A few weeks ago, Lucy Charles announced she would be out of the Pho3nix Sub8 attempt and the Ironman World Championship St. George due to a stress fracture in her left hip. While she already paid attention to the matter, discussing what could have been the possible causes, she dove into it a bit deeper now. Charles spent some time at the Red Bull performance center in Austria, where they did research on what could have really triggered the problems.
It was her running form, a run analysis points out. Charles explains why. “We looked at old footage of my running, and I allowed the experts there to just kind of break every part down of my run and really look at it. They discovered some crucial things in my running biomechanics that are so likely to have caused this injury. It was always going to happen, basically, as soon as I would ramp up my run volume, my run biomechanics would put so much stress onto my left hip.”
There is another thing that could have caused issues: scoliosis in Charles’ back, which could be caused by her breathing to only one side while swimming, instead of bilateral. “I should have listened to a swimming coach that I’ve had when I was younger, who said that I should breathe to both sides. Then I would have been a more balanced athlete.”
Check out the full analysis and Charles’ recovery journey down below.
