The running injury prevention app

Around 50% of runners experience an injury each year, and 70–80% of running disorders are overuse injuries (Kakouris et al., 2021). The single biggest modifiable risk factor is training load: specifically, increasing mileage or intensity faster than the body can structurally adapt.

Injury prevention is a broad topic (footwear, biomechanics, strength work, sleep, and nutrition all play a role), but the evidence is clear that monitoring and managing how much you run, and how quickly you ramp up, has the largest measurable effect on injury rates.

myTrainingForecast applies peer-reviewed training load models (including the acute-to-chronic workload ratio) to your actual activity data, giving you a continuous, data-driven view of where you sit on the risk spectrum. Rather than relying on generic guidelines like “don't increase more than 10% per week”, myTF adapts to your individual training history using the latest sports science.

Shin splints (medial tibial stress syndrome, or MTSS) are one of the most common running injuries, responsible for 10–20% of all running injuries and up to 60% of lower-limb overuse injuries (Deshmukh & Phansopkar, 2022).

What are shin splints?

MTSS involves repetitive microtrauma to the muscles and tissues that attach to the inner edge of the shinbone (tibia), particularly the tibialis posterior, soleus, and flexor digitorum longus, along with irritation of the periosteum, the outer layer of bone. This causes exercise-induced pain along the medial tibial border, usually in the middle to lower third of the shin. The pain typically starts as a dull ache during or after running and eases with rest, but if training continues without modification it can become persistent and may progress to a tibial stress fracture.

What causes shin splints in runners?

Rapid increases in training volume are consistently identified as a primary risk factor: the tibial bone and surrounding tissues need time to remodel under load, and increasing mileage faster than these structures can adapt is the most common trigger. Other contributing factors include poor or worn footwear, muscular imbalances at the ankle, tight or weak calf muscles, higher body mass index, and running on hard surfaces (Bhusari & Deshmukh, 2023). Female runners and those with a history of previous shin splints are also at elevated risk.

How myTF helps

Because training load spikes are the biggest modifiable risk factor, monitoring your acute-to-chronic workload ratio is one of the most effective ways to reduce your risk. myTrainingForecast continuously tracks how your weekly mileage compares to your recent training history. When your load spikes beyond what the research associates with safe progression, you'll see it reflected in your ACR zones, giving you the signal to back off before shin pain sets in. This is especially important for new runners, runners returning from a break, or anyone ramping up mileage for a race.

Patellofemoral pain (“runner’s knee”) is the single most prevalent running and cycling overuse injury. A systematic review and meta-analysis by Smith et al. (2018) reported an annual prevalence of 22.7% in the general population, with incidence rates in amateur runners reaching 1080.5 per 1,000 person-years, making it by far the most common cause of knee pain in active adults. Female athletes are disproportionately affected, with point prevalence reaching 22.7% in adolescent female athletes.

What is runner’s knee?

Patellofemoral pain presents as diffuse pain around or behind the kneecap, typically worsened by running, squatting, using stairs, or prolonged sitting. It arises when the load on the patellofemoral joint exceeds the capacity of the surrounding cartilage, tendons, and musculature to absorb it. Unlike traumatic knee injuries, it develops gradually and is strongly linked to training load errors, particularly sharp week-on-week increases in volume or intensity that outpace tissue adaptation.

How myTF helps

myTrainingForecast monitors your load progression across multiple dimensions (distance, longest run, and elevation gain) and flags when it exceeds the thresholds that published research associates with elevated injury risk. Because runner’s knee develops from cumulative overload rather than a single session, the multi-week view in the planner is particularly useful: it lets you spot gradual drift into higher-risk zones before knee symptoms develop.

Overtraining occurs when cumulative training stress consistently outpaces the body's capacity to recover. The result is a downward spiral: persistent fatigue, declining performance, disrupted sleep, and a significantly higher risk of injury.

The acute-to-chronic workload ratio (ACR), as described by Blanch & Gabbett (2015), provides an objective way to track this balance. An ACR that stays in the 80–130% range is associated with lower injury risk; sustained spikes above 150% are associated with significantly elevated risk.

By calculating your ACR daily and plotting it over time, myTrainingForecast can give you an early warning for overtraining that's grounded in data rather than feel alone. This is particularly relevant for runners who feel fine during a ramp-up: aerobic fitness adapts in days, but tendons and bone remodel over weeks to months, and their lower nerve density means overload often goes unnoticed until damage is already done.

The return-to-running phase carries some of the highest re-injury risk. After time off, your chronic load drops, meaning even a modest run can spike your ACR into the red zone. The research is consistent: a graduated, load-monitored return is far safer than jumping back to pre-injury volume (Taberner et al., 2019).

myTrainingForecast's planner lets you map out a week-by-week return and instantly see how each session affects your projected ACR. This makes it straightforward to build back progressively while staying within zones that the evidence associates with lower injury risk.

myTrainingForecast is a training load monitoring and injury risk tool for runners, with support for cycling and swimming. It connects to Strava and applies published sports science models, including acute-to-chronic workload ratios, multivariate risk factors, and population-level injury data, to your actual training history.

The goal is to give you an objective, data-driven view of your injury risk that goes beyond generic rules of thumb such as the "10% rule". Thousands of runners use it to manage training load, plan safe mileage progression, and stay injury free.