The Bone-Safe Mileage Build

This is a short placeholder story generated for the design demo. Replace it with a real interview.

Use it when

You've had more than one bone stress injury, or you get shin or foot pain every time you build mileage. Repeat fractures almost always have a cause: training load rising too fast, too much hard running, or a body that can't rebuild bone fast enough.

Step 1: Find the cause first

Marco had three stress fractures in two years: two in the shin and one in the foot. He DNF'd two races. Each time he healed, then went straight back to 90 km a week. On the third one, a sports doctor ran tests. His vitamin D was low, and a food log showed he was eating far less than his training needed. He fixed both with the doctor and a dietitian before running again.

Step 2: Cap the increases

His rule became 10% more per week at most, and every fourth week cut by 25%. Coming back from zero, that meant starting at 20 km and taking about four months to reach 60. "It felt slow. It was the first time I'd ever reached 60 without breaking."

Step 3: Slow most of it down

His log showed that most of his "easy" runs were close to marathon pace. He slowed them by about 45 seconds per km, to a pace where he could talk. That made 80% of his weekly time truly easy. Hard running dropped to two sessions: intervals on the track and a tempo on the road. Less pounding at speed meant less load on the bone.

Step 4: Respect the warning sign

The new rule: if a spot on a bone hurt when he pressed it, he stopped. Two days off and a doctor's appointment, not one more run to test it. That happened once, in month five. It was a tendon, not a bone, and he lost only a week. That season he raced eight times and finished all of them.

Try it this week

Book a sports doctor if you've had two or more bone injuries. Check your last month of runs. If more than a fifth were harder than conversational, slow them down this week and keep your total the same.