Background/Purpose Personal and situational factors affect athletes' cognitive, emotional, and behavioral responses to injury, and their physical and psychological outcomes (Wiese-Bjornstal, 2010). Type of injury is one personal factor influencing athletes' responses. The majority of sport injury psychology research is based on macrotrauma injuries (single, sudden force onset; Flint, 1998), but athletes with microtrauma or overuse injuries (accumulation of repeated small forces onset; Flint, 1998) may differ in their psychological responses because of the unique challenges presented by these insidious onset and often chronic injuries (Henert, 2000; Wasley & Lox, 1998). Our purpose was to use narrative inquiry to examine the distinctive experiences and responses of eleven male and female adult long-distance runners who had recently experienced microtrauma injuries.
Method Qualitative data analysis of interview data led to a chronological timeline of the injury experience and an assessment of the meaning attributed to these injury experiences using a variation of Mishler's (1986) core-narrative approach.
Analysis/Results Results showed that long-distance runners with microtrauma injuries experienced psychosocial responses in a consistent and sequential order: planning for achievement of an athletic goal during the pre-injury phase, emotional distress and social support during the onset, diagnosis and acceptance of the injury, and learned perseverance as an outcome of the injury. A higher order meaning theme of “injury invisibility” emerged with dimensions that included ambiguity of diagnosis, feeling psychologically weak, seeking validation, pressure to continue training, and inconsistency of symptoms.
Conclusions The use of narrative methodology proved effective in identifying psychosocial experiences unique to microtrauma injured long-distance runners.