Archive for Technique
March 8, 2007 at 11:00 pm · Filed under Running, Technique
Shakti joined me for a short run around the block last night. She hasn’t been running for a few months so she was even more reticent than usual. I’ve said before that running is a ridiculously psychological sport but Shakti has got to be the most psychological runner I know. We start at a reasonable pace but 20 seconds in she appears to start running backwards, I grab her sleeve and we carry on as normal for a while. Then I feel really strong resistance and find that she actually has turned around and started running in the opposite direction. I get behind now and start nudging her forwards in the right direction.
Despite the pulling, nudging and prodding, I really enjoy these runs, they are quite a bit slower than I’m used to and I feel comfortable and chatty. At just over 8 mins per km I still have the breath to holler abuse in the true sargeant major style – “Move that ass you good for nothing idler!”. Nice aren’t I.
The funny thing is, the moment we turn around and I announce we are on the way back, Shakti starts sprinting like a banshee. This shuts me up, I have to start my puffing billy routine while I tag along behind her desperately trying to keep her within my sights. Needless to say she doesn’t return the favour and pull me along by my sleeve.
So my plan for todays commute home was to go slow. I wanted to add a “slow for me” slow run to the routine instead of every run being at the same pace. As I set off it seemed to be paying off, despite the niggles in my hip I was feeling fairly comfortable and I didn’t feel the need to jump in front of a bus within the first 2k.
I had to change my route and run to my home today. Shakti is out go-cart racing or something exciting like that and is therefore not available to make my tea or run me a lovely soapy bath. What a bummer eh? Also the sun is staying above the horizon for a bit a longer now so I also intended to shift my route to take in a bit of riverside beauty. I made 3 attempts to hit the river around Brentford but each time I was introduced to a lovely riverside promenade that lasted about 10 metres before being thrown back onto the grotty Brentford High St. I was cursing the inefficiency of my run until I got home and loaded the satellite data into SportTracks – another perfect 10 km run. How lovely is that??? I’m going to have to make those irritating riverside detours every time though now.
SportTracks also revealed the truth about my pace. Although slow, it was pretty much on a par with my previous commuting runs. The average pace for the 10 km route today was 07:52/km, the average for the previous 3 commutes has been: 07:51, 07:50, 07:51. You’d think I must run like a metronome but this excel graph shows the degree of variation.
I find it odd that I can complete the route literally within seconds of my previous time despite setting off with completely different pacing intentions. Psychological I tell you!
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Tags: commute, Sporttracks
February 21, 2007 at 11:33 pm · Filed under Running, Shoes, Technique
I’m a bit out of sync with my posting but I wanted to slip in an update for the weekend which was quite active on the running front.
Firstly my new shoes arrived: Asics Kayano X11’s and Asics Gel Trabuco trail shoes. The first pair were simply a direct replacement for my existing Kayano’s – a touch larger so they shouldn’t bruise my toes. My parents were visiting as well so my mum ended up leaving with a fine pair of previously owned running shoes with only 158 km on the clock.
I took my folks to Richmond Park to show them the sights and used the opportunity to get a video of my running gait. Booyaa has stoked my interest in running styles by mentioning in a recent comment, the debate between pose and chi running styles. I thought it would be useful to see what my natural running style is before I consider altering it.
Here is the movie:
My 66 year old mum features in the video, she is only at the back because I absolutely forbade her from overtaking me during filming but the moment the filming finished she whizzed past me in her new trainers.
I think I’m demonstrating a definate heel strike in that clip, which doesn’t bode well for me ever getting any faster, every footstrike is the equivalent of me slamming on the brake. I need a video of an “ok” runner to compare techniques with. Would I be better to try raising the knee or kicking my legs out at the back for example? Any of you bloggers got a video to share?
I’ve managed to find a clip of someone demonstrating the pose running technique:
It looks pretty strange – as though the guy is hopping on one leg and bashing his trailing toe into the tarmac, however I think it also demonstrates most of the essential features of pose:
1) Strike on ball of foot, not heel
2) Land with knee bent
3) Land under Centre of gravity with knee, ankle and shoulder in vertical alignment.
