Today we're talking about whether or not you should run when you have pain about 10 days out from a marathon. 

This morning I got a call from Amy in Houston, and she's running a marathon in 10 days. She's doing the Houston Marathon. Today is Thursday, so a week from Sunday she is running the marathon. She has pain, and she's 10 days out, and wants to know if she can run now. That's the thing. She says, "I got this new pain, and I wanna run and finish my training." She admits that she didn't really train effectively, so she didn't train as much as usual. She normally is prepared for the marathon, but this year a bunch of stuff happened, just didn't get to train as much. Her plan was to try to run 10 miles today, on Thursday, and then maybe do a final 18 mile run on Saturday, and then maybe a few runs next week, you know, five, seven miles, or six miles, or whatever a couple of times next week, leading up to the marathon next Sunday.

So, her question is whether or not she should run. You know, she has this weird pain, this weird soreness. She's not sure what it is. She's done a bunch of marathons, but she doesn't know what it is. Is it a good idea to run or not? All right. So, just to back up, let me tell you, the first thing you have to know is that if she goes and sees a doctor, they're almost certainly gonna tell her to not run. Right? Why? Well, doctors tell you to not run, because they assume you wanna heal. Now, that sounds kind of simple, but that's the thing. When you're a runner, we know that that's not always the only consideration and certainly, in many cases, not even the primary consideration. They're not assuming your goal of finishing a marathon, an ultra marathon, an Ironman Triathlon, anything. They're not assuming that that goal of finishing is actually more important than your overall goal of making sure that you don't make your injury worse. Listen and I will explain...