I quit running because I'm too good

Considering rest, recovery and why we're all soooo bad at being injured

me in my heyday (five months ago)

Saying you’re too good at running is a bold claim in the year of 1.1 million applying to run the London Marathon. I don’t mean that me, with my over four hour 26.2 miler, is actually better than others on the course. No, that would be both incorrect and far too braggy.

What I really mean I’m too good at turning up in spite of what I should be doing.

I’m sure anyone who’s ever been injured in a hobby is also guilty of this. Stopping something that you not only enjoy but that your weeks are shaped around is hard. Keeping up with it despite pain is easy. We’re all very good at making easy choices.

I initially felt the niggle and ran through it anyway, then was barely able to walk the distance from my bedroom to the kitchen in my small London flat. When I realised I needed to drop out of my marathon, I was remarkably stoic about it, instead throwing my energy into what I’ll call recovery-maxxing.

I immediately swapped my long runs and sprint intervals for recovery jogs. I ran to find my tolerance and comfortable edge, as instructed by physios, then repeated that over and over again. I lifted and lowered light dumbbells and pulsed repetitively with a resistance band in the name of rehab.

I swallowed white powders (legal ones, purchased from Holland & Barrett with words like joint health written in bold and circled on the containers). I avoided the bike and the stairmaster despite my dry skin longing for sweat, knowing they also made my knee ping.

Six weeks later, I hobbled down the stairs during a flare-up of pain that seemed to come and go without any trends. I’m doing everything right, I complained: the exercises, the diet, the moving-but-not-too-much.

It took too long for me to figure out what you already know reading this: I wasn’t actually resting.

If it’s possible, I was over-recovering. Maxing out the things I could do, causing the same stress on my body. So, rather than let the one-minute-on, one-minute-off runs ramp up, I quit. Went cold turkey. I’ve promised myself it’s just for a month (ok, drama queen), but it feels big, and I’m already noticing things I’d rather not.

We all struggle with rest. I don’t think it’s scientifically correct to say it’s biologically imprinted in us to hate it (it sounds right, what with the whole needing to move to survive in a world of tiger chasing thing we had going on years ago, but I also know the human body does most of its work —including digesting, sleeping, processing —when it isn’t out of breath), but it is culturally enforced, and those can feel like the same things. It is so drilled into us that sitting still is the worst thing we can do that moving, working and stressing feel like they’re ingrained in our DNA.

But for some people — like an injured girl like myself, or anyone recovering from literally anything else — rest is productive. I know I sound like a podcaster from 2020 when I say that, but clearly their droning episodes didn’t hit hard enough because I need to repeat it to myself: rest is productive.

One way I like to remind myself of that is by imagining all the work going on behind the scenes. It sounds deranged, but imagining all of the blood flow, rebuilding and repair happening beneath the surface as my leg sits still help — sometimes I literally picture cells in hard hats (something to think about next time you see me sat in silence and wonder what’s on my mind)?

For now, it works. I’m not finding extra excuses to pop out for a testing run to check whether I’m magically healed (spoiler: it’s always no). I’m not doing extra sets and reps because I can, when my body doesn’t want to. I’m quitting (for now) and it feels… weird.

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Injured people — I’m desperate to hear stories of your resting journeys and tips for how to survive! Please share them with me: