Marathon Training Schedule Tips: Dealing with an Injury

Injuring yourself is easiest way to interrupt your marathon training schedule. When you are pushing your body to its limits, as you undoubtedly will be doing during your training, it's very easy to over do it and have a nagging injury stop you in your tracks.
There are many ways to prevent getting injured, such as correcting your running form, buying the right shoes, running on soft(er) surfaces, and not increasing your mileage too quickly.
However, all preventative measures aside, how do you deal with an injury once it has already presented itself? The simple answer is... it depends. Learning to read your own body is a huge part of any endurance sport, and this is no exception. Muscle soreness, while painful, is not debilitating, and a simple procedure of massage, easy stretching and backing off (meaning at least 1-2 days of non-impact exercise, if any exercise at all) should usually do the trick.
Other injuries, that are ligament or bone related, are more serious. Often these injuries present themselves as muscle soreness at first, because your muscles will try to work to correct whatever imbalance or stress that you are placing on your legs. This is the basis for shin splints, which are caused by a swelling of your shin muscles, which in turn pushes on your flat shin bone, causing pain.
Therapeutic massage can aid in recovery, as well as ice and elevation. Using the old R.I.C.E. acronym for Rest, Ice, Compression and Elevation is the best way to treat most acute running injuries, in the first few days. Be very cautious about running after taking anti-inflammatory medication, or any pain-relievers. Often they will enable you to mask the pain, but lead to further injury later.
Deep water running is also a great way to train and keep your fitness while injured. I'll cover it in detail in another post.
Of course, the best way to deal with injury is not to get injured in the first place. Keep yourself healthy with a marathon training schedule designed by professionals. I like The Non-Runner's Marathon Trainer.