Part of the problem that I had was that I was slow, at least the last time I was running seriously. That meant that my form was poor. I don't know why that is, but for me running slower than 6 minute kilometres seems to mean that my form is poor. I have heard others say similar things. After I speed up, somehow it improves. I only know this because of pain: Many years ago in Japan I started up running again. I had a lot of stress, and a newborn son at home, and needed a release. I started running at night in an old pair of New Balances only sold in Asia. It was perfect for stress release, but I got shin splints. I investigated extensively on the Internet and bought a pair of New Balance 580s from Road Runner Sports in the U.S. They seemed to do the job pretty well, and I was able to continue running, but there was still a niggling pain in my lower leg.
However, after I started running faster, there was no more of that. I started to train for a half-marathon, with my goal to finish in 90 minutes, which was when they re-opened the road that the race was being run on. I was quite good about training, and had run half-marathon distances in training at about 96 minutes. The marathon was in early January, and I went home to Oregon that Christmas, via Honolulu and a week in Hawaii. I slacked off the training in Hawaii, but got back to it in Oregon.
Oregon would seem to be the perfect place to train, and especially Eugene, where I am from, and where I spent that Christmas. The problem was that it was shitty rainy weather, and I was running around Amazon Park, which was only a hundred yards from my mom's house. It was a 2k barkamulch trail, which was completely mushy with the rain. I was training, at that point, on about 8 or 10 km per day, and somehow the softness was not a good thing. Not a good thing at all, and led to some serious pain in my right knee. I rested after that, hoping it would be better for the half-marathon, which I was due to run 2 days after getting back to Japan. I made it to about 10k before the pain was too excruciating to continue. The next day when I went to the hospital, the doctor gave me a shot of cortisone, and, similar to the physio, told me not to do anymore running. I told him to get stuffed, but the combination of not finishing the race, and being in quite a lot of pain put me off it for quite a few years.
Fast forward to two years ago when I applied, and my application was accepted to, the London Marathon. I had never heard of a race that didn't accept all-comers who applied in time. Eugene doesn't have those sort, and neither does Japan. London does, though. But I hadn't really been training. I had applied to motivate myself to train, but waited until the results of the lottery in December before I really got serious. I set myself a very ambitous training regimen, which involved training a lot, and doing a long run on Sundays. I was up to 15 miles on my Sunday run, at a so-so pace, but after my long runs, and after some of the longer training runs, I had very bad shin splints. I found a store in London, Profeet, which did gait analysis and then used that to choose the perfect shoe and create custom-molded insoles for them. They set me up with some Mizuno's which seemed to be pretty good. I still had shin splints, though. And the longer my long runs got, the longer it took me to recover. I could barely move my legs on Mondays.
That's when I went to the physio to get her to reduce the pain. But nooooo! She had to tell me to stop! Again, I railed against her advice, but was also in enough pain that continuing despite her advice was difficult anyway. This time, though, I did quite a lot of research about why I might be having these problems. It looked like, in reading Gordon Pirie's book on running, as well as alot of other stuff, including a rip-off eBook that looked terrible, but wasn't actually as much of a ripoff as I thought, that the problems in my lower leg were probably the result of heel-striking, or some other problem with my form. There were some jump-roping exercises and others that would apparently help. I also heard about something called the Pose Method, which was a method of getting people to run with proper form, on the balls of feet (BOF). I bought a book from a guy in Reading, which also had a DVD with samples of lots of exercises. Most of the exercises required some amount of space, and I began to use the gym at work's aerobics studio.
I had also, during this time, joined our company's volleyball club. It is a great game, which I love playing. However, within a very short time of joining, I injured my thigh muscle, a first, and also a short time later my calf muscle. The thigh injury took quite a while to recover from.
It looked more and more like I would never get back to running.
I had, in my mind, however, accepted what Dr. Nicholas Romanov said about form in his Pose Method book. It struck me as being essentially true. Some of the things he says:
- Humans naturally run on the balls of their feet, which can be seen watching someone run barefoot. It is only the running shoe companies that pad up the heels to such an extent that they can be run on that have thwarted natural human biomechanics.
- Running is essentially about falling forward. Gravity moves the body forward.
- Pounding the ground and/or pushing off are very hard on the legs, and it is far preferable to pull the legs upwards and let gravity, rather than muscle, propel one forward.
Last summer my mom came over and my family, together with her, travelled to Italy. We stayed most of the trip in Amalfi, the headline town on the Amalfi coast. It is a lovely area, but one the features is lots and lots of stairs. I sweated like a pig. I was so out of shape, and a fat 95 kg, that I was huffing and puffing like my 65 year-old mother. Not good.
So, I joined the gym and started doing exercise biking nearly every day. At some point, I think I mentioned it on a previous blog post, I also started to look pretty seriously at my diet, and to reduce my calorie intake.
However, I didn't run except very occasionally. When I did run, I tried to run Pose, but I kept getting cramps and minor muscle tears in my calves, a clear indicator that I wasn't running correctly.
I got extremely busy in December, and was spending a lot of time in Paddington, where I didn't have access to the company gym, which was the excuse I used for why I didn't continue with my every day training. It was/is, as far as excuses go, an ok one, but it is still an excuse. Recently I have been trying to get back in to it. But stationary biking, as opposed to going home and seeing more of my family, is lame.
Last weekend, I again tried running. This time there was no pain. I told myself that I need to make sure that I don't run with any tightness in my muscles, as that can lead to an improper running style. I did have some tightness on Monday, so I held of. Tuesday is volleyball night, so I got a different kind of exercise. Yesterday, I ran again, also without any real pain this morning. So, I ran again today. Again, I don't feel any pain. Yeah!
I didn't run fast, but I did run on the balls of my feet, and the lack of pain hopefully means that now I've 'got' the Pose method. I use some quite flat and light shoes, which hopefully will last awhile, as I bought them in Japan, and they aren't available here.
It is really good to be back on the road again. Hopefully I can stay running, injury-free.
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