Exploring contextual factors for management and prevention of running-related injuries: runners and experts' perspectives.

Running injuries are often described as the main reason people stop running, but most research into why this happens relies on numbers rather than runners' own experiences. This qualitative study revisited interview data from 15 Chilean runners and 6 running experts to explore how people perceive, manage, and try to prevent running-related injuries, and what contextual factors shape those behaviours. The analysis identified a mix of personal factors, such as identity, motivation, stress, and self-taught habits, alongside external influences like environment, marketing, peer advice, professional guidance, and clothing. Less experienced runners linked injury risk to surfaces like asphalt and found it hard to judge trustworthy online information, while experts stressed that injuries usually arise from several interacting factors rather than one cause.

Notably, both groups described runners as reluctant to rest when pain appeared. As a qualitative study drawing on a specific cultural context and a small sample, these findings offer insight into runners' experiences and attitudes rather than generalisable conclusions about injury prevention or treatment effectiveness.

If you run, you've probably had a moment where you kept going despite some discomfort, hoping it would pass. This study looked at why that happens by talking with 15 runners and 6 running experts in Chile about how they think about injuries, what influences their decisions, and how they try to avoid getting hurt. The conversations revealed that runners are shaped by both personal things, like motivation, stress, and self-taught habits, and outside influences, including the running environment, social media, peer encouragement, coaches, and even clothing.

Newer runners often blamed hard surfaces like asphalt for injury risk and found it difficult to know which online advice to trust. A theme that came up again and again was a reluctance to rest once pain started. Because this was a small, qualitative study based in one country, it can't tell us how common these experiences are elsewhere or whether changing any of these behaviours actually prevents injury.

It simply offers a window into how runners think.

This is a summary of research, not medical advice. Talk to your own healthcare provider about anything affecting your care.

This paper speaks to a common clinical challenge: understanding why runners with an injury often resist advice to modify training or rest, and how their broader context shapes that resistance. Drawing on secondary thematic analysis of semistructured interviews with 15 Chilean runners and 6 running experts, the study maps intrinsic factors (identity, motivation, stress, self-learning) and extrinsic factors (environment, information sources, marketing, peer advice, professional guidance, racing culture, stereotypes, clothing) that influence how runners perceive, manage, and try to prevent injury. For clinicians, the findings suggest that less experienced runners may attribute injury risk to specific surfaces like asphalt, struggle to evaluate online health information, and be strongly influenced by peer advice rather than professional guidance.

Experts in the sample reinforced that running-related injuries are multifactorial, involving prior injury history and training load, and both groups described a shared tendency to avoid rest despite pain, a pattern clinicians may recognise in practice when setting rehabilitation expectations and building therapeutic alliance. As qualitative findings from a specific cultural and geographic sample, these themes illuminate runners' experiences and reasoning rather than establishing injury mechanisms, prevalence, or the effectiveness of any management approach, and should not be generalised beyond the context studied.