During my last run I made three big beginner mistakes:
1. I ran very early during a cold morning without stretching
2. I ran relatively fast with quite tense muscles
3. I ran in a way that compensated for an achillies injury
The result? I injured one of the muscles on the inside of my thigh (called the Adductor).
At the time I couldn’t tell if I’d torn the muscle, however it’s 2 days later now and the pain is significantly reduced and I’ve been for runs, so I suspect that I just strained it.
It was very scary reading up on Adductor Muscles and Running Injury because it might have meant no training for up to 8 weeks.
It’s only two days in, but here are the things I’ve been doing to reduce the pain and the chance of overuse:
- I’ve shortened my stride. Before I was running around 165 steps per minute. Research has shown that for running a stride length below 180spm increases the chance of over striding and therefore injury.
- I’ve performed gentle standing stretches and walked around every hour or so during the day. The standing stretches are very simple and both utilise a chair. The first is to stand with your back straight holding the back of the chair and lift your leg and bend your knee until your thigh is 90^ to your body and hold for 5 seconds. The second is to put your foot on the seat of a chair whilst the other is on the ground and perform a lunge and hold for 10s then release. I repeated these 3 times throughout every break I took.
- I’ve performed targeted stretches:
It was really lucky that I wasn’t more injured considering the circumstances. If my adductor continues with the rate of healing it has currently then all should be good by next week.
