite athletes deal with minor injuries daily, for weekend warriors and people trying to regain their old form this can be devastating.  The most important thing to remember is that whatever set back you face it is temporary!  Look at the long term.  Look at it as an adjustment or redirection in your training.  If you injured your knee then do some extra weight training workouts.  Spend more time in the pool this week until your knee soreness goes away.  Find an alternative but keep training and stay positive.

 

A good way to help you stay positive and avoid injury is to set realistic goals.  If your training runs when you were 18 were five miles or even ten miles, but you haven’t run in 20 years you will not be able to get off the couch and run five miles your first week of training.  As much as us balding middle agers don’t like to hear it, we must follow an age appropriate, and fitness level appropriate regiment.

 

What do I mean when I say age appropriate?  Well just like your hair loss you loose cartilage in your joints which can lead to osteoarthritis a degeneration of the cartilage between your joints, once thought to be an effect of just getting old, new research shows that there may be risk factors beyond just age and whatever the cause this can lead to extremely painful training. 

 

Only you, and a doctor, can judge your fitness level, so be realistic.  All the work you are about to set out to do will be for not if you spend the next three months back on the couch because you tried to do too much too fast.

 

Know when to “say this is not normal training pain” and seek out help from a doctor.  Preventing further injury can sometimes be the difference between a week off and a month off. 

 

For more information on joint conditions see http://orthopedics.about.com/cs/arthritis/a/arthritis.htm