4) Lift ankle under hips
5) High cadence resulting in very brief contact with ground.
Not sure where to go with this now, the pose technique looks too far away from my natural style to be feasible but there must be some simple improvements to be made.
Popularity: 30% [?]
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Tags: asics, knee
August 15, 2006 at 4:38 pm · Filed under BodyForLife, Running, Technique
I went on the treadmill this lunchtime and tried the Balke test for determining my V02 max score. This involves running as far as you can in 15 mins, I actually ran for 20 mins so I obviously wasn’t pushing hard enough, but I still managed to get up a fair speed. I actually managed to run at 11 km/hr (not for long) without being propelled off the back of the treadmill. I wouldn’t even dream of running that speed a couple of months ago. Things really seem to be coming together with this running malarky.
Anyway, back to VO2. As with everything else I do, I have to get thoroughly obsessed with the science behind my hobby. Hence the purchase of all the sporting gadgets, training software, books and whizzy excel spreadsheets. I recently bought Daniels Running Formula which aims to tell you exactly what pace you should train at, based on your VO2 max. So there would be a set pace for the long slow runs and another for marathon, 10k and interval runs. Trouble is I am too slow to even get onto his tables, so that was another waste of money!
The runningforfitness website is a techies dream. It is awash with converters and running calculators to tell you everything from predicted race paces to speed improvements associated with weight loss. I love it. The link I have given above enables you to determine your VO2 max figure based on the 15 min run and then tells you what pace you should train at.
Apparently I should do my long slow runs at a pace of 08.03 and it reckons I should complete the 10k in 69 mins. Not sure if that figure is based on me running the race tomorrow or after a training schedule. I would hope to be running slightly faster than that by October but we shall see.
I am so impressed by the runningforfitness site that I have taken up PHP programming to recreate some of the conversion tables on my website. Not that I need another project at the moment – I’m supposed to be submitting my thesis in 2 weeks, instead I am spending every evening cursing about some line of code that refuses to do what I want.
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August 2, 2006 at 6:08 pm · Filed under Gadgets, Running, Technique
I was reading the other night that the most efficient running style is associated with exactly 180 strides per minute. Apparently, almost all athletes run at this cadence regardless of distance and therefore speed. The faster runners just take longer strides.
Anyway, I thought I better check it out. So on this mornings run I discovered I take 158 strides per minute. So it looks like I’m not an athlete. Darn am I surprised.
So now what to do about it? It is suggested that most runners would benefit by taking slightly shorter steps and increasing cadence but if I take shorter steps I’ll be running backwards. Also, efficiency is not all its cracked up to be. Efficient runners use less calories, which is pants! Inefficiency rules – as do cream cakes.
**UPDATE 14/01/07**
Thought I ought to provide a link to a more informed opinion on running cadence. The endurance coach
records cadence as the number of times 1 foot hits the ground in a minute ie. half the figure I quoted above, and on his site he details a few training exercises to help increase your cadence. Must admit that non of them involve listening to music with the target bpm.
**SECOND UPDATE 12/02/07**
I have a new gadget in my sights (Polar RS800SD – but more of this later) and it has yet again triggered an interest in the running cadence issue. It’s obviously my cycling roots that encourage this obsessive trait with cadence. The RS800SD monitors and displays both stride length and cadence so that you can schedule training sessions to focus solely on this issue. As they say at polar, there are two ways to run faster: moving your legs at a higher cadence or taking longer steps.
Here is a link to the polar article on cadence and running efficiency, where they make a few suggestions for increasing pace:
“A good way of improving stride length is to undertake specific strength work, like running hills, running in soft sand, or running up steps. A six-week training period including strength work should result in noticeable improvements in stride length, and if combined with some faster leg speed work (such as short strides at best 5km pace), noticeable improvements should be seen in overall speed, as well.”
So it looks like I need to ramp up the treadmill as well introducing fartlek.
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Tags: polar, RS800SD
