A Major Tip for Avoiding Overtraining as a Runner

Sophia Eick is a volunteer who has worked with Ronald McDonald charities to support chronically ill or elderly patients. Outside of her commitments in healthcare, Sophia Eick takes care of her health by running regularly.

As a runner, taking care of your health is your number one priority, as the work you put in can easily be invalidated if you overdo it. Beyond mere diminishing returns, overtraining can injure anyone from an amateur to a professional. Training is meant to take time and slowly build up your strength and endurance, and doing too much too fast leads to damage instead.

There are a few things you can do to prevent this. Early on, talk to a specialist or sports doctor about analyzing your body for its strengths and weaknesses; you might find that a consistent ache points to a structural weakness you need to be careful of or that you have been using the wrong type of shoes for the terrain you run in. Understanding your body’s biomechanics and understanding it as a machine you have to care for will improve your odds of noticing or predicting problems before they arise.

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The Benefit of Pool Running

Sophia Eick is a volunteer worker who has cared for patients with disabilities and chronic illness alongside charities like Ronald McDonald House and A.I. DuPont. Sophia Eick also regularly exercises by running, training for endurance and strength.

Running is a high-impact sport that makes regular runners constantly pound their bodies on pavement and other terrains. This pounding is usually hard on the joints and muscles that hold them together and lead to damage and injury over time. Long-term runners can combat this with various techniques, including pool running.

Pool running is a type of training where you run mostly or entirely submerged in water. While training in this way, you exercise by pushing against the water rather than pounding on the ground. The impact here is much lower as your footfalls will generally be a lot gentler than usual. This type of training is not easy and you will probably find that your average pool run will be a lot shorter than your average road run. However, if you have access to a pool, this can be a great way to take a break from high-impact exercise when you’re at risk of injury or need a change of pace.

Dressings and Cleaning Wounds

A student at the University of Delaware, Sophia Eick has served as School of Nursing Curriculum Committee representative while working toward her nursing degree. One of the foundational skills Sophia Eick holds centers on cleaning and dressing wounds.

Even when adequately dressed, old wounds require a regular fresh covering. When removing the old dressing, always wash your hands and wear gloves. Assess the injury through a visual check and evaluation of elements such as blood, ooze, smell, color, and wound size.

If healing has not progressed as expected, notify a senior nurse or physician so that further assessment can be taken and the care plan is revised. If the recovery is moving as expected, replace the old dressing with a new one of an appropriate size and material.

This requires care, as the patient’s skin is often highly tender, and delicate sutures may be in place. In ensuring that new dressings are correctly placed, The goal is to avoid pain or aggravate the wound site and prevent dirt and ooze buildup.

Managing Chronic Diseases

Studying nursing at the University of Delaware, Sophia Eick has an extensive volunteer background in her field. In one volunteer undertaking, Sophia Eick worked with elders who had a chronic illness. She provided home services and assisted with the activities of daily living.

As a category, chronic diseases persist for months, years, or a lifetime and do not ultimately disappear or heal. Common examples include diabetes, arthritis, asthma, and ulcers. While some chronic conditions do not have a ready solution, in other cases, the fact that patients learn to live with such conditions means that an attainable cure is not actively sought.

Managing chronic disease typically begins with blood tests and diagnosis and may include using medications. It also typically involves a thorough evaluation of lifestyle and related factors that can have an outsized impact on the progress of the disease. For example, asthma may be much worse when combined with a home environment with elements to which one is allergic. An unbalanced diet and lack of nutrition may aggravate and extend the symptoms associated with heart disease or diabetes.

Food, regular checkups, exercise, and medication are usually part of the lifestyle of many patients with chronic illnesses. The difference in their lifestyles and those of patients with less severe illnesses is that they typically have to stick to these habits to increase their chances of managing the ailment effectively.