Fiona McMahon, DPT
Marathon training season is just around the corner! If you are competing in the New York Marathon, it’s about time to lace up those sneakers and set off on your 18 or 20-week training plan. As an experienced marathon runner, I know personally the frustration and anxiety that can accompany being sidelined from the action. Prior to my days as a PT, I accumulated ankle injuries, knee injuries (both of my knees), and hip injuries while training for various races. These injuries were so upsetting, I had given up my weekends with my friends to wake up for 20 mile long runs on Sunday, I had gone through more sneakers than I care to think about, and coughed up $300 a race in entry fees. Total bummer.
At the time of my first marathon, I was not a physical therapist; rather I was working in a genetics lab in Maine. I was fortunate to have two physical therapists that worked for my company help me when my knee became so painful I could not stand to work at my lab bench, let alone run 26.2 miles. Through weeks of work, they returned me to my old self and I successfully completed my first marathon in Mount Desert Island, Maine. Since that time, I have run 4 marathons and sought the help of physical therapists to help stave off injuries and allow me to train at my top capacity as I push closer towards a Boston Marathon qualification time.
Physical therapy helped me gain a critical awareness of my deficits as a runner. I found out I had a weak butt, tight iliotibial bands, and hamstrings. Who knew?! There is a lot as runners that we tend to overlook in terms of physical fitness. Many of us believe that putting in the mileage alone will prepare our bodies to endure the stress of months of training on hard pavement. It won’t. We need a strong core and hip stabilizers to reduce the impact on our joints. We need long and strong muscles to help generate enough force to efficiently move your body the length of the race. If you are only thinking cardio with marathon training, chances are good you are missing something that could help your overall time and health.
If you are starting out on your first 26.2 mile journey (or any athletic journey), or completing your 30th, don’t ignore your body’s signals that there might be an injury that needs attention. Treating an injury early with good physical therapy treatment is often much easier than treating one later on. Early treatment also minimizes disruption to your original training plan.
At Beyond Basics Physical Therapy, we go beyond what is offered in many physical therapy clinics. Our clinicians are orthopedic experts and spend an hour with their patients in one-on-one treatments, creating specialized plans to keep you in tip-top shape and return you to training faster. We are trained to look at the athlete holistically to determine the specific cause of a patient’s injury/deficit rather than a cookbook “one size fits all approach).
As clinicians, our goal is not only to heal our patients but to empower them to know more about their own bodies and to be able to take control of preventing future injuries. We take pride in our specialized home exercise plans, which a runner or any athlete for that matter, can take with them for the rest of his or her athletic career. I encourage you as a runner, to check us out and learn more about your running needs.
