The top emailed story on the New York Times this morning: According to some sports doctors, its OK to run as normal, even with an injury.
Maybe the reason the story (check it out here) is so popular is that it confirms what many of us have suspected for a long time. Continuing an activity after an injury doesn't seem to do any damage.
As new to athletics as I am, I've already started ignoring online medical advice. I've been running with a shin splint and a strained calf for weeks now and have steadily gotten better rather than worse.
The trick is to decrease distance and speed, these doctors say, and to ice for 20 minutes before and after exercise. Some recommend an anti-inflammatory like aspirin as well. And of course, don't run if doing so causes extreme pain. But if the pain after exercise is no greater than it would be otherwise, go ahead and run.
Again, this is what I've been doing for three weeks, with good results. The article, however, doesn't address the problem of shin splints, and I'm still not confident about running on them, so I wrote to Gina Kolata of the New York Times to find out. I'll post her reply if I get one.
In the mean time, I'll be buying a few more bags of frozen peas (yes, they're the best as ice packs!) and an extra bottle of aspirin and hitting the streets.
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Hi Rose. This is Jeff from MapMyRun. Thanks for using our site and linking to us from your blog. I thought you might be interested in knowing that you can now embed your MapMyRun routes directly into your blog. If you're interested, you can check it out here.
Happy Running!
Hey Rose, Melissa here. Interesting article, thanks for posting it. When I strained my left soleus(sp?) muscle 2&1/2 years ago training for the Portland Marathon, I went to a physical therapist who told me to keep training on it. I thought he was crazy. Now I wonder if I would've healed faster if I'd have kept going...
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