Yes, it's good to hear that from you. I'm realizing perhaps this injury is my final lesson in the just run approach, and you've articulated it perfectly. I still had too much of my head in it. It seems clear to me now. Thanks for emphasizing it with your confirmation and elaboration. It helps reinforce the lesson. Let me see if I can be a good student and try to apply it in practice:
One does not train for a race. One runs, and when one can run a certain distance at a certain pace that might be fun to race, then one seeks out that race. So, for example, I would never train for a marathon, I would wait until I could run a marathon distance, or at least very close to a marathon distance, comfortably and then I would find one to enter. If I never find myself wanting to keep building up distances, then I don't think about racing longer races. I don't build up longer distances simply because I want to run longer races.
'Just run' really is the only rule you need to know, but it's a very difficult concept to grasp in its full implication of implementation. So difficult in fact, that most will seek out some subset of the rules-based amendments as at least a bridge to true just run mastery, a zen art.
