MAKING PLANS WITH NIGEL
Our (usually) annoyingly cheerful ultrarunner Damian Hall isn’t injured, but he does have a niggle
Four reps up Snowdon – harmless fun, surely?
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MAKING PLANS WITH NIGEL
Our (usually) annoyingly cheerful ultrarunner Damian Hall isn’t injured, but he does have a niggle
This is the column I never wanted to write. I’ve got an injury. Well, not a real injury. Just a niggle. I prefer the word niggle. It sounds more like a friendly little pest: your neighbour’s yappy dog, who’s cute, but occasionally craps in your garden. Like with hurricanes, it’s tempting to give injuries and niggles names and I’m calling mine Nigel.
My not-backed-up-by-science classification is that, with a niggle, you can carry on running (ideally with a physio’s consent and often with training plan tweaks). But if you have to stop running, you’ve got an injury. I can run if I want to – in fact I’ve done two ultras on it. However, if I run at the moment, my Achilles tendon can get lumpy, grumpy and swollen. The needy, self-centred thing. So now seems like a good time to not run on it for a bit. And instead, says my physio, do so many lunges and squats that I’ll soon have the backside of a Kardashian.