I think that when you finish a race this happy:

it should be considered a success.

I did my first triathlon yesterday. A Sprint (750m swim, 20k bike, 5k run). In 1:29. The whole time, even when my legs were screaming on the bike and even when it felt like my calves were going to explode on the run, all I could think was “This is so much better than a half-marathon!”

Probably because of the perfect conditions and a great route (that I was familiar with), and really sound organization, and crazy friendly participants, and doing it with my husband (his first, too), and the best cheering section I could have hoped for, and even practically falling face first in the sand when I got out of the water, and not to mention actually wearing a wet suit in public (how’s that for a run-on sentence?), it was such a great experience.

But also? It was just… fun. I mean, you long-distance runners know what I mean when I talk about the pain, right? And that mental fight you come up against? It just didn’t happen yesterday. I even scored a PB on the 5k run!

Let’s just say, this has me seriously reconsidering that 2011 marathon I was thinking about.

(Pre-race with my husband and our two girls.)

The four main components of the Chi Running form are posture, lean, heel lift and arm swing. This blog entry discusses heel lift.

In Chi Running your legs and feet are only used to support your aligned posture when you run. The muscles in your legs and feet are not required to propel you down the road since you are creating the forward pull of gravity with your aligned posture and lean to achieve this propulsion.

Remember the exercise for the “Intro Blog”?

1. Stand up straight with good posture and completely relax all the muscles in your legs, including everything from the knees down and especially the ankles.
2. Now lean forward from your ankles ever so slightly and your body will start to fall forward.
3. If you continue to lean far enough you will eventually pick up one of your feet and place it on the ground a foot or two forward to keep you from falling on your face.

Note how you simply picked that foot up and put it down to support your body. You didn’t use any muscle in the legs or feet to move your body forward. What if you repeated the exercise above and instead of putting that first foot down and coming to a halt, you just put it down momentarily and started the forward fall again this time using your other foot for momentary support. If you continue from one foot to the other you are moving forward in a controlled fall using gravity, not the muscles in your legs and feet.

You want your feet to create the least amount of contact with the ground. The longer the feet are in contact with the ground the more of a “rooted” connection you make with the ground and the less gravity is able to pull you forward.

In ChiRunning you pick up your feet by first peeling your foot off the ground starting with the heel then ending with the toes. You then you lift your heel only high enough to clear the height of the opposite ankle. Each heel moves in a circular fashion over the opposite ankle with the same movement as if you were pedaling a bicycle with toes clips. This circular movement is directly below or slightly behind your hips since you are leaning. The whole time you are lifting your heels your lower legs, ankles and feet are completely limp and relaxed. If they are completely relaxed then your toes will naturally stay down when you lift your heel. This avoids dorsiflexing (toes up higher than heel) and heel striking.

Chi Running uses a mid-foot strike rather than forefoot strike or heel strike. A forefoot strike engages the ball of the foot and subsequently the calf muscle which we are trying to avoid. Try standing up on the balls of your feet and you’ll feel the calf muscle working. A heel strike is not energy efficient when you are trying to avoid muscle usage as every time your heel contacts the ground in front of you it is a momentary braking action.

Sometimes, I look at the calendar and plan out races.

I think of what will be happening in my life around certain times of year and I browse through the Run Nova Scotia site or the Triathlon Nova Scotia site or I click on race links and daydream.

The thing that’s the hardest to remember is the pain. I ran a half marathon a few weeks ago and while I’ve been toying with the idea of a second marathon sometime within the next 18 months, as I turned off the run route at 21kms, I could not have been happier that I wasn’t going any further.

It’s not the race, is it? That makes marathons so hard, I mean. It’s the hours logged on the road, the injury you seem to be always on the verge of getting. It’s the dark place you visit once  a week on your long run. It’s the way long runs start to overtake your life – you’re either just recovering from one or planning your next. It’s the toll it takes on your family, because when you run for four hours, there’s no energy left to run through the sprinkler with your kids.

I read the other day that we shouldn’t rearrange our lives to fit our exercise or training schedule, but that we should make and set goals that fit easily into our life. I’m not sure how much I agree with that. To a certain extent, there’s truth there, but there’s also something to be said for digging down to the depths of your reserves and seeing, first hand, just what you’re made of. There’s something to be said for surviving those last 8k of a marathon (I call it “The Dark Place”). There’s something to be said for logging hours on the road and living to tell about it.

I’m not sure when my next marathon will be, but the voice whispers to me. I look at the calendar, flip through the months, 2010, 2011… and I hear it. “Marathon. Marathon. Marathon.” I close the calendar, tell that whisper to shush, that I don’t have time for that right now. It’s quiet, for a while, until I find myself on the Ottawa Marathon site, looking at the route. “Just one more,” the voice says to me, “Just one more time and then you can put it to rest.” I suspect that this voice is lying, and one more will turn into one more and then just one more after that. I wonder if this long distance running, if this desire to catch another glimpse of what I’m made of is little more than a bug that never truly goes away.

