A few years back, before his first NYC marathon, Lance Armstrong appeared in a Saturday Night Live sketch as himself, racing in a Celebrity Ironman. Still wearing his bike helmet, Armstrong bobbed along the run course, his arms flailing incongruously in front of him. The sketch cuts back to baffled-looking ESPN commentators played by Jason Sudeikis and Seth Meyers, who intones, “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I don’t think Lance Armstrong knows how to run.”

Lance on SNL

(Thanks to NBC’s ridiculous practices re. video file sharing outside the US, the only clip I could find of the sketch is part of a homemade montage of SNL sports sketches; Lance’s is third, after Peyton Manning.)

Since I returned to running a few weeks ago, I feel a little like Celebrity Ironman Lance: I’m never sure what to do with my hands when I run. As any new mom will tell you, on the rare occasion you find yourself NOT holding/feeding/carrying/cajoling/diapering/wiping/soothing/swaddling/burping or bathing your new baby, you’ll be frantically running about the house making use of your newly-freed hands to accomplish all of the things you can’t do whilst baby-wielding – sort of like the Tasmanian devil, but clutching a bottle of Febreeze. Anyway, heading out for a run unencumbered has come to feel all kinds of wrong, so to keep my arms from flailing in the air a la Lance, I’ve devised a few other activities to keep them busy. They include, in no particular order:

-Clutching my iPod so tight it jumps songs with almost every footstep

-Waving at stroller-pushing running moms like a lunatic; though since I don’t have my babe with me to identify myself as one of the tribe, most of them look at me like I actually AM a lunatic

-Yanking my too-tight running tights up in the hope that they’ll finally settle somewhere resembling a “waist.” Ah, someday.

-Doing the double-guns finger point and making high-pitched “pew-pew-pew” laser sounds at anyone who passes me – which is, let’s face it, everybody.

-Use my free fingers to count the number of things I’ll have to attend to simultaneously the minute I step back through the door.

At very least, unlike Ricky Bobby doing his first interview in Talledega Nights, I don’t just let them float slowly into mid-air. Thank goodness for that.

Ricky Bobby\’s floating hands

Perdita Felicien edged teammate Priscilla Lopes-Schliep by a hundredth of a second to claim silver in the 60m hurdles at the IAAF Indoor World Championships today in Doha, Qatar.  American Lolo Jones ran away from the field for the win, posting a 7.72s.

Felicien’s 7.86s was a Season Best for her, and offers some positive mojo leading up to the first race of the new Diamond League series on May 14th right back here in Qatar.

Hey everyone in the iRun world!  Thanks to those that responded to my last post – good to see that runners are asking more questions about what they have on their feet.   As usual, I love questions so keep em coming!

For this blog, I’d like to talk a bit about the confusion surrounding picking running shoes when you have orthotics.  I could probably write a book about this topic alone but I’ll try to keep it short so you can all get out for your runs!

I really feel that everyone needs to have the proper level of support with their running shoes as a starter.  For some, this will mean a motion control shoe with the proper level of posting and for others it will mean a minimilist neutral shoe (or no shoes!).  We should be able to get most runners and walkers lined up straight with the proper level of support in the running shoes.  Once that foundation is established, there are certainly cases where arch supports may be necessary.  Congenital issues (thanks Mom and Dad!), soft tissue issues and other biomechanical problems can often require the use of orthotics (either custom or over the counter).  Because most orthotics these days are made based on positioning your foot in a neutral position, there is often very little concern of over correction with the shoe.  

Where much of the confusion comes in with fitting shoes with orthtotics is that it’s commonly assumed that if you have an orthotic, you go with a neutral shoe.  This rarely works unless you are neutral to begin with.  When running, we come down on our feet with up to 2-3 times our body weight.  If you have a runner who over-pronates (rolls inwards with the feet) excessively, it would be very difficult to control this with an orthotic.  The shoe, however, should be able to control this.  Once we have that over-pronation controlled with the proper shoe, we have a perfect foundation to place an orthotic on top of if necessary. 

So to summarize:

(1) In most cases, select the proper level of support with your running shoes first.  This is your foundation and we should be able to get most runners lined up properly in their correct support category. 

(2) Orthotics, when necessary, provide arch support and can help with other issues that may not be able to be addressed by the shoes alone.  Because in most cases we don’t have to change support categories of running shoes, it often makes the transition to the orthotic much easier.

This certainly won’t apply to everyone but I do find it works well in most situations.  Hope this helps and definitely keep the questions coming!

Ryan

Just a quick update from the World Indoor Championships in Qatar.  Both Priscilla Lopes-Schliep and Perdita Felicien advanced this morning in their respective 60m hurdles heats.  In fact, Lopes-Schliep posted the day’s fastest time (7.94s).  The semifinals and finals are tomorrow, and you can watch a highlight package show on CBC at 5pm Eastern.

Nicole Edwards was not able to advance out of the heats in her 1500m event.

