yego.me
💡 Stop wasting time. Read Youtube instead of watch. Download Chrome Extension

Tips From an Ultramarathoner for Common Trail Injuries | Get Out: A Guide to Adventure


2m read
·Nov 11, 2024

I'm Scott Jurek, and I'm an ultra-marathoner. Today, we're gonna be talking about injury prevention. I love pushing myself to the edge, and when I'm injured, I'm not able to train; I'm not able to race. Thus, avoiding injuries — but then once they do occur, making sure that I recover — is paramount to my success.

There are a few things I usually bring in my pack from a first-aid standpoint. There's not one set first-aid kit out there. It's really important that you start thinking about how long am I out there and how far away from help am I. That's gonna be dictating what type of first-aid supplies you need.

One of the most common injuries on the trail are blisters. You really want to start treating them early on into a run or hike. To prevent the blisters, you want to avoid the abrasion. I like to use petroleum jelly, which just kind of helps keep the toes and the skin moving smoothly between the sock. I commonly will include some moleskin or some of the fancier added blister prevention tapes and cushions that are out there. Just try to figure out, you know, what kind of conditions are you gonna be in and what's gonna be best for your feet.

Another common injury is the ankle sprain. Treating an ankle sprain initially involves compression, and compression can come in different forms. I commonly will have a compression sock or sleeve that I can put over. Taping can be pretty complicated, so the nice thing with an ankle brace that has support around it with straps will create the same type of tension and support without the complications of, "Okay, how do I tape this ankle?"

If you have a cold creek or a cold lake nearby, getting the ankle in some cold water to kind of bring down the swelling can be really key to making the comfort level a lot more manageable and getting you back to the trailhead or maybe continuing on. If you notice that pain is like a dull ache, you're probably okay pushing through that. If it's more of a searing pain, that's probably not the pain to push through.

Another common issue out on the trail is dehydration. When the signs of dehydration start, first and foremost, you want to start drinking water. If you haven't been incorporating salt or electrolytes, I would highly recommend that you bring some of those with you. We lose a lot of electrolytes in sweat.

Finding that happy balance between injury recovery and performance is probably like the ultimate goal of any athlete or anybody trying to push their body a little bit harder. When you find that balance, you're gonna be able to push your body further than you ever thought you could.

More Articles

View All
The Biggest Myth In Education
This video is about learning styles. What kind of learner are you? Oh yeah, I’m a visual person so I have to see things, yeah. Oh yeah, same. I think visual learner. Visual. I mean, like, I remember formulas like auditory. I need to be like, interac…
Mars 2020: Nasa's Next Mission To Mars
This is such an awesome experience! To get up close and personal with the Curiosity rover. I mean, this isn’t the exact one that’s on Mars, obviously, but it’s basically identical. VOICEOVER: I’m here at the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, California. I …
How Cod Saved the Vikings
When I was in the Lofoten Islands in northern Norway, I came across one of the strangest sights I have ever seen: cod. [♫ ominous low tone fades in ♪] Hundreds of thousands of them, strung up on racks, [♫ ominous low tone fades in ♪] their stench blanketi…
How a Great White Shark Strikes | Shark Attack Files
In Muscle Bay, South Africa, Allison Towner and Enrico Janari investigate if speed is what makes a great white’s jaws so deadly. Other investigators have seen how a bull shark’s bite works. Now, getting a bite impression might help them solve the mystery …
2015 AP Physics 1 free response 1a
Two blocks are connected by a string of negligible mass that passes over a massless pulley that turns with negligible friction. It is shown in the figure above. We see that the mass M2 of block 2 is greater than the mass M1 of block 1. The blocks are rele…
Salutations and valedictions | Punctuation | Grammar | Khan Academy
Hello, Garans and hello, Paig. Hi, David. Today we’re going to be talking about commas in correspondence, and what that means is how to use commas in letter writing. So, saying hello and saying goodbye, when you start writing a letter or an email to some…