by Michael J. Velsmid, DPT, MS
We see many marathon runners after the race with injuries. The scenario usually goes like this: runner struggles through training with nagging injury, runner completes race, runner takes a week off to heal, runner starts running, nagging injury returns and won’t quit, runner comes to Boston Sports Medicine for help. The race this year was very different. Hundreds of seasoned runners did not complete the race and hundreds of runners were hospitalized. Many have asked me, “Do you expect to see a lot of people from the Boston Marathon?” The unexpected response is, “no.” Just because the temperature reached a record breaking 89 degrees, doesn’t mean that there were more musculoskeletal injuries. We have not seen a correlation between outside temperature and incidence of runner injury. In fact, one could argue the opposite. With the record high temperatures, everyone’s pace was slower than their training pace, below the level of intensity they were trained for. So, with respect to injuries, we will need to see how many calls we get in the coming weeks, but I can predict this year will be no different than last year. We’ll get the same number of people as in the past. Those who licked their wounds, started to run again, and realized that they will need a little extra help to get that base going again.
Dr. Velsmid is a Physical Therapist at Boston Sports Medicine