Tomorrow is the first night of competition for the IAAF World Indoor Championships in Doha, Qatar.

Canada’s wagon, as usual these days, is hitched to Priscilla Lopes-Schliep in the women’s 60m hurdles.  She’s coming off a disappointing fifth place finish at a meet in France earlier this month, but her 7.82s Season Best is the fastest 2010 time of anyone in the field and she’s already won the Millrose Games (Manhattan) and the Sparkassen Cup (Stuttgart) this year.  Her first heat goes off at 2:45pm Doha time (6:45am Eastern Time).  Perdita Felicien’s heat goes 5 minutes earlier.  The semis and finals are Saturday morning and afternoon.

Manitoba’s 23 year old Nicole Edwards will also be there in the women’s 1500m.

You can listen to live internet radio broadcasts here, or watch live streaming video at dailymotion.com and cbcsports.ca.  CBC TV will also have tape-delayed coverage of Saturday’s events from 5:00-6:00pm on Saturday.

“The world in which you were born is just one model of reality. Other cultures are not failed attempts at being you; they are unique manifestations of the human spirit.”
Wade Davis

VICKY: How is it going with the book?

GRANT: I’m up to Chapter 25, but I have something else which is competing for my attention.

VICKY: What’s that?

GRANT: I’m listening to the CBC Radio Ideas Podcast of the 2009 Massey Lectures by Wade Davis.

VICKY: The guy who wrote The Serpent and the Rainbow?

GRANT: Yeah, I’ve never read that but I did see the horror movie they made about it.  But anyway, this series is amazing.  Davis is an anthropologist and great lover of the diversity of human cultures.  He has a great balance of scholarship and learning through experience.  The reason I bring this up is because it’s actually related to the Born to Run Book.

VICKY: How so?  I’m only on Chapter 7.

GRANT: Well, Davis has been talking about the San People of the Kalahari Desert.  They are considered (through DNA research) to be direct descendants of the first humans.  What is awesome is that they are runners.  Great runners.

VICKY: Aha.  Like the Rarámuri or Tarahumara from Born to Run.

GRANT: Exactly what I was thinking.  Isn’t it amazing that these humans in environments largely unchanged from what we evolved into were RUNNERS.

VICKY: Yeah, that is cool.  Running was obviously something that made us human.

GRANT: More on this to follow as we work through the book, but there is one story I really like (even though I’m a vegetarian).   I read on the jacket cover of Born to Run about how the Tarahumara would chase a deer until they captured it.  Wade Davis tells a similar story about the San People.  They would chase antelope.  They would run after the antelope for days until eventually the animal would collapse from exhaustion.  Then they’d eat it.

VICKY: Wow. It’s surprising to find out just how great humans are at running.

GRANT: It’s what made us who we are.

Contrary to what you might guess from the title Run, Baby, Run, this *isn’t* a blog about enslaving infants in brutal marathon training regimes – however novel and controversial that might be.  (The entries would practically write themselves. “Are Crawling Breaks Cheating?”; “10 Ways to End Diaper Chafe;” and my personal favorite, “Should Soothers be Allowed in Races?”)

Nope, Run, Baby, Run is actually a three-word description of my running history to date. I ran (a lot; 6 marathons and countless halfs in the span of four years); then I had a baby (the delightful Ms. Alexandra, born in early January); and now I’m running again (slowly, sporadically, and humbly.) Against the advice of pretty much every sane person I know, I’ve registered for the Ottawa Half-Marathon at the end of May – in part to ensure that I actually *do* start running again, but also to test out how something that was once so all-consuming as my run training could be re-worked into a teeny bit of balance in an otherwise chaotic, sleep-deprived existence.

Of course, but a few weeks into the journey (to use my favourite reality show parlance – have you ever noticed that everything on reality shows – from finding love in a herd of catty bachelorettes to sustaining drunken head injuries –  is referred to as a ‘journey’?), I’m already ready to hoist on my shoulders any mom who manages to get out the door in a pair of running shoes, even if it’s just to run to the curb to grab the newspaper. I hope to use this blog, not just to tell my own little training story, but also to share the experience and wisdom of other new moms who are trying find some sort of physical and emotional equilibrium through running in these already-grueling post-partum months. Oh, and I’d also kind of like my old jeans to fit again.

Since I’m already a week late in posting my first entry, I also know finding the time to blog consistently will be a challenge. So forgive me in advance if, some days, my entries are more the cryptic scribblings of a an overtired lunatic than paragraphs upon paragraphs of eloquent blog-prose. See the description of my Monday workout, below, for an example of what I mean.

Hours slept: 5

Most consecutive hours slept: 1.5

Kilometres run: 3

Most consecutive kilometres run: 1 (had to stop three times to adjust the speed on Alex’s swing, which sits next to our treadmill. She’s still too little for the jogging stroller. )

Thoughts on race goal: What was I thinking?!