Running: For runners: Preventing, managing injuries

Let's be honest: if you run long enough, you have about a 100 percent chance of getting hurt, whether it's losing a toenail or feeling a stinging pain somewhere in your lower extremities.

When it comes to running injuries, Hallie Labrador, sports medicine physician at the Rothman Institute, knows the pain firsthand.

She has completed six marathons, two half iron mans, and countless triathlons since she started running in 1999. Her injuries? Some of the most common she sees in her patients: IT band syndrome, runner's knee, and hip pain.

She also knows that most runners accept that injuries are part of the process of being involved in the sport - and that we try to work through and around them to get back out on the road.

"I've been managing it on my own," she said of her own injuries.

She'll be bringing that personal and professional expertise about preventing and managing injury to the Haddonfield Running Company on Sept. 26 at 6 p.m. for a free session on how to avoid common marathon training pitfalls - perfect timing since many are in the thick of marathon training where injuries old and new start occurring and could derail your training program.

The most common injuries are what she has experienced herself: knee pain and lateral hip pain. The problem, she says, is that just running can be too much of one thing, and runners need to work on stabilizing not just their core but their pelvis as well because weaknesses there can cascade into injuries all the way down the leg.

"When you're running, the job of the pelvis is to keep the hips stable. So if there's some subtle weakness in some smaller muscle around your hips, you lose that stability," she said. Other parts of your body will overcompensate, and that "puts people at risk for injury," she said.

She'll also demonstrate how to get strength through dynamic instead of static exercises, like crunches.

"You can do a lot of crunches and end up with a six-pack and look really good, but it doesn't really translate into core strength or pelvic strength," she said. "How often when you're running do you need to do a crunch?

"A lot of runners know that if they have 30 minutes, they're going to put on their shoes and run outside and not do any strength training," she said. "They think their legs are really strong - isn't that enough? Probably not."

Some of the information runners might know, but Labrador says she is including a lot of new research as well.

You can RSVP for the event at rothmaninstitute.com

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