by ·Comments Off on Running: How to Avoid Injuries from Slips and Falls

If you are a runner, it is only a matter of time before you find yourself on the ground having fallen or slipped during a run.

Running as a hobby or a way to stay fit is great.  If you have a great running route, it is a way to enjoy the beauty of your neighborhood, your park, or nature’s landscapes.  It is definitely a way to feel the inner you once you’ve reached a state of equilibrium during a very long run.

However, this feeling can quickly be interrupted when you take a spill.  If you don’t know how to roll, you can end up with injuries that will put a major damper on your training.

Below is an illustration of how a shoulder roll is done.  Although it is shown in a martial arts setting, the rolling concept is exactly the same.  Once you get used to rolling, your body will automatically go into rolling mode when you find yourself taking a trip.

How to do a shoulder roll

by ·Comments Off on Getting Faster: All Out 8 Times in 30 Minutes
All Out 8 Drill

All Out 8 Drill

Since starting this drill to help me get faster, I’ve pulled back on some of my running.  Although this might work well for younger folks, I think it doesn’t work well for me, and probably others who are in my age group (50 plus).  Read on if you want to know more and how I’ve modified it to help reduce strains and injuries during training.

When I started this, I was following this training regimen:

  • Monday:  Rest day
  • Tuesday:  Ride stationary bike for 30 minutes.  The first 10 minutes is at an easy warm up phase.  The next 2o minutes is where I apply the all out 8 drill; by 30 minutes my legs are tired, and sometimes I would have difficulty standing for the first few seconds immediately after finishing.
  • Thursday or Friday:  Run for about 30 minutes.  Use the same time and work out pattern as the stationary bike work out.
  • Sunday:  Do long run (anywhere from 6 to 20 miles); apply the all out drill on the last 30 minutes of the run.
  • During weeknights I cross train  by doing Taekwondo (a Korean Martial Art)

On my second week of doing this, I felt my plantar fasciitis flaring up as well as some right hip pain.  Note that I’ve been training in my minimalist shoes (the Five Finger Bikila LS).  This is probably the root cause of this.  The hip pain, which I haven’t felt since 2 years ago when training for my first marathon, is back.  I think the heavy impact of intense running did my hip in.

To modify my training regimen, I’m only going to apply the all out 8 drill to my stationary bike workout.  I will not do it for the short 30 minute run.  For the long run, I will do 4 repetitions of  gradual accelerations at the end of the run to help my end of run kick.

I will keep you posted on my progress on this, and post my race times to see if this truly helps with getting faster.

by ·Comments Off on Running Soft: Arm Swings
Run for Life book

Run for Life by Wallack

I’ve been reading this running book titled “Run for Life.” Their premise is if you do certain things in your running and cross train, you should be able to continue running up to the age of 100!  The secret?  Run soft and do strength training.

Well today I focused on one aspect of this–running soft–mostly focusing on my arm swing.

During my long run–just over 20 Km (12.8 miles to be exact)–I focused 100% of my effort to ensuring my arms were just over 90 degrees bent and were swinging on the vertical plane.  Occasionally I would make sure my knees and heels were going up.

The proper swinging of arms, according to the book, helps keep the running balanced.  If you swing your arms across your body, it causes lateral stress on various parts of your body, especially the hips, knees, and ankles.  This unbalanced running is what causes the injuries.  So if you swing your arms in the vertical plane (basically forward and back), you reduce or eliminate the extra stress.

Here’s how I felt after the long run:

  • Left calf sore — I think this was sore because I was partially correcting my form by trying to bring my knees and heels up during the run; normally my left foot drags, which causes the uneven wear on my left shoe compared to the right.
  • No knee pain on either leg — Last year or the year before I felt serious pain on the right knee; later after the right knee recovered, I felt pain or soreness on the left.
  • No hip pain — I normally feel pain on the right hip.  This time around I felt none.  That is a good thing.
  • Hamstrings sore — My heels don’t go up enough, which means that my legs, on the turn over, would be limited in speed; since I did better heel kicks, it would only make sense that my hamstring are sore since the hamstrings are doing extra work.  Note that by bringing the heel up, the leg is shorter on the turn over, allowing the leg (as a unit) to move faster from the back to the front.  This is just plain physics.

