Heel striking in shoes (foot lands in front of the body…although at 5 minute miles what looks like a heel strike often ends up being a forefoot strike under the body because they are moving so fast)
Barefoot Running (forefoot strike beneath the body)
I’ve gotten a bunch of questions regarding the barefoot running thing and how it relates to evolution running and chi running, etc. so I thought I’d answer them all in one post.
Everytime I visit Chris Bagg’s blog (which is grammatically without parallel and shames me for my lack of wit and intellect) I laugh at his banner so I thought I’d share it in case you’d never visited:
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This barefoot running thing is addictive, and that’s not necessarily a good thing. One bee sting, a puncture wound, and tarr-covered feet later, and my calves feel like ground beef…after all of a few miles tonight. I’m trying to mix between grass and track or trail, because the harder surfaces definitely force your form to improve more than the grass, but the grass is better for strengthening all the stablizers. I threw in some strides on the track and it feels amazing…like flying. Until, that is, you haul yourself out of the ice bath and find your soleus is grounding you. I can’t seem to get more than 3 miles without my calves giving out, and I figure my achilles can’t be far behind so I shut it down.
It’s 67 degrees in my basement and I’m loving it. Time to work on the office for a change…
With her permission, I’ve pasted Donna’s race report below. Enjoy…
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“So I will try to keep this short but in all essence ironman is whole new beast and you really need to respect the distance and to respect everything about what it entails to get to the race start, it was an amazing experience from the race venue,the fans, the people I met there, the volunteers, what an amazing race.
It’s interesting how sometimes you can learn and relearn the same lessons time and time again and sometimes in the matter of days.
I’m still away so I can’t load any of the photo’s from yesterday in Lake Placid with Donna (which are AWESOME), but all that matters is today…Donna Furse is an Ironman.
I don’t know all the details but I do know that she crashed her bike and STILL ran 26.2 miles and finished the race in 13 hours. I could not have run 1 mile after my crash a couple weeks ago…ironman or no. That woman could not amaze me more, even after all this time.
So today I was recalling what happened last year at FSA and realized things didn’t go so smoothly. During the team pursuit, our team caught and tried to pass another team on the track and they did an exchange just as we tried coming around them after yelling at them to stick. Not a big deal except it was our last lap and it caused big confusion for all of us and I gaped off the other two riders for the finish and they rolled in a couple of seconds behind….. if it wasn’t an event I feel passionate about I wouldn’t have cared. But since we were going against some top talent and I wanted to see how we would stack up - I was a little upset.
I always figured, since I was a scientist myself and I never believed in needing to haul any body parts to the afterlife, that I’d probably donate my body to science someday (with the exception of whatever usable organs that went to someone who could put them to immediate life-giving use). Turns out I’ll be doing it a little sooner than I planned.
I’m donating my body to YOU, my friends, and your collective running science.
Yesterday, I had the pleasure of attending class at cambio., a donation-based studio in Colorado Springs. The class was billed as “Crosstraining Yoga,” appropriate for runners and cyclists, so I brought a copy of The Athlete’s Guide to Yoga, although I felt unsure whether that would be an appropriate donation in exchange for class. Was it too egocentric? Would cash be better?
