Objective: easy w/ 1 mi @ MP Conditions at 5:35 AM: 32F, calm, thick fog 15 min. core and upper body
Today, I would like to talk about elbows. In college I had an anatomy-in-art professor who liked to say "as goes the elbow, so goes the angle of the scapula." I wonder if we runners should have a similar saying that ends with "...so go the legs." I have a couple of bad running habits I'm trying to break. One is curling my toes. I can't imagine why I do that but it has got to stop. The other is what I call my "chicken arms." It's mostly the right arm now, since I've been working on it and the left is coming along nicely. But the right elbow likes to float outward and stop swinging. When I concentrate on making the chicken arms swing properly, it's like someone flipped the turbo switch. It makes a huge difference in speed and fluidity. I often watch my shadow as I cross through the light from street lamps to see whether I look like a "real runner," and the elbow swing makes a difference there too. And then I ran across this little gem in one of my old running books (Miller, Programmed to Run, p. 32): "...during the later laps of high schooler Alan Webb's sub-four-minute mile... his coach Scott Raczko 'implored him to "Keep going! Drive your elbows back!"'" I have a photograph of Deena Kastor, taken by a friend of mine at the Women's Olympic Marathon Trials in Boston last year. Deena was practically flying down the home stretch and my friend snapped her photo at the exact moment when Deena was directly in front of her. (So there is no trick of the angle.) Deena's elbow is so far back that it's practically level with her shoulder. I can scarcely make my elbow go that far back while sitting in this chair! Add running, and making sure the shoulders stay down and relaxed, and that's a real challenge. But later on the same page of Miller books, we read this: "Craig [Poole, women's track coach at BYU] pointed out that both turnover and push-off are managed by posture and arm swing. ...He went on to say not only that running technique is the foundation of perfromance but also that it can be taught and learned." [My emphasis.]
So here's to reaching for our goals with our elbows. :)
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