Training regimen key to avoiding injuries in cross country

Central senior Clinton Sargent is a man in training.

But as the high-spirited Sargent talked to coach Mark Hahn and assistant Bryan Kelpe in the training room recently with a running shoe in his hand, it was hard to tell whether the slender runner was preparing for the cross country season or a career in shoe sales or podiatry.

As Kelpe was tracking down Sargent's shoe model on the Internet, Sargent was more than eager to share the diagnosis of his arch type. Sargent proudly showed a piece of paper embedded with his wet foot print, and he began to discourse on the image as if it were an X-ray.

"I have a normal arch," Sargent said as he traced the curve of the imprint from the ball of his feet back to his heel. "A low arch would come over like this, and a high arch would come back in here."

Sargent noted the normal arch requires a stability shoe, rather than the motion control shoe for a low arch or the neutral shoe for a high arch.

Hahn listened in proudly as his student displayed he had learned his lessons well.

It's part of a lesson that has been painfully learned by runners over the years. And it's part of a proactive approach to injury that local cross country teams take in a sport known for taking its toll.

"Nationwide, the statistics are there, cross country is a high-injury sport," Hahn said.

Hahn said that injuries to girls in cross country once was second only to football in a national study. Now in his 17th year as cross country coach at Central, Hahn said injuries were one of the primary reasons why he had only 15 students in the program his first season.

"When I started here, there was a reputation of stress fractures on our team," Hahn said of the more serious injuries that commonly can occur if runners do not train properly. "My primary goal that year was to get rid of it, that reputation. I knew it would take more than a year to get rid of it."

Central now typically has between 45 and 55 runners in its program, and last season the girls placed third in Class 4. The Notre Dame boys finished second and the girls sixth in Class 3.

And the teams have high hopes this season, but much depends on health.

"We've won races at the end of some years just because we had everyone on the team," Hahn said.

Sargent is in his second year with the Tigers' cross country program, but he's gotten the message.

"It's all part of the injury prevention information they give us," Sargent said. "All the stuff like running on the right side of the road, running methods, analyzing stuff like this [his foot] and different treads on your shoes. They teach you a lot about running."

Sargent had reported some discomfort while running on hard surfaces after wearing one of the two pairs of shoes his mother recently bought him. Hahn and Kelpe know Sargent has tight calves and are aware of the stress that can cause in the shin.

A preventive remedy might be the daily icing that teammate Brandon Bryant was going through elsewhere in the active room, which included Saint Francis Medical Center trainer Rob Bunger working on one of senior Annie Tipton's feet.

Most of the work being done was preventive in a sport that can take a toll on its participants.

Tortoise and the hare

Cross country usually is not the first choice for athletes who seek the limelight and instant gratification. The path of a cross country runner is a plodding one, one that starts earlier and even more anonymously than the first day of practice in mid-August.

Notre Dame coach Bill Davis said summer is the time for slow miles and lots of minutes. It's the most fundamental part of what he fondly refers to as his running pyramid.

"You don't have to run fast in the summer, you want to get your cardio up and get good heart development where you're pumping a lot of blood and getting a good oxygen delivery system," Davis said. "That's what we try to buy into in the summer, getting that developed. Then when the season starts, you're ready to go and do the extra things and build to a higher level.

"It's like a pyramid. The wider the base, the higher the peak can be. So if you have a wide base and some good quality miles in during the summer, you can build to quite a peak by November."

Notre Dame senior Wynn McClellan, who placed first in the Bulldogs' season-opener in the Murphysboro Invitational and more recently broke his own school record in the 5K, has a wider base than most runners. While less experienced runners only might log 15 to 25 miles a week during the summer, McClellan, an all-state runner in 2008, ran about 70 miles a week during the summer.

"I think just not getting too crazy at first," McClellan said of the best way to avoid injury. "Some people start summer training, and they do stuff too fast. The last time I summer trained, I got three months in before my first race."

McClellan covered the 3.1 miles at the Brooks Cross Country Invitational last weekend in Memphis in 15 minutes, 58.63 seconds, but during the early summer he's encouraged to run miles in the 9- to 10-minute range.

Late in the season, if runners advance past district, they actually back off on mileage.

"Our mileage does decrease, but it becomes more quality mileage," Davis said.

High mileage over a long period of time creates the type of runners that Hahn refers to as virtually indestructible.

"Our guys that were out there hammering seven miles today, those guys have been with the program two, three, four years and they've worked up their mileage gradually, and you can't hurt those guys," Hahn said recently. "They're so durable."

But to get to that point, the path at times seems to run through a minefield.

Common injuries

Shin splints are a common occurrence in runners who do not have a history of a lot of miles.

And like shoes in the high-tech era, shin splints are not what they used to be. In general, shin splints are an irritation of the muscle lining along the tibia.

"You can't really say shin splints anymore," said David Enderle, a certified athletic trainer with Saint Francis Medical Center who tends to Notre Dame athletes. "There's medial tibial stress, there's anterior, lateral ... I mean, shin splints isn't just shin splints anymore."