Run for Life is probably the most comprehensive book on running I’ve ever read.  The information in it are very relevant for all ages, especially for those over 40 years of age just trying to stay fit.

I will share more useful information over time; for now think about arm swings as part of the overall process to run soft.

by ·Comments Off on Race to Stay Motivated to Run
Run Races to Stay Motivated

Run Races to Stay Motivated

Running is probably the cheapest way to work out without excessive side costs.  It is also one of the best ways to stay fit.  But sometimes, just running on a regular basis isn’t enough to stay motivated.  You need that something extra to help pull you along and keep you excited; otherwise, you’ll simply feel bored and worn out, and eventually just stop running altogether.  So how does one stay motivated?

Some people stay motivated because they have running groups or running buddies who can help them stay motivated and who can help the run more bearable, especially those long runs.  But what if you don’t have any running groups or running buddies?  How can you stay motivated?

The best way I’ve personally done it is by signing up for races throughout the year.

Here in the Central Valley, I didn’t realize how many local races there are until I signed up for one of the local small town events–the Micke Grove Zoo Zoom 5K.  There are practically several events almost every month as shown here at the On Your Mark Events schedule!

Signing up for running races is great for motivation for the following reasons:

  •  It establishes milestones over time on which you know you’ll have to run.
  • Nothing is better at motivating you to go faster than to try to beat your last race time.
  • Running with a group helps you run faster than normal; the race excitement can actually shave off minutes from your normal time!
  • After a race you want to know when the next one is so you can do it again.

If you are running to stay fit and can’t find a way to stay motivated, why not sign up for a race today?  It may just work for you.  After all running is something almost anyone can do.

by ·Comments Off on Warm up and cool down, part 1

When you get to your late 20s, warming up becomes very important.  For running, I’ve found that doing a little bit of light stretching helps a lot, although in several running magazines, they have noted that stretching before running have no correlation to how better or how worse you perform on a run.

The bottom line is, do what works for you.

When I started getting into running in preparation for the Chicago Marathon over 2 years ago, I made sure to do the following things before the start of any of my runs, be it short, long, intervals, or tempo runs:

  1. 16 lunges
  2. 8 each forward and back leg swings
  3. 8 each lateral leg swings
  4. 2 sets of 10-sec hamstring stretch by pushing against a wall (do 2 sets per leg)
  5. 2 sets of hip rotations (8 repetitions in each direction)
  6. 2 sets of knee rotations (8 repetitions per direction)

After I finished all the above, then I started my running exercise. 

The set of cool down exercises I do at the end of a run is totally different and serves a different purpose.  I will enumerate them on my next posting.

by ·1 Comment

One of my life’s goal is to run at least one marathon–a 26.2 mile run.  To that end, I’ve been reading about various information on how to do it.  One inspirational book I recently read was “50 50” by Dean Karnazes.  Dean is an endurance runner.  He set out to run a marathon everyday for 50 days; he achieved it!

This tells you what the human body can do if the mind is set to do it.

