From the article:

But elites, even in training, seem to push past many signals that body-listeners would seem to notice. Take Paul Gompers, who finished fourth at the 1988 Olympic marathon trials with severe Achilles tendinitis. He reportedly ran 175 miles a week, including regular 37-milers. Rather than listening to their bodies, these runners seem to be giving the orders.

Yet sports doctors and top coaches side with Sheehan. "There's no reason to doubt this principle of listening to your body," says William Levine, M.D., an orthopedic surgeon and head team doctor at Columbia University. While soreness can be fought through, pain is the body's way of saying you've overdone it. Jennifer Solomon, a physiatrist at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York who sees "tons of runners," offers the same advice. Soreness is one thing, she says, but pain must be respected. Even the world's best runners would be better off paying closer attention to their bodies' ebbs and flows, these professionals insist.

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