What Happened Last October or The Half-Marathon of My Discontent

Looking back at my training logs to the last few days leading to last year’s Long Beach Half Marathon, I just realized what could have caused my posterior tibialis tendon to tear. Having been a physical education major in college, I learned that one of the principles of training is specificity. This means that to be good at sport, you have to train specifically for that sport. So if you are a tennis player, you play tennis, if you are a cyclist, you cycle, and if you are a runner, you run. This is so the muscles and joints get used to the specific movements of the particular sport you are training for. Using that principle, I ran for two consecutive days on Saturday, and the race on Sunday. I believe now that this spelled the doom for my posterior tibialis tendon. When you exercise, you develop microtears in your muscles and connective tissues and it is during recovery days between hard workouts that these muscles and joints get a chance to repair themselves. In my case, with a pre-existing injury, even the short run recovery day on the eve of the half marathon continued to irritate my ankle tendon. And this is what I think led to its overstretching or tearing during the race. It was just a bad training decision based on a good training principle. Keeping an exercise logbook does help to see where things went wrong and likewise when things went right. Hopefully, I know better this time and not make the same mistake. Learning about your own body is an experiment of one.