Mileage Build-up Injury Prevention

I'm becoming an expert on running injuries and injury prevention/ recovery. With my history of injuries I've had the opportunity to experiment with various recovery strategies. So far the best results in injury recovery have come from rest and icing for muscle inflammation injuries. When the first pain is experienced don't be a stubborn head but take a day or two off. These two days can't do much damage for any level of running. However, continuing for two days in the beginning stages of an injury can eventually retire you for several weeks.

How to prevent injuries depend on many factors such as your experience, weekly total distance, running surface, weather conditions, etc.

While in the building stages of your weekly mileage avoid or minimize hard interval training, hill training, and races longer than a half marathon. What you should do is create a mileage build-up schedule (before starting a marathon training schedule) , using recovery runs between tempo runs and long runs. You should be drinking lots of fluid during the mileage build-up stages to reduce strain on your circulatory systems, providing sufficient blood and nutrition to the working muscles. You should be increasing your weekly mileage by no more than ten percent, this also applies to your long runs.