Running when Injured
As runners we all know that we are not supposed to do it, but it can be hard to stop yourself. Your head may try to trick you into thinking that you are not as injured as you really are. Right now I am having some pain in my foot when walking/running and even though I know I should not be running let alone walking too much a little voice inside my head is trying to tell me that it’s not that bad and that I can push through the pain and I need to get out and run.
Don’t listen to these evil voices in your head! They only mean to do your more harm then good. If you are injured don’t run until you feel no more pain or a doctor says it is ok. Listening and giving into the little voices in your head can cause you more and a longer delay before you are able to run again.
Instead if you need to workout, cross-train. Go to the gym and lift weights, use the stationary bikes or elliptical machines, or if you have access to a pool go swimming or do some underwater jogging. Basically reduce the amount of stress that you place on your feet until you are 100%. Doing cross training will ultimately benefit you in other ways as well. It may not be as fun as running, but it beats sitting on a couch doing nothing.
When to change your running shoes.
This seems like an easy quandary with an with an easy answer. When they are worn out! Unfortunately it can bee a bot more complicated with than that when it comes to running shoes.
It is recommended to change your running shoes every 300 to 500 miles. That when you get a new pari of running shoes to mark it in you running log or tag the shoes with a purchase date and estimate from there.
For the runner, its normally not exactly that simple. As any runner knows things can happen out there on your run and that your body can tell you a lot more as to how you are doing physically and mental much better than any running log can hope to do. A runner should base the timing of a mew pair of running shoes on how their body is over nearing or hitting a mile point. If they are experiencing any foot, ankle, lower leg, or knee pain and your shoes have quite a few miles on them then it may be time to grab another pair sooner rather than later.
This is not to say that if your not feeling any pain then go ahead and keep running on those same shoes until they disintegrate on you. Putting off a purchase of new shoes because you are not feeling any pain can also invite problems in the long run.
In the end use you best judgement, if you are feeling pain with a pair of shoes that may have 150 miles on them then may be you should replace the shoes with a different model don’t wait until you get to a point that you cannot run or even walk without pain.
How Many Miles
I have been running on and off as an adult for years. I never really gave much serious thought to tracking my mileage until recent years as I was getting back into running in local races. Being a big technophile I wanted a way to electronically track my runs so I can look back at them latter and be proud of my accomplishments. I took a few different tries at this with different apps with varying degrees of success.
After purchasing my first iPhone a 3g1. I started to look on the app store for apps that could help to track my runs and tell me how far I have run. The first app that I found was Runkeeper. This is a neat little app that used the GPS module of the phone to track the distance, speed, and elevation changes on you runs.
I started using this app in its first release onto the app store. It was really great little app, until about midway through a run it would lose the GPS signal and then just stop. You would get no warning this would happen so many times I lost quite a few miles on my run. I dealt with this problem for a few months before finally starting to look for an alternative.
My next app was the nike+iPod built into the phone. This application was a fairly reliable app if you could get the sensor calibrated correctly. There were some times that a one mile run the next day on the same course all of a sudden became a 3/4 mile run. It was enough to drive me batty at times.
I learned to deal with and adjust with this issue, as the app was doing a well enough job. The downside to the app was that it was created by Apple for Nike. Which you would think would be great, but to Apple this was like just a side feature and not much innovation or updating went into the application.
Nike then published its own iPhone app, Nike+GPS. I saw it an immediately downloaded it from the app store. This app was great! There was no need to worry about the foot sensor and you could actually see your run route. The Nike+GPS app did lack the elevation feature, but that was nothing major to me. I loved being able to see my run routes again and being able to share my runs and get cheers from friends while on the road. I used this app for a couple of years until the heart rate monitor was released.
Having a history of heart problems (a heart attack and then having to have 2 more stents inserted 10 years later) I thought that using the heart rate monitor would be a great addition to my Nike running arsenal. Unfortunately the heart rate monitor is only compatible with the Apple iPod nano. So I ended up getting a nano at the same time as the heart rate monitor. This also meant that I would have to either run with a iPhone as well to track the run by GPS or drop that feature. I decided to drop it. I do miss being able to track the run, but feel that making sure that I don’t run my hear into an explosion is a better option.
Well Nike has now introduced a new watch that will track the run by GPS and can use the hear rate monitor. The only thing that it does not do is play music. So if I do decide to get this watch then I will still be using the nano for music, which is no really problem as the non is not much weight.
Overall I have been happy with the results of all the apps that I have tried out and am looking forward to see what will be released in the future. If anyone happens to know of an app that will track the run by GPS, play music, record and announce your heart rate please let me know! That is my dream app.
It may have been the 3gs, not really too sure which iPhone at had back then. ↩