Are Running Injuries Inevitable?

One runner I know suffered a broken rib when he tripped during a run. Another I know broke his arm when he didn’t see a low chain-link fence during a dark morning run. These are freak occurrences. They sound like the kinds of injuries that skiers and football players get—random, acute events. Most running injuries, in contrast, are overuse injuries—they stem from repeatedly stressing an overworked body part and ignoring the early warning signs that something is wrong.
Why do runners get injured? Remember, when you run, your bones, muscles, tendons, and ligaments deal with forces of at least three times your body weight with each step. In order to continue running, your tissues must be able to withstand these loads, even when they’re repeated thousands of times per day. An injury is a failure in your body to handle these repetitive forces.
What causes muscle strains, tendinitis, ligament damage, and stress fractures? Either the forces to which body parts are subjected are too high, or they’re repeated too many times. In other words, injuries occur because of too much impact shock with each step, the cumulative effect of too many steps, or a combination of the two. Most running injuries occur because of the repetitive nature of the running stride. When repeated thousands of time per run, even a slight imperfection in how your feet roll through the gait cycle, for example, can lead to problems nearly anywhere in your legs. That’s why you need to take a global view of a running injury—you want to look at not only the area that’s bothering you, but what about your running is causing that area to hurt.
Conquering your injury, then, means two things: treating the immediate symptoms, and figuring out what went wrong to cause them. Take care of the symptoms, and you get to start running normally again. Figure out and eliminate the root causes, and you’re more likely not to be sidelined by that injury again.