In his book he lays out a training plan for would be marathon runners who has never done one before.  I summarize it for you here:

Week Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun
1 Rest walk 20 min Rest walk 20 min Rest walk 20 min walk 20 min
2 Rest 10X: walk 1 min, run 1
min		 optional: walk 20 min 10X: walk 1 min, run 1
min		 Rest 10X: walk 1 min, run 1
min		 10X: walk 1 min, run 1
min
3 Rest 7X: walk 1 min, run 2 min optional: walk 20 min 7X: walk 1 min, run 2 min optional: walk 20 min 7X: walk 1 min, run 2 min 7X: walk 1 min, run 2 min
4 Rest 5X: walk 1 min, run 3 min optional: 10X: walk 1
min, run 1 min		 5X: walk 1 min, run 3 min optional: 10X: walk 1
min, run 1 min		 5X: walk 1 min, run 3 min 5X: walk 1 min, run 3 min
5 Rest 4X: walk 1 min, run 4 min optional: 10X: walk 1
min, run 1 min		 4X: walk 1 min, run 4 min optional: 10X: walk 1
min, run 1 min		 4X: walk 1 min, run 4 min 4X: walk 1 min, run 5 min
6 Rest run 2 miles optional: 7X: walk 1
min, run 2 min		 run 2 miles run 2 miles Rest run 3 miles
7 Rest run 3 miles optional: run 2 miles run 2 miles run 3 miles optional: run 2 miles run 4 miles
8 Rest run 3 miles optional: run 3 miles run 3 miles run 3 miles optional: run 3 miles run 5 miles
9 Rest run 4 miles optional: run 3 miles run 4 miles run 3 miles optional: run 3 miles run 6 miles
10 Rest run 3 miles optional: run 3 miles run 3 miles run 3 miles Rest run 8 miles
11 Rest run 4 miles optional: run 4 miles run 4 miles run 4 miles optional: run 4 miles run 9 miles
12 Rest run 5 miles optional: run 4 miles run 4 miles run 5 miles optional: run 4 miles run 8 miles
13 Rest run 5 miles optional: run 4 miles run 5 miles run 5 miles optioanl: run 4 miles run 10 miles
14 Rest run 4 miles optional: run 4 miles run 5 miles run 4 miles optional: run 4 miles run 11 miles
15 Rest run 4 miles optional: run 4 miles run 4 miles run 4 miles optional: run 4 miles run 9 miles
16 Rest run 4 miles optional: run 4 miles run 6 miles run 4 miles optional: run 4 miles run 12 miles
17 Rest run 5 miles optional: run 4 miles run 4 miles run 5 miles optional: run 4 miles run 13 miles
18 Rest run 5 miles optional: run 4 miles run 6 miles run 5 miles optional: run 4 miles run 14 miles
19 Rest run 4 miles optional: run 4 miles run 5 miles run 5 miles optional: run 4 miles run  9 miles
20 Rest run 5 miles optional: run 4 miles run 6 miles run 5 miles optional: run 4 miles run 15 miles
21 Rest run 5 miles optional: run 4 miles run 6 miles run 6 miles optional: run 4 miles run 16 miles
22 Rest run 4 miles optional: run 4 miles run 5 miles run 5 miles optional: run 4 miles run 10 miles
23 Rest run 6 miles optional: run 4 miles run 6 miles run 6 miles optional: run 4 miles run 18 miles
24 Rest run 6 miles optional: run 4 miles run 8 miles run 6 miles optional: run 4 miles run 20 miles
25 Rest run 5 miles optional: run 4 miles run 6 miles run 6 miles optional: run 4 miles run 12 miles
26 Rest run 7 miles optional: run 4 miles run 5 miles run 4 miles Rest MARATHON:  run
26.2 miles

Critical points to remember:

  • Make sure you are hydrated every 6 miles
  • Watch what you eat before a run
  • Get good shoes; any minor annoyance can become serious when extended for many miles; you can get blisters or irritate a knee or hip

To track your progress, think about signing up for an account on active.com.  There you can get a free account to help manage your training.  You can even map out running routes around the neighborhood.

Another site where you can track your progress is at nikerunning.nike.com.  There is you use a Nike + enabled shoe and a sensor, you can easily track your distance, calorie usage, time, and pace.  Information is logged on their site where they provide you with fancy looking graphs to see how you are doing.  And if you’ve gained around 1 year of experience, you can use their training plan there to achieve better marathon races.