A new study from Aarhus University has thrown into doubt everything we know about running injuries, suggesting that the most common cause of them is going too far on a single run.
Most injuries are caused suddenly by a single workout where you run too far compared to your normal distance.
Until now the most common advice for runners looking to avoid injuries was to gradually increase your overall training load each week.
This advice is built into the best running watches, which monitor your acute (short-term) and chronic (long-term) training load to ensure they are balanced and you’re not pushing too hard compared to what your body is able to handle.
However, research done on 5,200 runners found that most injuries don’t develop over time because you’re exceeding a suggested weekly training load, but are caused suddenly by a single workout where you run too far compared to your normal distance.
The longer the run, the bigger the injury risk
The study found that the risk of injury grew when you ran more than 10% further than your longest run from the past 30 days.
If you ran 10-30% further than your longest run in the last 30 days, the injury risk increased by 64%.
If you ran 10-30% further than your longest run in the last 30 days, the injury risk increased by 64%.
The risk of injury increases by 52% if you run 30-100% further than your longest run from the past 30 days, which is interestingly smaller compared to the risk from a 10-30% increase in distance.
Unsurprisingly, if you increase the distance of your run by over 100% compared with your longest run from the last 30 days, it poses the biggest risk of injury, with a 128% increase.
How to use this advice to avoid injury
The takeaways from this study are refreshingly simple — don’t go too far on a single run. If your longest run in the last 30 days was five miles, then don’t suddenly run 10 miles; build up to that distance carefully.
This does tie-in with the advice on training load you get from running watches in some ways, as avoiding big increases in training load each week will usually help to keep the length of your longest runs down.
The lead author on the study, Associate Professor Rasmus Ø. Nielsen from the Department of Public Health at Aarhus University, suggests that watches could use the advice from the research to create new features to help users.
"I imagine, for example, that sports watches with our algorithm will be able to guide runners in real-time during a run and give an alarm if they run a distance where injury risk is high,” says Nielsen.
“Like a traffic light that gives green light if injury risk is low; yellow light if injury risk increases and red light when injury risk becomes high.”
This advice is particularly important for those marathon training, who might well suddenly start doing very long runs to prepare for the 26.2-mile event. Give yourself time to build-up to those 20-milers if you can.
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