I had a great run with Matt this morning. Matt brought up an interesting point that really got me thinking. He found it interesting how so many runners and coaches are more than happy to take credit for success but refuse to accept responsibility for failure. The amount of excuses that Matt and I hear from runners on a daily basis is staggering.

When a runner does well you will usually hear them explain how everything they did in training allowed them to run well. You will hear confirmation from the coach that his training plan worked. You will hear congrats from teammates and friends, telling the athlete great job on what they did. Everyone is so happy about what the runner did. The runner feels proud because the training payed off.

When a runner runs poorly or gets injured you will often hear every excuse in the book including people blaming injuries on “bad luck.”

Bad luck? Really?

I would guess at least 90% of running injuries have nothing to do with luck and everything to do with bad training, bad form, wrong shoes, poor mentality, insufficient recovery, poor nutrition and other factors. One of my teammates got hit by a car while she was running on the sidewalk. That’s bad luck. Getting spiked in a race might be bad luck. Getting a stress fracture is not bad luck, it’s bad training.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I have no sympathy for someone who is injured. I feel bad and want to help anytime someone tells me they have a running injury. But I feel even worse when someone tells me they have an injury because of “bad luck” or they “can’t catch a break.” Not only is the person injured, they’re delusional. When they start running again, they will continue doing the same things that got them injured in the first place. When you refuse to accept responsibility for your failures how can you grow?

This is one of the reasons many track athletes have been so resistant to running form. Why work on technique? It’s not poor form that got them injured, it’s just random luck, apparently. When an athlete refuses to acknowledge the reasons for their injuries, correcting the root of the problem will never happen. So we start the cycle of rest, ice, drugs, surgery and then go right back to doing the same stuff that caused the injury in the first place. After all, it wasn’t anything we did wrong that caused the injury, it was completely random. People often run very fast before a major injury, so they think “well my training was working because I ran a PR, then I randomly got injured so when I heal this unlucky injury I will continue training the exact same way that got me the PR."

What makes this even more bizarre is the amount of hate I see people like Ryan Hall getting for expressing his beliefs in god. Ryan Hall gets absolutely blasted on the internet for giving credit to god for his performances. People make fun of him for thinking that god has something to do with his running. NO! It’s hard work they say. It’s his talent. It’s his training. It’s anything BUT god. They make him out to be crazy.

But ask these same runners who are hating on Ryan Hall how they got injured and they will say “I was just unlucky” or “I just caught a tough break.” It seems a bit hypocritical to mock Hall for believing that an invisible, mysterious force (god) was a factor in his running, and then turn around and declare that it was an invisible, mysterious force (luck) that gave them their injury.

I understand that owning up to your errors can be challenging. Admitting a failure is uncomfortable. I can see why people want to blame mysterious, invisible forces for their shin splints. I certainly sympathize with injured athletes who aren’t quite ready to admit defeat. If a runner wants to live in a fantasy world and think that everything good is created by them and everything bad is created by random luck, then great, no problem. That is their choice and I don’t begrudge them for it.

My issue is with the COACHES who promote this type of thinking. You might remember me mentioning a local coach who told me I *needed* to run 100 mile weeks to run under 32 minutes in the 10k (despite my repeating to him that I ran 31:15 on 50-70 mile weeks.)

Well this same coach, (and YES this is a true story) was once going on and on about how he trained a local runner to some very fast times. He spoke at length about the training he gave her and how she ran very fast times specifically because of the training he gave her. He was very clear that it was his training plan that allowed her to run such impressive times. At the time of our conversation the girl was in a wheelchair with stress fractures in both legs. When I made a comment about the stress fractures he said that had NOTHING to do with the training plan he gave her.

It must have been bad luck.

Sadly, this coach will likely never adjust his approach and continue running kids into the ground. This is a huge problem in our sport. Overtraining is right up there with eating disorders as the elephants in the room. If we continue to ignore the problems and write every injury off to bad luck we will never progress.