RUNSAFE: "Too Much, Too Soon"

In the British Journal of Sports Medicine March 2020, we discuss the “too much, too soon” theory. 

In running, it is widely accepted that athletes sustain sports injury if they train ‘too much, too soon’. However, not all runners are built the same; some can tolerate more running than others. It is for this reason that prescribing the same training program to all runners to reduce injury risk is not optimal from a coaching perspective. Rather, runners require individualized training plans. 

In acknowledgement of athlete diversity, it is therefore essential that researchers, assisted by runners, coaches and others, ask the right causal research question in studies examining sports injury etiology. In the article, we conclude “In the light of the limitations of population-based prevention that intends to provide all athletes with the same advice, we argue that a stronger emphasis on research questions targeting subgroups of athletes is needed. In doing so, researchers may assist athletes, clinicians and coaches to understand what training advice/program works best, for whom and under what circumstances”. 

In this light, participants in the Garmin-RUNSAFE Running Health Study, are a part of one of the first research studies that, based on a priori defined criteria, seeks to understand what running advice works for certain runners.

Read more about causal questions and the “too much, too soon” theory here:
https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/early/2020/03/05/bjsports-2018-100245 
Note that the publisher owns the copyright for these publications so only the abstracts are available for free.

Outside: Naming, Shaming and Blaming

Frank Meza’s Death and the Running Internet Mob 
Martin Fritz Huber/Outside Online, Jul 9, 2019

Anyone seeking guidance on how to be a decent person in our chaotic and violent world could do worse than consult John Stuart Mill’s famous essay, On Liberty, from 1859. One of the most influential ideas that Mill unpacks is the notion that—to generalize horribly—an individual’s freedom should only be curtailed when it begins to impinge on the freedom of another. It’s a concept that sounds great in theory but, of course, things get a little murky when we have to figure out where that nebulous boundary lies.

Take, for example, the seemingly benign case of the course-cutting amateur runner. On the one hand, if I’m participating in a race and someone else cheats, it’s really not my problem—unless the cheater somehow directly interferes with my progress. On the other hand, as I’m sure many will be quick to point out, if someone cuts the course and finishes ahead of me, it does impact me in the sense that I will be one spot further down in the results. If the cheating runner deprives me of a podium finish, or even prize money, the offense becomes more acute...

(link to article)

CTS: Cramp Causes and Fixes

Causes, Prevention and Treatment of Cramping
Chris Carmichael, CTS/July 20, 2017


Endurance sports are all about pushing yourself and testing your limits. Sometimes your brain has to step in and protect you from yourself, like when you bonk and your brain conjures up nausea in an effort to get you to slow down and address the problem. Other times your body skips protection and moves straight to kicking the crap out of you in a creative and painful way, otherwise known as cramping.


Muscle cramping is something athletes deal with at all levels of the sport, yet they’re often talked about with a sense of mysticism, like there’s a cramp fairy who magically appears and zaps your hamstring just as you get up to sprint. Science offers a number of theories for the cause of cramps, two of which are particularly interesting...


(Link to Article)