At some point during the year, many runners are going to have to deal with some sort of minor injury that will hinder training or racing. These injuries often involve the foot and ankle. There are generally 2 schools of thought that most people use when it comes to dealing with running-related injuries
1. “It’s not that bad yet”- In this case, runners pretty much ignore the signs and symptoms of an injury and continue to run as normal until they can no longer run anymore. This method of making the injury worse requires more substantial recovery time and disrupts consistency.
2. At the first sign of any discomfort or slight injury a total shutdown of running until pain is gone. This often does not solve the problem since once the running resumes the injury or pain returns, especially if it is a tendon related.

Research has shown that 50% of runners are injured every year. 75% of all running injuries are due to overtraining ( or under-recovering), ramping up volume and/or intensity too fast, and not allowing the body to adapt. Running injuries increase dramatically when weekly running volume exceeds 35 miles per week.

Here are some guidelines that you can use to adjust your running to remain consistent and allow your body to adapt and recover from minor tweaks. Make sure you are not doing further or long-term damage. Consult your doctor or physical therapist on any injuries.

1. If you are a triathlete you can shift more of your training volume to swimming and cycling to maintain fitness levels.
2. Walk /run- alternate walking and running even if it starts out with one minute walk/1 minute run in order to stress the body yet not make the volume or the load to excessive.
3. Treadmill- treadmills can be valuable to lock in a specific pace that is comfortable and not painful. Using a decline of -1 – 2% can help reduce stress. Sometimes using a slight grade of 1 – 3% will decrease the impact loads and put less stress on the body. The other advantage of using a treadmill is if the injury starts to get worse, you can hit the stop button and step off.
4 Low level of pain- Easy running no matter how slow, while keeping below the pain threshold ( 1 or 2 out of a scale of 1-10 with 10 being extremely painful), your body gradually adapt while still creating some stress to maintain fitness. This can easily be done by just doing slow easy running around a grass field. Which has the same benefits as a treadmill. Plus if you are not feeling good you can immediately stop. This also eliminates the ego of running slowly on the roads. If this is an issue for you stay in a grass field.
5. Deep water running- I suggest that all runners have a deep water running belt that can be used when necessary for active recovery or for rehabbing injuries. Deep water running can also be used for added recovery or adding extra volume without the impact to your long runs.
6. Shallow water running- This can be done in waist deep water which takes a lot of the impact stress off of the body yet still allows you to run with some impact in weight-bearing. It is suggested that you use an old pair of racing flat or water running shoes on so that you don’t tear up the bottoms of your feet running on the bottom of the pool. If you live in a warm climate this can be done at a beach in waist deep water. 

The loading continuum
One way we can approach training while injured is to maintain our running volume based on minutes, but manipulate the loading as mentioned above to facilitate recovery while the same time maintaining fitness. These can be mixed and matched within the workout to gradually but consistently increase the stress on the body while maintaining fitness.

Based upon stress and load, this is how I classify from the least stressful to most stressful run variations
Deep water running
Treadmill walking
Shallow water running ( waist deep/3 – 4 feet)
Inclined walking on treadmill with weighted vest ( 5 – 8% grade
Treadmill running ( control grade in speed)
Land-based running

Here is an example of how a 60 min run can be progressed adjusting load while keeping the run volume in minutes stable:

30 minutes treadmill running/30 minutes shallow water running
40 minutes treadmill running/20 minutes shallow water running
30 minutes land running/30 minutes incline walking
40 minutes land running/20 minutes treadmill running

The goal is to stay below the point where it is painful or running form is compromised. Adjustments can be made day by day depending on how the injury is feeling and can be adjusted during the workout.

The goal of dealing with injuries is to try to keep progressing or moving forward without stopping if possible. Adjust intensities ,volumes and frequency to allow a slow steady gradual return to full running. The more tools you have available, the easier it will be for you to navigate this all too frequent situation.