But for now, I close the calendar, shush the whisper, and run through the sprinkler with my kids.

I’ve mentioned before that I coach a 10k running clinic, right? During our weekly talks, a question that often comes up is “How much should I run?” Outside of their outlined training schedule provided by the clinic and the standard recommendation of 30 minutes of exercise most days, there’s no real right answer. Is 5k three times a week good? They ask me. Is 10k a good distance?

It’s a very personal journey, I always tell them. Getting out and getting moving is the most important thing. But finding the motivation to get you moving is equally important.

As much as I love running (and I do) and as good as I feel when I’m feeling fit and strong, I slip off the fitness track easily. If I don’t have a goal race in my near future (I’m talking four to five months ahead), I find that I start skipping runs. I know this about myself, I know that races are what keeps me on the road (or in the water, on my bike and on the road, lately).

Beyond the motivation, though, comes support. And without a strong support team, it becomes very hard to achieve goals. My husband, for example, happily watches the kids every Sunday morning. Often we tag-team to get our runs or bike rides in. When I ran my first marathon last fall, he was my road crew, driving beside me for as much of the route as he could. There’s my parents, too, who are our “race day babysitters”. They’re also my most devoted fans, which means more than I think they know.

What about you? What is your motivation? What keeps you lacing up your kicks run after run?

Hey iRun readers!  Hopefully everyone’s managing to stay cool and are having a great summer of running and racing.  

As a pedorthist (aka  a guy who deals with feet), one question that I certainly get asked alot is how to fit running shoes. What’s the proper fit?  Can they be too big?  Too small?  What are the consequences of wearing shoes too big or too small?  Hopefully I can provide a little insight into what to look for when fitting your running shoes.

First of all, here are a few basic tips when going out to buy your running shoes:

• Try shoes on closer to the end of the day or after a run/walk when your feet are likely to be a little more swollen.
• Always stand when checking the size.
• Don’t be alarmed if your shoe size various significantly from brand to brand (even different models within the same brand can have different sizing).  I often see people caught up with being a certain size which can certainly lead to a lot of grief.  This is also one of the concerns with buying shoes online.  Unless it’s exactly the same model from the same year, be careful as sizing is often different!
• Bring your regular run socks with you when you go in to try on shoes.  Thickness of sock can definitely change shoe size!

That being said, let’s look at what constitutes a ‘proper’ fit.  Ideally, when standing there is approximately 1/4 – 1/2  a thumbnails space from the end of your longest toe to the end of the shoe.  For width, you want to be filling out the sides of the shoe without hanging over the midsole.  For width, it often helps to look at the laces when you have the shoes laced up.  The eyelets (the holes that the laces go through) should be about an inch apart and pretty consistant throughout.  If the gap between eyelets is quite large the shoe is likely too narrow.  If the eyelets of the shoes are being pulled together, you might want to look for something a little narrower (many of the brands have width sizing).

This being the ideal, there is certainly quite a bit of room to vary here for personal preference.  Some certainly like their shoes to fit a bit snugger while others prefer to have a little more space.  This is often figured out through trial and error (some expensive experiments!).  Problem with shoes being too small is a heightened risk of black toenails and blisters due to the foot rubbing up against the material of the shoe.  Problem with shoes being too small is that the shoe may bend in the wrong spot.  If you look at the bottom of your shoes, you’ll notice some little grooves cut into the outsole of the shoe near where the toes bend (called flex grooves).  If the shoes are too big, this groove is in the wrong spot and can potentially cause trauma to the forefoot.  Shoes that are too big can also lead to blistering due to excessive movement in the shoe.

If you’ve been running for years, you likely already know what works best for you.  For those newer into the sport or for those experiencing problems with shoe fit, it can certainly help to find someone knowledgeable at one of your local specialty shoe stores to help you out.

Happy running!

Ryan

One aspect in particular that I struggle with is to push on when the going gets tough. If I’m hill or speed training and the pain starts to flow in, my mind immediately starts talking intelligently foolishly. Just stop. Come on, stop. S-T-O-P. What’s this matter? Who cares about this hill? No one’s here to see you, no one will know you didn’t finish it. And so on.

I’ve gotten better at tuning out this voice in the past year or so and as a result have really pushed my limits a couple of times. Do you know what? The limits I had? The ones I had put in place for myself? They weren’t what I thought. Pushing through the “pain” (and of course I mean the acid in my legs and fire in my lungs – not real injury) has rewarded me greatly.

