A camber is ‘a convexity in a road surface’, i.e. the centre of the road is higher than the sides. Lots of runners always run on one particular side of the road. This means that one leg will be hitting the road higher than the other. Over time this could lead to imbalances in the muscles of the foot, leg and pelvis, even leading to one leg being functionally shorter than the other. This can be the source of a whole host of running injuries, including ITB syndrome, plantar fasciitis, runners knee, hip and back pain.

So, as a rule of thumb it is best to vary the camber you are running on. This also relates to running on pavements (sidewalks), as they often slope (in the opposite direction to the road camber in many cases, so that water flows into the gutter).

sweet running!

Normally, in clinic, when examining a patient, I use the base of a tuning fork on the bone I suspect is fractured (it will be painful if  a fracture is present!), but you can also set your mobile phone to vibrate and rest it on the suspected bone to check yourself. If the vibration is painful to you, then you may have a stress fracture and should stop running, and seek advice!

Your long runs will be becoming more substantial, perhaps up to 16-18 miles, and your speed work, interval and threshold runs will be becoming a little longer and a little faster. Consequently, your muscles will most likely be aching a bit after each long run, and perhaps even between the shorter runs. This is ok! In general it is only your body adapting to the new status quo that is endurance mastery. If it is your joints that are aching, and it is always the same joints at the same intensity (or getting worse), or if the ache is preventing you from finishing your run then it is time to get yourself checked out by a running injury specialist (such as ourselves, needless to say!).

This is a crucial stage in your training with regard to picking up injuries, especially those long lasting injuries that can stay with us until the big day. So you will need to take certain precautions to keep yourself injury free.

Here are the things that you need to do and watch out for over the next month or so:

- Make sure you are well rested at all times. Sleep at least 8 hours per night for most of the week. Your body needs this rest to heal your muscles and tendons and ligaments that are all struggling to adapt to longer runs.

- Concentrate on maintaining your good running form throughout your long run. As you get tired during runs your body thinks it is doing you a service by changing the way you run. But dont be fooled. Shuffling legs, flapping arms, flicking feet and lurching gait may make you feel like you are conserving energy as you tire, but you are really just leaking energy, which ultimately makes you much more tired. If you want some advice on good running form, then email our running team at info@backsandbeyond.co.uk and they will send you some golden nuggets of information.

- Adapt your running posture to iron out tight muscles. If your calves feel tight or achey during a run, relax your feet (run with puppy feet). If your hamstrings feel tight or achey focus more on using your glutes (bum muscles) to power you. If your quadriceps (front of thigh) feel tight or achey focus on running tall and leaning a little more forward from the feet (not the waist). If your groin feels tight or achey focus on lifting your knees and feet a little. If your glutes feel tight or achey focus on tightening your core (you may need to do some pilates based exercises to help you get the idea).

The obvious answer to the question would be that stretching is not the answer to your recovery! Of course you need to understand what your injury is before choosing the right tools for rehabilitation (essentially what this website is designed for!).

If stretching IS what you need, there is also a less obvious answer which is predominantly overlooked by most runners, coaches and therapists. If i ask you how you stretch you may well say that you stretch each muscle for about 20-30 seconds, gently, allowing your body to accomodate to the stretch. That sounds great! But you know what? It’s not the best way to stretch.

No-one is completely symmetrical (at least in my 12 years of practice i’ve never seen someone completely symmetrical) so, for example, we find that we can stretch one hamstring more easily than the other.

The thing is that by stretching both sides for the same amount of time and intensity we are actually PERPETUATING THE IMBALANCE, since the tight side gets a little looser, and the loose side gets even looser!

As a rule of thumb i recommend that with every muscle group that we stretch, we stretch the tighter side 3 times more than the looser side. That could be that we stretch the tight side 3×30 seconds versus 1×30 seconds on the loose side. Or it could be that we stretch the tight side for 90 seconds versus 30 seconds on the other side. Both methods work well.

Do this ratio of stretching on each muscle group until the imbalances have ironed out (may take weeks – be patient!) and you can then stretch equally both sides.

Happy stretching!

Gavin

It was a really tough marathon, and i missed my target time by 11 minutes. There were many reasons for this, some of which were out of my control like the hills (!!) and the wind, which always seemed to be blowing into my face no matter in which direction i was running, and the fact that i was still recovering from a hamstring injury.

The thing that was definitely controllable was the pace at which i was running. It’s a well known fact that starting off too quickly in a long race like a marathon means that you will inevitably burn out in the last few miles.

