Sore.

Monday night I dropped the kids off at the YMCA play area and headed up to the indoor track with a page of scrawled workout notes from my running clinic last Saturday.  The instructor had provided us with four weeks' worth of drills.  "It'll probably drive you crazy to take this time off getting almost no mileage while you're focusing on those drills," she had told the class.  "I know I hated writing a big fat ZERO in my mileage notebook while I was working on my form.  But winter's really the best time for this kind of work, and you're going to come back even faster."

All the superwomen had nodded their heads.  Me, I was thinking:  Cool, four whole weeks with an excuse to skip "running!"  Actually probably more than four because I'm such a slow learner!

So, anyway, there I was at the indoor track around the top of the basketball gym -- 18 laps to the mile -- with the little alcove for stretching right next to the entrance.  Fortunately there weren't too many people around, because I expected to either (a) look like a weirdo or (b) annoy other runners.

I started out by warming up with a gentle run around the track, but instead of my usual heel-striking lope I tried to run the way I'd learned in class.  It feels pretty weird -- an exaggerated high-stepping feeling at the knee, and I couldn't get over the sensation that I was running down a steep hill and might fall.  Also, I couldn't go very fast.  

The drills were similar to the ones we had learned in the class, and involved very little actual running.  They are meant to make three corrections to running form:

1. most importantly, to stop you landing on your heels and rolling forward onto the toe for push-off, and instead to get your foot striking the ground "mid-foot," which sounds like it ought to mean flat-footed (the middle of your foot is somewhere on the arch, right?) but really means more like on the ball of the foot.
2. to get you straight-backed and leaning slightly forward instead of backward, vertical, or bent at the hips.
3. to raise the running cadence -- the number of times your right foot hits the ground per minute -- above 90 or even higher.

About landing on your mid-foot -- this is why I felt so weird during my warm-up jog.   I think I can give you a quick demonstration of what this feels like, if you don't know.  Stand up (shoes are not necessary here), face a direction with a few feet of space in front of you, and jog gently in place for a moment or two.  You'll find that your foot naturally strikes the ground midfoot-first, not heel-first, though it's good if your heel comes down and sort of "kisses" the ground before you pick it up again.  OK, once you've got that, gently lean your body forward ever-so-slightly -- and what happens is that you move -- when your body corrects to keep you from tipping over, your running in place turns into running forward -- but on your midfoot, not with a heel strike.  That's the kind of running I'm trying to do, only continuous.  And I'm not used to it.  I'm used to hitting the floor with a heel that's heavily cushioned by my running shoes.

So there were hopping-on-your-toes drills, and standing leg raises, and lean-against-the-wall leg raises. (This video gives you a pretty good idea of the kinds of stuff I was doing.)

Near the end there were just a couple of cadence drills.  The instructor had recommended buying a runner's metronome for these so you could try to put your foot on the floor in time to the "dink...dink...dink...dink..." sound.   I judged that the other patrons at the Y would not be pleased to have me bring such a thing into the building.  What I had found instead was a set of free .mp3 files of metronomes set at various tempos.  So with these loaded on my iPod I was able to run around the track keeping fairly close to the tempos suggested by the instructor.

I was seriously winded by the end of all this, despite going very, very slowly.  Also, my left foot seemed to be able to "do it" better than my right, though I am not sure -- that could have been from the banked corners of the running track.  I don't remember ever feeling that the arch of my foot got tired before!

The drills only took about 25 minutes total (and that was with a lot of hemming and hawing and checking my notes and also counting the warmups), and the instructor had basically ordered us not to try to do any additional running beyond the drills.  So I went back to the locker room, quickly changed into my suit, and had a ten-minute swim.  What a relief to be doing something I knew how to do already.  

So, two days later, my calves are still sore.  It is not an injury-type soreness, just a "my muscles aren't used to this" soreness -- I can tell it was a good workout.  

But you know what is really best about this?  I usually find running very, very boring.  Every time I run, I wish I was swimming instead.   I try to watch the treadmill-mounted TVs and forget about what I'm doing until my 40 minutes are up.  The only thing that changes from run to run is maybe how fast I go or how high I set the incline.  But with these drills to work on, something interesting is going on, and suddenly I am looking forward to my next time at the gym.  

Learning something new will do that.  Cool.

Comments

[Amy F]

I'm not sure about this, but it sounds like you're training yourself to run as if you had bare feet. After reading Born to Run, my husband ran a 5k and a 10k barefoot this summer/fall and it looked to me like he was taking lots of little steps and landing forward on his feet.

I forgot if you've read that book, but does that seem to be the gist of what the training is doing? Did the instructor mention going barefoot?

[bearing]

Yeah, I read Born to Run. Great book isn't it? It must have been popular, because I had to wait in a line of 240 people to check it out of the library.

This is December in Minnesota, so nobody is seriously entertaining the idea of running barefoot. But we did discuss it. The instructor seemed to think that the main thing is to avoid heavily cushioned heels, not so much to avoid footwear at all. She recommended some trail runners made by New Balance that have a pretty minimal heel and some racing flat type shoes made by inov-8.

[Christy Porucznik]

I got a pair of flatter shoes at Costco, and it is amazing how the lack of padding at the heel helps encourage you to strike the ground differently.

I'm still on the quest for the perfect running bra - just to throw that out again.

[Delores]

I have heard of people running barefoot, or with those funny looking "shoes" that are just kind of thicker socks. It just looks like it would be incredibly painful.

[bearing]

I forget where we last left the quest for the running bra - had you yet tried a front-closing non-nursing bra as a somewhat-easier-to-deal-with compromise? I just gave up -- most of the time when I have the running bra on, the baby's not with me anyway, so I just change before I pick him up.

Are you running now? Trail running? Or speaking of trail hiking?

I meant to ask the instructor what her opinion was of those weird rocker-sole shoes that some of my friends are swearing by for walking (Skechers Shapeups and knockoffs) but I forgot.

[MrsDarwin]

Huh -- I always thought you were supposed to run heel-toe, heel-toe (though now that I think of it, no authoritative source ever told me to run like that). Now I want to do some running drills too!

[Christy Porucznik]

I got a front closing non-nursing bra, but I hadn't yet un-grown enough to wear it at any time of day. End of the day, A-ok. Early morning before kids wake up, incredible pain b/c full of milk. :-)

[Amy F]

I read "Born to Run" while in my third trimester, so I didn't try any of it, but it seemed to me that the important thing was to run as if you are barefoot because it's easier on the body. The easiest way to do that is to actually run barefoot, but if you can train to run that way with shoes on, it would have the same effect. Dan hasn't run for a couple months, but he talked about wearing his oldest, worn out sneakers to run in winter, or possibly the basic sandals he made with wool socks. I guess the less cushioning the better. It did take most of the summer before he stopped getting blisters, but he didn't get any worse injuries and it had been 10 years since he'd run much.

[bearing]

Adding a comment here many months later to update that I eventually settled on cross-country racing flats as the shoe style of choice. Mine are Saucony Kilkenny XC women's.