Injury. It's the bane of every runner's life: that niggle of anxiety that's always there in the back of a runner's head. What if the body lets us down? If you run, you will have encountered injury along the way. How we cope with and recover from injury is often as important as what we do when we run.
Injury frustration only gets worse the better we become at running. When you're used to a certain standard, and you're unexpectedly sidelined by an injury, it's possibly to develop a disconnect between the body and the mind. The mind thinks it's still at elite level. The body will have different ideas.
Tom Fairbrother, an English runner who's run sub 2.40 shared his own experiences of overcoming serious injury on Twitter this week. Fairbrother required ankle surgery for a number of months, and in the tweets below, he describes how he reprogrammed his running mind after his injury, and specifically how he learned to embrace 'easy running'. Fairbrother broke his personal best of 2.36 last weekend in Edinburgh, so the proof is in the pudding.
If you're trying to cope with any kind of running injury, you'll find something in this Twitter thread.
The hardest thing was changing. mindset.
My brain was still a 2:34 marathoner and I was desperate to prove that to everyone, as quickly as possible!
But my body was not ready, and after breaking repeatedly, I learnt you have to stop comparing yourself to a previous version.— Tom Fairbrother 🏃🏼 (@fairboyruns) May 28, 2019
You also have to manage your expectations. Your speed is not coming back overnight.
You also need to ignore what other people are doing.
If you are as competitive as me and find that hard, remove the temptations.
By that I mean get off Strava and Power of 10!— Tom Fairbrother 🏃🏼 (@fairboyruns) May 28, 2019
I have very very gradually added intensity, and even now sticking to two sessions per week.
I avoid hills, short intervals, sprints and strides because I know those are high risk for me.
Please don't go smashing thresholds and the track wearing spikes a week into your comeback— Tom Fairbrother 🏃🏼 (@fairboyruns) May 28, 2019
I accepted I'm way too impulsive, and cannot be trusted to make calm, rationale decisions.
Therefore I handed over control and decision-making to my coach @thomascraggs.
Being accountable to someone else is so important, not to mention having a mentor to talk to & learn from.— Tom Fairbrother 🏃🏼 (@fairboyruns) May 28, 2019
And despite all that, even now, I'm still not back to my best 😩
Like I said, my last PB was in September 2015. Will I ever get back there? Who knows.
What I do know is I'm closer to it than I was last week, and the week before that, and so on.
You have to think big picture!— Tom Fairbrother 🏃🏼 (@fairboyruns) May 28, 2019
My next attempt at achieving eternal greatness, also known as 2:34:10, will be in Frankfurt in October.
Me on the start line: pic.twitter.com/BYgaPNj7VE— Tom Fairbrother 🏃🏼 (@fairboyruns) May 28, 2019
