Marathon training and dealing with injuries

Supercell

With the Dublin City marathon looming I'm about to start an 18 week programme soon and was wondering how people adapt to injuries.
Last couple of runs my left knee was a little sore and today its sore just walking around so I'm going to take a few days off until it settles down and do some weights instead.

Now that's fine while I'm just training mainly to loose weight and gain overall fitness but if it was in the middle of an 18 week programme it would seriously be a concern.

Would you just skip that weeks training and move on to the next weeks one once you recover or would you just modify the next weeks one to be a little easier than it should be and hope you can do the week after it fine?
Or would you do the original weeks one and then next week skip ahead a couple of weeks - idea being that loss of exercise for the week means you lost a little fitness so stepping up right away would be the wrong idea.

Just curious to see if there is a conventional wisdom for returning to training after an minor injury?

RoyMcC

I've been lucky with injuries so I'm probably the wrong person to be replying. However a week out is unlikely to affect your training significantly. I think any of the approaches you suggest would be a reasonable course of action.

The one thing you would NOT do (and which you aren't planning to do) would be to try to catch up with the sessions/miles you've missed. That way further injury lies.

And if further injury strikes further into your programme then I'd be most concerned to at least get as many of the long runs in as possible, and skip one or two other sessions if necessary.

Slogger Jogger

My two cents worth is that the schedule needs to be flexible depending on your circumstances. If you miss the odd day through injury or having more rest then you could continue as per the schedule. If you're out for a week with illness or whatever you can't expect to move onto the next week's schedule if it has ramping up the intensity too much, so you need to know your own limitations and average it out perhaps. Good luck with your continued training.

Woddle

Are you overly worried about your knee, if I remember correctly from your log, when you ran longer distances your knee seemed to act up, if so you could look into exercises that help strenghten the muscles around the knee which may reduce the risk of injury.

Running Bing

I think a lot of it is just being vigilant. With running the majority of injuries gradually creep up on you and get progressively worse rather than your out running and your leg gives in.

Read the warning signs and dont be afraid to take a day off. Since I started I have had a few niggles but I made sure not to let them develop. One thing that I feel made a big difference for me is icing and elevating the leg when I feel something coming on. I usually go 20 minutes on 20 minutes of with the ice and make sure the source of the pain is well elevated (ideally above my heart). Ive found any niggles respond quite well to that.

I also find running on softer surfaces helps a lot.Dont do all your running on grass but I think a couple of weekly runs on grass instead of the footpath makes a difference.

Personally I feel a lot of injuries are down to bad form. Sometimes when Im running and tired Im just all over the place and my footsteps are so heavy, it has to make me more injury prone than an experienced smooth runner. One thing I have made a big conscious effort to change though is landing on my heels, this will absolutely destroy your legs and lead to all sorts of problems. Make the effort to land on your forefoot as lightly as possible and it solves a lot of problems imo.

another world

Agree with what what Running Bing says above, especially about keeping good form. Also, I've found a few things have helped me: more patience, building up speed and distance very slowly, not being worried about stopping a session if I feel an injury coming on, and building up core strenght (squats, push-ups, pull ups, press-ups etc).
Hope these help a bit