Everyone knows who Paula Radcliffe is. If not for the fact that she is the current world record holder for the women’s marathon, then at least for the fact that she had to stop during the 2005 London Marathon to answer a call of nature. Not long after winning the world championships in 2005, she sat down and wrote her autobiography (affiliate links: UK
A great read and a great British athlete
***
Why read Paula’s autobiography?
Well, I was in much the same place until recently when I began looking into running in more detail. As a personal trainer, I find that the majority of women in the UK who are interested in fitness or weight loss have had some experience of running. Usually, it’s one of the first things they turn to as tool to help them with their goals.
And yet, there is a staggeringly high injury rate amongst runners. Barefoot running expert, Lee Saxby noted in an interview I did a couple of weeks ago, that up to 80% of runners get injured every year.
Many people assume that this high injury rate is because amateur runners go out too fast, too soon. After all, the internet, books and running magazines are all rife with advice on building up running programmes slowly to allow the body to acclimatise to the increase in training volume.
But, as we will see in Paula’s autobiography, injury is something that absolutely plagues the elite runner as well. Some of the injuries that Paula sustained are instructive, so I’ll be dwelling on them in detail…
***
But first, a little background
Paula Radcliffe was born on 17 December 1973 is the current women’s world record holder in the marathon with a time of 2:15:25. She is famous mainly for her marathon performances.
As Wikipedia will attest, she is a three-time winner of the London Marathon (2002, 2003 and 2005), a three-time winner of the New York Marathon (2004, 2007 and 2008), and a one time winner of the Chicago Marathon (2002). She also won the world championship marathon in Finland in 2005.
However, she did not run a road race competitively until 2001, when she ran the Bristol half marathon and, unbelievably, her first marathon was the 2002 London marathon that she won. In her autobiography, she describes how the commentator was telling the crowd how she had gone out too fast and would burn out.
Before running marathons, she ran mainly 3,000m, 5,000m track and cross-country races, with the occasional 10,000m track race thrown into the mix. I find it fascinating that she was able to switch to marathons and produce such amazing performances so easily. I guess it shows that it is really easy to run very long distances slowly but it’s a lot harder to run medium-to-long distances quickly.
***
The injury catalogue
I took notes as I went through Paula’s autobiography, as I just couldn’t keep a mental tally of all the injuries as I went along. Here’s what I jotted down:
- 1992 – anaemia
- 1993 – amenorrhoea
- 1994 – stress fracture and fallen arch
- 1996 – cycling accident – cut to head
- 1996 – twisted back during cross-country race – moved back out of alignment, leading to hamstring pulling away from the bone
- 2000 – twisted knee standing up from kneeling on the floor, caused blister in joint
- 2002 – ran in poor running shoes and aggravated soft tissue in knee
- 2002 – bent little toe back banging it against a door, causing tenosynovitis
- 2003 – small child rides bike into the side of her during a training run and she falls badly, causing dislocated jaw, whiplash and severe bruising
- 2003 – crepitus in right shin, aggravated by poor blood supply via right hip that had become immobile in the socket
- 2003 – two partially punctured lungs (bilateral pneumothorax, for those of you with medical dictionaries), caused by coughing
- 2004 – femoral and inguinal hernias
- 2004 – trod on a pine cone during cross-country training and aggravated big toe muscle (flexor hallucis longus, for you anatomy geeks)
- 2004 – crepitus again but this time in left vastus medialis, caused by large haematoma near the femur
- 2005 – parasitic infection, which caused the runner’s diarrhea at the 2005 London Marathon
- 2005 – diagnosed with gluten and diary intolerances
- 2005 – a pile up in the 2005 world championships 1,500m caused her to fall and twist her back again, moving her sacrum and pelvis out of line
***
What do I take away from this collection of data?
Mental strength
Paula Radcliffe is clearly an amazingly strong athlete with an incredible will to win. To have come back from every single one of those injuries and to still perform better than everybody else in the world is remarkable.
***
The importance of strength training
While Paula does not go into detail about her rehabilitation programme for each injury (although she does describe her physio treatments), the careful reader can pick up some important tips. She notes that her physiotherapists had her doing significant amounts of strength training and special exercises.
And, if you look at pictures of her in later races, post-injury, you will see that her individual leg muscles are easily visible with clear separation between the quadriceps. Her posture is also a great deal better and she looks so much more stable. She clearly did a lot of very hard resistance training and postural work to improve her injury resistance.
I wonder what would have happened if she had been doing strength training and prehabilitation work of this kind all along? If only running clubs focused on these details instead of just having their athletes run all the time, it is possible that injury incidence would be a lot lower.
***
The importance of arch strength
I was most fascinated by the fallen arch, which caused the stress fracture. Regular readers will know that I really believe in the idea that arch support is the key behind the ability of the foot to cushion the hard landings in running.
I reviewed a research article a while back that explained how the foot arch works as a shock absorber. This is actually the fascinating thing about barefoot running. Barefoot running helps the body to begin to use the arch as it is supposed to work. Using a cushioning surface like a shoe stops the body from working properly and could be the reason why runners get so many injuries.
***
The power of the Paleo Diet
Finally, I was intrigued to see that after her difficulties with runner’s diarrhea, she turned to a nutritionist, who advised her to remove both gluten and wheat from her diet. I was not surprised by this, as I read her idea of a breakfast early on in her career with abject horror. I did not think it possible for an athlete to eat such nutritionally bankrupt foods in such quantity. I was delighted, however, by the clear implication that a diet more like the Paleo Diet proved helpful for her.
***
Wrapping up
If you have a recreational runner in your life, make sure they own this book. It’s a fun read and well written but more importantly, it will bring home three vital messages.
Running injuries - runners are very, very injury prone and need to be very careful about their training and recovery techniques. Strength training is not attractive to recreational runners but it could be just the thing to help them rehabilitate and prevent future injuries.
Running speed - if you want to get faster at running long distances, you have to get faster at short distances. Running long distances slowly won’t get you anywhere.
Food quality – being a runner doesn’t give you licence to eat food with no nutrients in it. You can do it for a while but sooner or later it will catch up with you and your performance will suffer.
You can get hold of the book at Amazon here (affiliate links: UK
Pingback: Books I read in 2011 | Chris Beardsley's Garage Gym