the High Mileage Story's Injury wrote:
I ran for a high mileage team for 4 years.
We did 90 - 100 mpw during cross country season, and 120+ for sections of summer training.
I'm on the backend of my 30s:
- I can't walk without both achillis making loud popping sounds
- My knees are shot
- My foot gets injured within a few weeks anytime I try to take up running 3-4 miles a day
I'm hoping things don't keep getting worse.
I'm wondering if this is normal? I guess it beats getting CTE from the college football.
My information comes from a few sports-medicine Orthopedists I know. Their opinion is that it does not matter how you trained when you were younger, it’s all about how you were injured. Certain injuries come back to haunt you years later. They do a lot of knee replacements and the vast majority of them are for people who had knee injuries in high school and college. If you had severe injuries requiring surgery those come back to haunt you too. They state that basically, if you had to get cut on, in any way, that area remains a weakness for life.
I was on the Lydiard plan in the 70’s and although I did not average high miles, I had periods with over 100 a week with at least one 130 mile week. I was easily injured, but the difference with me is rather than train through or have surgery, I just quit running. I’d just wait for it to heal up, sometimes taking almost a year off, then then start back.
In my early 50’s I could put in 50 a week with hard workouts, but again, I got injured often. Since this is consistent for 45 years now my conclusion is it has nothing to do with my training, it’s pure and simple genetics and dumb luck. I’m 61 now and have zero injuries, but I only run 16 miles a week and supplement with the elliptical.
There are some people out there that are what Jack Daniels calls “surviving eggs”. A coach creates an impossibly hard training program and only a few “surviving eggs” are left. The rest of the runners drop out or get injured. These people are just lucky or have good genetics. They don’t seem to understand why other people can’t run high mileage like them, not realizing, of course, it has nothing to do with their training program and everything to do with who their parents were.