It's all relative (2)

The soothing warm water from the shower felt good. As the water flowed down the rear right ankle, I felt a tingling sensation. I was still recovering from the morning run, so it took a few seconds before I realized that what I'd felt towards the end of the run was not--as I'd feared--some possible injury to the Achilles tendon, but rather just a blister. I smiled. I've been pretty fortunate, over all these years of running, that I've rarely gotten injured. Perhaps it's the natural way I run; perhaps I'm just lucky. Even over the last several years, as I trained for the Marine Corps Marathon, the Baltimore Marathon, and, currently, the Rock ‘n’ Roll USA Marathon, with the weekly mileage significantly higher than my typical just-stay-in-shape average mileage, I've remained fairly injury free. I did, however, experience two relatively minor injuries. The first one was because of a too-fast transition from a pair of traditional running shoes to Nike Free. (That was the first step in my transition to minimalist shoes, currently at Vibram Fivefinger, with a pair of huaraches, the Tarahumara running sandals, waiting for warmer weather.) The second one was that from one of my morning runs in Paris last August. It was the latter injury that was on my mind, when I'd felt something in my right rear ankle during that recent morning run. So, I was so relieved when it turned out to be just a blister. It's all relative.

This incident got me thinking and reading about the high percentage of runners who get injured. So far, I've just dipped a little into the literature on this topic. Here's one quote (that, unfortunately, I forgot to note the reference at the time, sorry): "average of 4 injuries per 1,000 hours of running. This means that if you are running 5-10 hours per week, you could potentially get 2 injuries per year. Further, epidemiological studies estimate that between 19% and 79% of runners sustain an overuse injury in a 1 year period." And, here's another one, with the reference link ("The Analysis of Injury Rates in Running"): "... half of the running population gets injured in some way every year." So, the big question is why the injury rate of runners is so high. As the author of this reference stated, "If we hold the running man theory to be correct, then the only conclusion to be made is that a 50% injury rate is not inherent to our species. If it was in fact inherent to humans we would simply not [have] been a viable species." The author's hypothesis is that "habitually barefoot people who have a life long history of running are at the least risk of running injury, but as yet no conclusive research exists to support this idea." This hypothesis is consistent with another study on the Biomechanical Analysis of Injured Minimalist Runners, which suggests that "running in minimalist footwear without proper minimalist running form predisposes a runner to injury." I'll come back to this, as I read more into this intriguing topic. Here are couple more pages from Daniel Lieberman's Web site at Harvard University (Running Before the Modern Running Shoe and Why Consider Foot Strike?). Related paper is in Nature (Foot strike patterns and collision forces in habitually barefoot versus shod runners; Lieberman et al., 2010; abstract only; payment required for full paper).

I'd love to hear about your experience with running injuries (or no injuries!).