Posts Tagged ‘cadence’

It’s so easy to get carried away with thoughts after a race or a different experience. After Saturday’s Trail Nut race, my thoughts are all over the place.

About a year ago, I posted this video to Facebook and recently posted it to YouTube from a run on Sharp Top mountain in Bedford County:

I’ve watched this video a few times today because I love my voice so much I need to be reminded of how much I was in love with the trails and mountain running just a year ago. The only problem is I only did a handful of runs like that. (If you happen to be a longtime reader, yes, I did blog about that run last year HERE.)

As I look back at my running over the years, even before this blog, I think it’s no coincidence that my injuries have come after many months of just running on roads. After Saturday, I realized that the mix of the two may be very beneficial to me.

Prior to the start of this blog 4 years ago, I ran trails quite a bit, hitting them at least once a week. I had ZERO injuries until I trained for a 10 miler in mid-2006 after I drifted away from trails. While it wasn’t all that much, the first half of last year I had a trail run at least once a month – my injury in the fall came after 4 months completely on roads.

The learning experiences from this past weekend aren’t limited to my post from Sunday. I realized while running Saturday how different my form was on the trails because it HAD to be. As I continue to work on stopping so much heel striking, I noticed how it was nearly impossible to heel strike even if I tried.

I even analyzed this inset photo from the race, blew up the area of my feet and noticed that the next step I was going to take was not going to be a heel strike.

The great thing about this photo is that it was a fairly flat portion of the race – whatever I’m doing to make these changes in my cadence is working.

The desire to run on trails more is also important to the “having fun” aspect of running. In my video above, I had a blast on that run up Sharp Top mountain. In Saturday’s race, I had the most fun I’ve had in years. I still think about how much fun a mountain adventure was back in January 2010.

At this stage of my running and what I feel like is a continued comeback, I have to keep mixing it up. It’s important, I think, to change things, to challenge myself and to keep having fun. If I’m going to have a stronger half of 2011 than the first half – which was my main 2011 goal – all of these things have to happen.

I’ve hinted here and there about some things going on since late fall to get me back to good running, but I have admittedly not been very detailed. I think it’s a fear that if I backtrack in the process that I seriously jinxed myself by talking about it.

Well enough of that. I think it’s important to be a little more upfront about things that I’ve been doing to help me “come back.” If I ever go down this path again, I need it for my own sake, but I also hope others can learn from this.

• I mentioned a long time ago about going to a chiropractor for treatments. I feel this is by far the No. 1 reason I’ve been able to get back to running. Dr. David Wimmer of Wimmer Chiropractic in Forest, Va., has been great. When we first started adjustments of my pelvis and spine back in December he was straight-up honest with me in that if I didn’t get back to running soon that he’d recommend other options. Within a month I was able to get back to 2 miles comfortably and the rest … well, the history is being written now. I’ll be doing a video Q&A with Dr. Wimmer sometime this month to talk about my treatments even more. In the meantime, feel free to “like” him on Facebook and check out his blog here.
• I’ve been very good about getting core workouts in a couple of times a week. I know I can do more, but exceeding my max plank goal last month and aiming for 50 consecutive push-ups this month is how I will continue to commit to the core. As I prepare for another marathon later this year, I know that having a strong core will be one of the main reasons of getting to the start (and finish) line healthy.
• I ditched the foam roller, sort of. This may have come up on here, and I know I’ve vocalized it on Twitter, but the foam roller isn’t for me. I may use it from time to time to make sure I don’t have some crazy knots, or to give myself a back massage, but it was not an effective treatment for me. I have a few stretches that are working well for me right now that I will continue to do.
• I am continuing to work on my cadence. One foot last week was right about 90 strikes. In Saturday’s race, I caught myself a few times slipping into my “old” way of running, which I find very uncomfortable despite my brain sometimes wanting to run that way.
• I am avoiding just going out the door and starting my run. I try to walk at least a quarter mile before I start my run and try to end it with a walk of about the same distance. I think too many times last year I just went out the door and ran, and then just finished up directly outside myself and came inside to log my workout on Daily Mile. I believe that my body is thanking me by doing a warm-up and cool down.
• As much as I hated to cut back on this, I run less with my dog Duke. As spring rolls along I may change this, but I realized after it was too late how much my dog pulled me to the left … which is the side of my injury. I believe that my running form is much to blame for my injury, but Duke contributed to it.

There are so many lessons learned here, and so many things I probably should have been talking about all along. What’s done is done, though, and all I can do is keep moving forward with all these things etched in my brain.

Image: Idea go / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

In seven-plus years of running, plus on and off running in high school 15-plus years ago, one thing that’s never really come up is my running form. Through various training groups and through my own research dealing with injuries, I’ve rarely been concerned about the way I run and never been told to do anything too different. This time around though, it’s different.

As I was running through my ITB injury back in October, I started to think about what had gone wrong. My mileage build-up was fine and I didn’t do anything drastically different in the few weeks leading up to when the problem started. So through various conversations with much more experienced runners, many Google searches and reading excerpts in books, it’s come down to this — my form.

Brandon over at A Healthy Dad wrote about this subject the other day. After I read his post I was reassured that some work I’ve been doing recently was the right thing. I’m not sure why I’ve kind of kept this to myself, but since I got back to running more than a mile at a time, I’ve been working on my cadence. Simply put, to be more effective with running, shorter strides are better. More foot strikes actually leads to less impact with the ground. Sounds weird, right?

Of course I’ve heard this over the years, but I didn’t need to change my form, right? I’ve gradually gotten faster over time and bought shoes people told me to buy, so there was never a need to worry about it. But I think I’ve been wrong about it for a long time and my ITB issue this time around was a big enough wake-up call to change the way I run.

I’m not there yet. I feel far from it. On today’s pretty good 5.1-mile run, I counted my foot strikes twice with one foot — 80 and 82. I have no idea if for my height (5 foot, 10 inches) and weight (186.8 this week, no need for a post on it) if this is good or if I need to continue to work on it. This was for my normal, everyday pace run around 9 minutes a mile. Since I run on so many hills, I need to check my foot strikes on hills, on faster runs, etc.

I do feel like I’m working those uphills the best I have in a while. They feel better than what they did before my injury. Downhills are still iffy, but I think it’s a mental thing. I was going down a nice big hill in October when the pain first hit.

After every injury I’ve had, I feel like I come back stronger and a little bit smarter. This time around, I’m even more confident that I’ll come back stronger and smarter than ever before. It’s just a constant work in progress.