I knew all this, and yet i still started out too quickly (by about 30 seconds per mile). I remember thinking to myself that i should not be doing this, but that ‘hey’ i was feeling so good i was sure i could keep up the pace, and even if i couldn’t keep up the pace i’d be so far ahead of my target time it wouldn’t really matter.

How wrong i was! At about 18 miles my pace suddenly dropped to way below my target. I was fairly ok at this point, as i thought that i had enough minutes under my belt to finish in time even if i slowed down a lot. At about 22 miles a sudden tsunami of people passed me, including a little helium balloon with 3:45 scribbled on it! I remember crying out ‘Noooooooooooooooooooooooo!’ and a norwegian bloke looking at me wwith a quizzical look as he passed me – no doubt wondering what i was complaining about.

I did think about stopping at this point, but the feeling was fleeting as i resigned myself to missing my target this time.

Moral of the story is: No matter how fantastic you are feeling, reign back the pace, otherwise you will definitely lose out later on. I have promised myself never ever to speed off again!

We’ll see!

best wishes

Gavin

What i’m talking about is that the knee is often a victim of problems with the hips, or the feet, or both. In this case one could say (and many have!) that the knee is the ‘middle child’, it suffers from the annoying brother and sister joints above and below it!

For example, if you pronate (your foot rolls in) too much when you run then your leg below the knee will rotate excessively, irritating the tissues of the knee. Another example is if your buttock muscles are too tight. The buttock muscles, and in particular the piriformis muscle (the ‘athletes’ muscle) control the movement of your hip when you walk or run. If they are tight, then this will cause your hip to ’stop’ rotating when you take a step, again resulting in a painful knee. If you have both of these scenarios happening at the same time (which is not uncommon, let me tell you), then your poor old knee will suffer the equivalent of a chinese burn with every step you take!! Not very nice.

In the Running Injury Oracle there are a set of videos called ‘Essential Tests’ which help you to self assess elements that may create the ‘chinese burn’ effect. These include, assessing hip stability, core stomach stability, leg length differences, whether you pronate or not, and whether your shoes are worn out yet. Other running injuries may sometimes be caused by these elements being out of balance,  but none more than the knee – what a victim!

The purpose of this blog will be twofold.

Firstly, I will be writing about any interesting points to do with running injuries, for example, prevention, training, nutrition, new developments in treatment and more, and some of these blogs will make their way to the main part of this site.

Secondly, i will post any information about the site regarding updates in information and services.

Also, at some point, hopefully quite soon we will start a forum situation so that users can swap ideas, and we can step in with advice and information. In the meantime you can always email me with questions and i will answer as soon as possible.

Thank you for using the site. Please tell all your running buddies!

I decided to change the subscription time to 4 months rather than 3 months, for the same price.

I also wanted to make sure that all the videos were working and to do a last sweep for accuracy of content and the presence of any bugs!

Hopefully i will be able to press the button in less than a week! Yay!

Meanwhile i have been training for the Oslo marathon which will take place on the 27th September 2009. My wife will be running the 10k there, and it should make for a really fun weekend!

Can’t wait for the site to open for memberships!

I thought i would just give a little bit of background to how the site was conceived, for anyone that might be interested.

Three years ago, i was travelling to Denmark to run the Copenhagen Marathon. On the flight I sat next to a man who happened to be running too. We chatted about many things, not just about running, but one thing he said to me stuck in my mind that day.

He had been plagued with an achilles problem for the last two months of his training. The first thing he did was to search for a solution on the internet. He told me that there was lots of advice given on various websites, but three things troubled him: One, he didn’t know whether he could trust the advice he was being given: Two, most of the sites said the same two things – ice, and stretch – things that he was already doing: Three, the drawings that showed the stretches were often confusing, and so how did he know that he was doing them right and not doing himself damage?

So I got thinking and thought, why not design a website that gave you a better idea of what you were suffering from, then took you through how to rehabilitate from that condition with lots of useful information, and most importantly showed you how to perform the relevant exercises using the most useful modern resource we have – video clips!

So the site was born, and it has taken 3 years to get to a point where i think we have a site that gives clear information. Once it’s up and running, and people are using it, i hope that runners will comment on how i can improve the site, to make it as user friendly and useful as possible.

There are over 70 running injuries covered, and over 160 videos showing everything from stretches, strengthening exercises, cold and hot therapy, sports taping and strapping techniques, self massage techniques, to mobilisation techniques. Some of the advice I have developed over my few years of treating runners, so it is not available anywhere else.

I have kept the price as low as i can. For 3 months access to the advice part of the site it is £19.95 (UK pounds), and for a year it is only £29.95. This is less than half the price of one treatment with an osteopath or sports therapist.

Anyway, please do have a look at the site, and let me know what you think.

Thanks!