Every Tuesday night I coach a 10k clinic, and last week we started hills. Everyone struggled – it was a big hill – but they did really great. But one woman in particular had a more difficult run that she expected, I think. The hill was bigger than she realized (and we ran more of it than her previous clinic had). I ran with her for a while, encouraging her as she pushed through, but eventually got the feeling that she didn’t want me with her anymore.

That’s where I struggle with coaching. I’m never quite sure how hard to push. A few people are very clear about their goals, a few people are already very strong runners and others have a lot of determination. But some? I guess it’s because I don’t know them as well, and I worry about pushing them away. Do they want an instructor who lets them walk the hill if they want to? Or do they want an instructor who’s there beside them talking in their ear trying to drown out their negative thoughts as they push through?

One of the reasons that I believe I am a good instructor is because I’ve been the person who didn’t believe in herself, and I’ve come out the other side with the faith that if I try, if I really, really put my all into it, there’s no telling what I can accomplish. And if I can make just one person feel that way about themselves, then there’s not much more I can ask for, is there?

Is it still summer?  my four year old asked me this morning, as she laid beside me in my bed, head resting on my arm, feathery hair tickling my nose. It’s been summer for a really long time.

Has it? I thought. Here I am, rushed while buying groceries and concerning myself with things like moping the floors and laundry and what to pack in the kids daycare bags when I forgot to check the weather and paying bills and squeezing in time for training runs/swims/bikes and being prepared for the clinic I coach each Tuesday night and if we’ve gotten enough family time this week and if I can squeeze in that manicure Tuesday afternoon before my meetings in Charlottetown and did someone feed the dog?

I can’t count the number of times I’ve turned down an offer to play babies or puppies or catch a bouncy ball with my kids because I need to do something else.

What will they remember, I ask myself. Will they remember a mother who took care of herself, who was healthy and fit and strong? Will they remember a mother who sometimes didn’t care about the dishes in the sink and instead sat down and played dollies? Will they remember a mother who snapped at them at four o’clock when they were hanging off her legs and there was still a million things to get done before dinner? Will they remember a mother that gave time outs and punishments? I imagine they’ll remember a little bit of all of that.

It’s easy to doubt yourself, though. Here in this heat as summer buzzes quickly by and every single person I talk to wonders out loud just where the time has gone. Every person but one.

To her, summer is bubbles on the deck, sheets hanging on the clothesline that are low enough to run through, sprinklers and a breeze through her open window as she naps.

Maybe I should take a second look at what summer means to me, too

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The four main components of the Chi Running form are posture, lean, heel lift and arm swing. This blog entry discusses lean.

Your lean is what engages gravity to pull you forward so that you don’t have to propel yourself by pushing off with your feet and leg muscles, thus allowing them to remain relaxed when you run.

When leaning you engage the maximum pull of gravity if your posture is completely aligned and you are only leaning forward from your ankles with your legs and feet completely relaxed from the knees down.

Try it for yourself … stand up straight and tall … then …

(1) Only bend your neck so your head is leaning forward … leave the rest of the body straight and upright … do you feel gravity pulling you forward? … Nope.
(2) Bend forward at the waist where your belly button is located … leave everything below the belly button straight and upright … do you feel gravity pulling you forward? … Nope.
(3) Bend forward at the hips … leave everything below the hips straight and upright… do you feel gravity pulling you forward? … Nope.

OK now stand up straight and tall and relax your legs, ankles and feet completely … keep your entire posture aligned and let it fall forward slightly with the only bend being at your ankles … do your feel gravity pulling you forward … You bet!

In fact the straighter your posture, the lesser lean that is required to efficiently engage the forward pull of gravity. Whenever I am running to maintain a certain pace and it starts dropping off, the first thing I do is straighten my posture. That alone is usually all that is required to bring my pace back since it increases the pull of gravity for my present angle of lean.

You want to use the component of gravity pulling you forward as much as possible so you don’t want to provide any resistance to it. Resistance comes from holding any tension in your lower legs and ankles which roots your body to the ground and impedes your forward movement. Instead you want to keep your lower legs and ankles loose, relaxed and limp when running.

Your lean is your gas pedal. The more you lean with an aligned posture the greater the component of gravity pulling your forward and the faster you go. The faster you go the more critical it is to relax your lower legs, ankles and feet to minimize resistance to the forward pull of gravity. This is a opposite to most running forms that require more muscle usage to increase speed.

As you increase your angle of lean there is a tendency to want to bend at the waist. Leveling your pelvis stops you from bending at the waist and keeps your posture aligned. The more you lean the more your lower abdominal muscles have to work to keep your pelvis level to prevent you bending at the waist.

Detailed instructions and exercises on how to properly lean are provided within the Chi Running book, video DVDs and audio CDs.