Enderle said a variety of problems can arise from the iliotibial (IT) band, which is a tendon/muscle that runs down the outside of each thigh from the hip to just below the knee. The IT band can be responsible for pain in the hip, knee and even the lower leg.

"There's been a study out earlier this year that 90 percent of lower leg injuries are usually due to weak hip abductors, like IT bands and stuff like that," Enderle said.

Stress fractures are the most severe of the common injuries. They generally sideline a runner six weeks, effectively ending his or her season.

"It's definitely a big fear for a runner," Notre Dame senior Ryan Johnson said. "Especially me, a senior, it would put me out for the rest of the season."

Staying healthy

Shin splints are often the first training obstacle for a runner.

"It's overuse because you either never ran or your mileage has been so low and now all of a sudden you're trying to do more," Davis said. "If you have a steady diet of miles and control what you're doing and get adequate rest, it should be something you can avoid. Even our top kids have had little bouts."

And Davis does not hesitate when it comes to a remedy. He sends his athletes straight for ice.

"I think people come by and think all your kids are hurt," Davis said. "No, they're not necessarily hurt, they're maintaining. A lot of sports they don't do that."

Hahn is among those who attest to the therapeutic nature of ice, as both a healer and safeguard. Hahn said he had 16 athletes sharing the ice tub recently.

"It's amazing how ice has helped us," Hahn said. "We should have been doing that a long time ago. We've iced forever, but in the early days they were symptomatic when they got icing, and we don't wait that long anymore."

Central senior Jordan Pope has had chronic shin splints all four years of his varsity career. He only participates in running practice two days a week. He uses one of the school's five stationary bikes or two elliptical trainers two other days and swims one day. Other runners have had to use alternate cardio training to address the condition.

"It's something I've just had to deal with," Pope said.

Athletes can use a roller to stretch out the IT band, which is getting more attention these days.

Runners also can wear an elastic band under their knees to improve the tracking of the knee.

To combat stress fractures and other lower leg injuries, Notre Dame employs banding, which stretches and strengthens the ankle by rotating the foot in different directions while warming up. Davis credits banding with a reduction in injuries.

Teams also encourage their athletes to train on grass, rather than pavement.

"Grass is good," Hahn said. "That's one of our mantras."

Surf's up

Central takes a different approach in its training process because injuries generally are associated with the pounding.

Hahn said the body will adapt to the pounding of running over time but emphasizes the adaptation period is more in the realm of years rather than a season.

Since his primary goal was to limit stress fractures in his first season, Hahn took the advice of then-assistant coach Dayna Powell -- now Central's swim coach -- and introduced swimming into the Tigers' weekly training regimen in 1993.

Swimming, which has little or no impact, has become a fixture for Central runners, who can be found in the Central pool every Wednesday during the season.

"It's a commitment to no-impact training," Hahn said. "And the main reason is to keep injuries from happening, and it breaks things up a little bit, too."

Central senior Alex Crawford said he never associated swimming with cross country running when he started running in seventh grade.

"It's nice to get out of the heat sometimes," Crawford said. "There's a lot of variety in the pool."

Central runners will rotate among four stations as they work on their cardio and conditioning.

Taking care of the foot

As Sargent has learned, the shoe is critical to staying healthy. Getting the proper shoe is imperative.

"They'll come out here in basketball shoes sometimes, the freshmen out here," McClellan said. "We try to get them to get some running shoes that will help them. It will help them from getting injured -- it might not help them get faster."

Runners generally get about 300 to 500 miles out of a pair of shoes. For a runner like McClellan, who runs about 11 months out of the year, that can mean as many as eight pairs of shoes in a year.

McClellan will rotate between two pairs of shoes, wearing lighter ones on faster days and heavier shoes on slower days.

"You need to have the right shoes to be able to do the amount of work you need to do to be really good," Davis said.

Medical help available

Trainers also are a big part of keeping runners healthy, which is why Jackson and Saxony Lutheran also have athletic trainers.

"Our first day of practice lecture is the 'Don't tell coach when you're hurting' mentality has no place here," Hahn said. "We've got to know. And we're fortunate, like Notre Dame and Jackson, and I don't know how many of the smaller schools, but we've got trainers there every day, which we didn't have years ago. So there are a lot of options."

Technology and science have combined with old-fashioned hard work to make cross country more survivable.

"I think a lot of it is the mileage we do during the summer," Johnson said. "It builds up a good base so you can do the speed work later in the season without getting hurt. And if I get a little pain or something, I'll go ice it right away or talk to a trainer. I think that helps me stay healthy."

Johnson was healthy enough to finish runner-up to McClellan at the Murphysboro Invitational, as Notre Dame ran away with the boys title in the 11-team meet.

"Generally we've stayed pretty healthy with our top seven the last four or five years," Davis said. "A lot of it is due, I think, to the summer running our kids buy into doing. It just helps build a level of tolerance, and I think that is important in this sport.

"And you know, some kids are just lucky. They never get hurt."