ThinkRunning

Well, some running and some stuff about the website…

New Website

Yes, it’s taken a while but at long last I have created my very first scratch written theme for WordPress featuring the JDGallery plugin and SimplePress Forum.

I really like both of these plugins and they seem to work very well indeed so full credit to the people that created these. Keep up the good work!

Now I know about the basics of theme writing I plan to do some more when I have the time and perhaps showcase them on another site separate to ThinkRunning. ThinkRunning is my little project that is a showcase for my work yes but also a place where I share my thoughts about running and my journey in the quest for better performance and injury free running.

Which of course leads me on to talk about my running…

Running

I am steadily coming back from a Summer of injury and no running. I have been completely pain free for a week or two now – I think there have been odd strange pains every now and then but nothing to tell me that the injury hasn’t healed or I have re-injured myself.

I have been very careful in starting back and have concentrated on getting my technique correct to increase the likelihood of me making a successful return to injury free running.

I still seem to learn a bit each time I run. The basics are quite astounding though. I will never understand how on earth I never realised how simple it was. It is as though the “secrets” of injury free and efficient running were hidden in plain sight. The harder I looked, the less I could see. You really do have to stop looking for magic and simply feel what your body is doing. Sadly if you are like me it will take a long time for you to train your senses, proprioception, reflexes and sub conscious to simply run properly again. This is what comes with a lifetime of isolating our senses and especially the nerves in our feet from the ground beneath us and learninig to trust our bodysense without assumptions. Of this I am sure. How many times have you found yourself saying “no, this can’t be the right wqy to do it, I must be wrong”. Why ust you be wrong? If it feels different, it doesn’t mean it’s wrong, just different and if you want to change that can be a good thing.

What I find saddens me is I see lots of people around me being upset and frustrated by running induced injuries and it is as if they are blind because they cannot see what is causing it all. Some people do not wish to listen so I don’t volunteer anything nowadays. If someone asks me for help then I oblige to the best of my abilities. I love helping people. It really gives me a sense of happiness to see people make positive changes that will allow them to continue to enjoy running like they never imagined rather than put up with the constant frustration of injury, rest, re-injury etc due to not changing what is the root cause of injuries.

I have been there, done that and had the stress fracture, tendon injury, you name it really. Running, or more correctly, running badly has left my body and mind battered and bruised to the point where I very nearly gave up.

I am so glad I didn’t give up though because now I feel as though I am just beginning to enjoy running all over again. Running feels so different nowadays. Yes it is still not easy but my pace for a given effort has improved, the aches and pains have gone and hopefully so have the injuries!

On Saturday (10/110/09) My wife and I ran with Beth, a friend of ours on a lovely off road course. We caught the train from Grindleford to Edale, then ran from Edale back to Grindleford for a chip buttie and huge mug of hot tea at the Grindleford Cafe. That is a lovely way to spend a Saturday!

This run was the longest one I have done since June and it was all on a hard off road course with lots of climb and descent. I have now learned how to use gravity even on the steepest of hills. I am releived that it still takes a lot of effort to do. When it was explained ot me ages ago I couldn’t understand how you could use gravity to help you up hills. Basically you fall forwards just like you do on the flat, picking your feet up and catchng yourself from falling on a knife edge, perpetuating the unbalance. Up hills this takesa lot of strength to maintain this constant stae of unbalancing forwards, hence the effort. I did notice though that this was comparitively the easiest way I have ever ascended these hills and I have run up there a number of times now! On the way back down LoseHill to Hope I learned how to control the speed and not let it run away with you on the steepest of hills too. It is leaning back a little to control speed – you have to on a very steep hill. However, the hips stay a tiny bit forward so you land properly and you pull the feet from the ground properly. I imagine the torso is actually perpendicular at this point but the steepness of the hill gives the perception that you are leaning back a bit. It pays to remember to bend the knees here and you will descend nice and softly following the contour of the ground down and away from you rather than stepping out into space then crashing down in front of your centre of gravity.

Saturday’s run saw me cover nearly twelve miles of off road running – afterwards there were no aches and pains, no DOMS the day after either, in fact I was fine to run five miles at a good pace on Sunday. This shows me that my technique is better than it ever has been and I am really looking forward to regaining my full fitness to see what I can really achieve with my running.

Here is the course we went on…

http://www.runsaturday.com/tabId/64/activityId/157939/Default.aspx

I do hope that somebody will find what I write useful or helpful. Some people may call me a “Pose nut” but basically I am just a runner and what I do is run. There is no such thing as Pose running as far as I am concerned because Pose is a teaching method, not a style of running per se. I don’t think about Pose when I run, I just concentrate on maintaining that state of unbalance and the rest just happens.

That isn’t to say that I don’t find Pose Method useful or a good idea because I think it is all these things. Pose Method has helped me to run again without injuring myself. It won’t work for everyone but it will work for a lot of people.

Tonight’s Run – 13/10/2009

Tonight felt really good from a technique point of view. My feet felt like they were just tapping the ground away beneath me and I was keeping a good pace. I don’t feel fit yet though and should consider running a little slower now. Oe thing that occurred to me while running tonight was about the fall as we call it. In order to be able to pull our foot from the ground properly we need to unweight properly which is when our bodyweight lessens as we travel over our support point. If this unweighting doesn’t happen properly then we cannot pull our in time and I think we may also try pushing to compensate. When this happens then our trailing foot is left on the ground too long and we put the othe rfoot down prematurely before our body has moved over support. Basically if we don’t unweight properly it impedes the whole running action.

How do we unweight properly then? I hear you ask. Well, we have to make sure that our alignment is good, our hips are forwards leading our fall and we have good posture. When we do this then everything else just happens on time. It won’t be perfect but it will be good enough to give you the perception fo running efficiently and I thnk you will realise that you can now adjust things as you run and feel the difference. The cruicial part as I see and percieve it is getting the hips forwards and the upper torso nicely aligned. It doesn’t have to be perfect but it has to be near enough. The hips have to be forwards enough to destroy balance over support and sustain that lean so you run with the least amount of braking possible.

This is what I thought tonight. It may make perfect sense to some of you, to others it may well be gibberish. Make of it what you will, if it helps I’d be interested to hear.

Here is my run tonight…

http://www.runsaturday.com/tabId/64/activityId/160453/Default.aspx