It’s the dog days of summer and with the Olympics and playoff baseball closing in fast, a lot of athletes are just now reaching their prime. Those that aren’t in the game right now are off training and going through grueling workouts to get themselves ready for the challenge of the next year. It seems like the perfect time for everyone working as hard as they can.
And then....an injury.
It could be soreness in a knee. Sharp pains in the side. Total, unbreakable stiffness in the shoulders. The great athlete comes crashing down, the toned muscles and refined joints crumpling in a heap of pain...and worry. Down on the ground, the athlete who has been working so hard faces a tough choice: stop training to get better or play through the pain, and push themselves to ignore a really high urge to quit.
How do they make a choice like that?
Really, I think choosing to play through the pain comes down to how well you know your own body and its ability to come back day after day to get the job done and also how serious the injury really is. Take me, for example. I’ve been running almost every day to train for a race, but last Sunday I woke up with a terrible head cold.
I thought about the six miles I was supposed to put in for the day. It would be a shame to miss the workout, but I’ve still got months until that race. I know from another time that I had this choice that running through a cold means it could take a lot longer to heal. I knew that taking one day off to recover would do a lot more good than breaking myself down for several days in a row.
Have you ever played through an injury? Tell us all about what goals you were working toward as an athlete. How did you decide what to do knowing about that goal?
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