Today felt like a huge breakthrough for me. Here was the result: The roads were icy and snowy and it was 18 degrees outside so I did 6 miles of running around a 1/13th of a mile Gym indoor rubber track at about 7:35 pace. It was so enjoyable I didn't want to stop. Again I didn't have an ipod. I was just really happy to be running and working on my form. And it made WORLDS of difference today. I was very, very pleasantly surprised. Last night I read up on barefoot running tactics from Barefoot Ken Bob at runningbarefoot.org. So today I was really looking forward to trying to apply his advice (since he ran 4 marathons in may of this year without getting injured I can assume he is doing something right.) I can't believe what a difference it made in how it felt to run. I thought I felt great on Saturday when I ran six miles, and I did. But later on Saturday the left upper outside of my calf and my lower lateral quad were kind of tight and sore. I didn't feel pain when I was running to really speak of, but I felt I definitely needed a day off on Sunday to let that recover. But today I felt REALLY great. The major change that I made was with my cadence. That was the missing piece that I didn't understand before last night, and it makes a HUGE difference I found out. Ken Bob recommends running at a minimum of 180 steps per minute or preferably more. If you care to know why, which I think is very helpful and legitimate information after trying it today, read his blog. In any case, I did it today. I periodically calculated my cadence by counting my steps for 6 seconds and multiplying it by 10 (much easier than initially when I tried to count to 180 in a minute while running...don't even bother trying that, believe me it sucks). Every time I counted I was going between 200-220 steps per minute. I played around with running faster speeds and slower speeds, raising my heart rate to the 170's for a quarter mile and timing it (doing around 6 min/mile pace), then scaling back to a heart rate of mid to low 150's and cruising at a 7:30-7:45 pace. Regardless of how fast I was going, or how high my heart rate was, I was surprised to note that my cadence stayed pretty much the same. When I was going slower, I kept my cadence high, and I just wasn't leaned forward into it as much. When I went at 6 min. pace my cadence was the same but I was just falling into it more. I let my whole body relax and I focused on that, and it felt great. For the first time I think I've ever done, I let my hips relax and focused on allowed them to freely rotate forward and backward with my legs, instead of staying rigid while my lower legs did all the work. I kept my upper body upright over my hips and thought about keeping my butt under me and leaned forward from the ankles with my hips forward. The time flew by, and I when it had been 45 minutes I was tempted to keep going so I could keep playing around with it. But I also felt I should be moderate with my mileage as I work into a new form. The thing that was the greatest though about the faster cadence and improved form, is that my legs never seemed to feel tired at all. My calves and feet felt relaxed, like they were hardly working and all, as compared to when I first started barefooting my calves were screaming at me the whole time. I realize now that was due to 2 things. 1 - the muscles needed to adjust, but 2 (and more importantly) I was doing it wrong. I was still taking big strides with a low cadence and that forced my calves and feet to do way more work than they really need to be doing. I could feel a very stark contrast today in the six miles I did compared to Saturday. My calves and feet feel very fresh and almost unused as compared to Saturday afterward. My inner/upper thighs and my upper hamstrings I'm noticing got more of a workout today with the adjusted form, but they don't feel painful. And this goes without saying at this point, but the left knee pain that basically debilitated me 3 weeks ago from even running 1 mile, is non-existent now. Now here's the bad news...there was 1 minor set-back that happened today. The Gym Manager Nazi. At about 30 minutes into my run I noticed the Gym manager 'Todd' walking around the track very casually looking down at the gym below appearing to be inspecting how things were going. Conveniently (or cowardly, whichever) about 3-4 minutes later one of the trainers Jerry came up and stopped me, informing me that I was not allowed to run barefoot at the gym. I was really happy until then, because I thought it was completely ridiculous, and I kind of challenged him on it for a minute or two until I realized he had been sent by Todd. So I went down and nicely approached Todd about how he might be able to "help me out". He sadly said there was "nothing he can do" and "its corporate policy" and I think I heard a "blah blah blah" in there a few times...and a "you can try those 'aqua socks'" which I thought was kind of funny but didn't laugh out loud. But I politely thanked him for trying and went back and apologized to Jerry for challenging him (I'm pretty sure I wasn't overly nice to him initially). Then, although I wasn't stoked that I couldn't run barefoot anymore because I was really enjoying it, I was stoked that I had brought my FiveFingers. And I was happy to be able to slip them on and continue to run. I was really glad I had them with me. But I was also really glad I had about 5 miles to test out running fully barefoot because I think it really helped me improve my form immensely. I wonder why I didn't ever try to learn "how" to run before now? I just kept getting injured, all the time, and I don't remember ever thinking to ask anyone "how" to run properly so that I could stop getting injured. I just looked to better shoes to solve my problems. Until I actually had given up and written off running for some day in the future when something miraculous would happen and my body could all-of-a-sudden run far without getting hurt. Nan kept saying I should run a marathon with her (because we had always talked about doing it since we met, and I wanted to), but I just felt defeated and lacking hope that I ever would really. But not anymore...I feel very grateful for this new found knowledge of how to run, because now I believe I can run a marathon with Nan next year, and do it without getting injured and love it.
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