Niggle or Injury? How to Decide What to Do Before Auckland Marathon
A tight calf for the first kilometre. A knee that grumbles on the downhills. A spot on the top of your foot you keep pressing, just to check it's still there.
Five weeks out from a marathon, almost every runner has something.
The thoughts that come with it are predictable. "Is this going to wreck my race?" "If I stop now, do I lose everything?" "If I ignore it, will it go away?"
Most training niggles aren't injuries, but the ones that are tend to announce themselves in similar ways.
This article is about telling the difference, and what to do with each.
Why niggles turn up now
The final block before a marathon is usually the heaviest of the whole programme. Long runs are at their longest, weekly volume peaks, and many plans add race-pace work.
Your tendons, bones and muscles adapt to that load, but they adapt more slowly than your fitness does. You can feel ready to go while your Achilles is still catching up.
So some soreness in this phase is expected. The useful question isn't "do I have a niggle?" It's "which way is this niggle heading?"
The common assumption: stop, or push through
Most runners treat it as a choice between two options. Stop running until it's gone, or push through and hope.
Neither is usually the best call. Complete rest doesn't just cost fitness and confidence five weeks out; tendons and bones need load to stay strong. Pushing through ignores information your body is giving you.
The middle option, keep running but change something, is where most sensible management sits.
What the research says (and doesn't)
Running-injury research has moved away from simple weekly rules like "never increase more than 10% a week". Last year we covered one of the most useful recent studies in The Single Run That Predicts Running Injuries. In about 5,200 runners, a single run more than 10% longer than your longest run in the previous month was linked with more overuse injuries, while weekly load changes showed no clear link.
It's an observational study, so it shows an association, not proof of cause. But it's a good reason to keep your long runs in range over the final weeks.
For niggles themselves, some of the most practical guidance comes from tendon research. In a well-known trial of people with Achilles tendon pain, participants kept running and training with pain up to about 5 out of 10, as long as it settled by the next morning and didn't build from week to week. They did as well as a group who stopped running and jumping for six weeks.
That's a useful rule of thumb for tendon pain. It isn't a rule for bone pain, which behaves differently and deserves more caution.
Keep going, modify, or get it checked
No article can diagnose you. But these three groups cover most of what we see in clinic in the weeks before a big race.
Usually fine to keep going
Muscle soreness that's spread out rather than in one spot
Stiffness that eases as you warm up
Discomfort that's settled by the next morning
No change to the way you're running
Worth modifying
Pain that's there but tolerable during the run and settles within 24 hours
A niggle that's stable, not getting worse, over a week or so
Modifying might mean shortening a run, dropping the hills or speed work, swapping a session for cycling or pool running, or keeping your longest run within what you've already done. Strength work usually stays, at a lighter volume.
Worth getting checked
Pain in one small spot on a bone that you can find by pressing (shin, foot, hip), especially if it comes on earlier in each run. Our article on bone stress injuries explains why.
Pain at rest or at night
Limping, or changing the way you run to avoid it
Swelling, locking, a knee that gives way, or losing confidence in a joint. Knee noise on its own isn't one of these; we explain why in My Knee Clicks When I Squat.
Pain that's worse each week, even after backing off
Pain that's worse the morning after a run, more than once
Chest pain, unusual breathlessness or dizziness while running are a GP or urgent-care matter, not a physio one.
"Should I still run it?"
This is the question most runners are really asking, and it rarely gets a straight answer.
Sometimes the honest answer is "yes, with a few changes". Sometimes it's "not the full marathon this year". Auckland Marathon allows entries to be transferred to a shorter distance until that distance sells out, so check the event website for current terms and deadlines.
Dropping to the half isn't failing. It's choosing the race your body can run well on the day.
A physio assessment can help with that decision. The point isn't to hand you a yes or no. It's to work out what's actually going on, what you can safely keep doing, and what's worth changing for the next few weeks.
What we'd suggest for the weeks ahead
Keep the plan, not the backlog. Missed weeks stay missed.
Keep your longest run close to what you've already done in the past month.
Keep a simple niggle log: where it is, when it comes on, how bad it is, how it feels the next morning. The trend tells you more than one bad day.
Don't start anything new: new shoes, new strength exercises, or a new training approach you've read about this week.
The takeaway
A niggle is information, not a verdict. Most settle with sensible tweaks. The few that don't usually tell you, through where the pain is, when it comes on and which way it's heading.
If something's in the "worth getting checked" group, or you can't tell which group it's in, we're happy to take a look. Book online below.
References
Schuster Brandt Frandsen J, Hulme A, Parner ET, et al. How much running is too much? Identifying high-risk running sessions in a 5200-person cohort study. Br J Sports Med 2025;59:1203–1210.
Silbernagel KG, Thomeé R, Eriksson BI, Karlsson J. Continued sports activity, using a pain-monitoring model, during rehabilitation in patients with Achilles tendinopathy: a randomized controlled study. Am J Sports Med 2007;35(6):897–906.
References
1. Schuster Brandt Frandsen J, Hulme A, Parner ET, et al. How much running is too much? Identifying high-risk running sessions in a 5200-person cohort study. Br J Sports Med 2025;59:1203–1210.
2. Silbernagel KG, Thomeé R, Eriksson BI, Karlsson J. Continued sports activity, using a pain-monitoring model, during rehabilitation in patients with Achilles tendinopathy: a randomized controlled study. Am J Sports Med 2007;35(6):897–906.
