Eilish McColgan Injury Saga Getting Hard to Watch

Sometimes taking time off completely also doesn't help it at all because the actual problem doesn't just fix itself with time off. Continuing to do a little bit of work makes it adapt to the new normal

She should get some hokas

More hamburgers.

Too late...nothing less than ribeyes, brisket and lots of f raw eggs will work.

Early in her career she was training once a day and about 40-45 miles per week because she was very injury prone.This stuck in my memory because it was about a third of what her mum was doing at times during her best years and getting comparable results. I recently read that she worked up at first to 65 and then to as much as 85, now doubling most days. Maybe she just cannot hold up under a load of that size for very long. I hope she can sort it out.

Let’s not forget how injury prone Ritz was his entire career. This sounds about the same situation: Massive engine but the body isn’t on the same page with all the pounding it takes to be consistently world class.

Return to the mean.

yep, time off always led to more issues for me or the reoccurrence of an older injury as I built back up. Back of mileage or run every other day or so but long lay offs did nothing but mess me up more.

It isn't normal to be injured all the time. She is either overated, under nourished, or both.

In 30 years of running I never missed more than a week. Only here is it considered normal to have repeated injuries.

I'm sure she's consulted a team of healthcare professionals, and is working to their advice.

As others have mentioned; depending on the injury, simply taking time off won't necessarily solve the problem.

Tendon issues in particular require load to heal. However, if you exceed the amount of load the tendon can handle, it will flare up, and this is likely the case with Eilish. There tends to be some teething issues when trying to find the sweet spot, and anyone whose had these types of injuries will tell you how frustrating they can be.

And what level of performance did you reach?

It's easy to stay uninjured if you never push your limits.

Injuries may not heal with time off, but the solution isn't to keep training but to find an injury prevention/healing treatment that works. I let myself get out of shape last fall hoping my knee injury would heal from rest. It didn't and I missed my marathon. Later I found exercises I could do, alongside easy training, that would make it better and I've been able to run continuously since then while also healing the injury when I do the exercises regularly.

I think that one of the key elements to good training (and of reaching some success in attaining YOUR potential) is find a level of volume, intensity and structure of training that works for you - and not trying to follow, model or copy what is used by others. This is very hard for many/most people to do....

It's almost like an athlete needs to consume food in order to remain healthy.

I've said this many times, but here goes again. She is not built for the marathon. Her stride is too labored and her form is going to lead to more injuries. EM should stick to the track, where she is a star in both the 5000m and 10000m.

She needs a proper plan. I think she pushed herself through marathon training without her heart really being in it. She ran A+, all out efforts in the 10k and HM in her London build, all while (presumably) trying to train through and maintain marathon mileage. That would increase anyone's injury risk - how many people set 10k and HM PBs on the way to a marathon goal race? Hopefully her team can put in place a proper plan to get her fit for the remainder of the year

She NEEDS TO EAT

I think her and her team were looking to cash in big on the marathon ~ appearance fee and fitness.

It's pretty undeniable that going for all-out, PR-chasing efforts in 10K/HM (mind you with injuries cropping up around them) indicated that they really wanted to get something out of the fitness.

If you were really convinced that you'd have the same success in the marathon besides the appearance fee, the need to run a HM would've been smaller as the injury concerns mounted. Ultimately it backfired because if Kara got paid $175K to run the NYC Marathon, what did Eilish forfeit in not running London? $250K?

Also, I understand the counterpoint to my original take that doing nothing isn't always the answer. Clearly the current approach has been ineffective in resolving the issues, so whether it's time off or just more effective rehab, PT etc. she shouldn't be having the same issues crop up after 2 days of training for the 4th or 5th time since coming back.

P.S. apologies for not putting the tweet in the first post here