Hey there, athlete! So you've
decided to develop a healthier lifestyle. I bet
you're getting excited. Gotta make sure you're prepared. What's your
plan to get started running?
The
PaceSetters of the Fox Cities is a tax-exempt, non-profit
running club dedicated to increasing activity, improving
nutrition, enhancing our community’s enjoyment of the sports
of running, jogging, walking and individual healthy activities
for all ages and abilities.
If
you want to improve your physical fitness level and become a
runner, start now. Don’t
spend the rest of your life wondering if you can do it.
Running 101 is for you! “Experience the Sport of
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Tips to Keep You Running Strong in 2012
Tips for Mental Training
Keep a training diary. Record not only your workouts but also your day-to-day mood.
Drive to a state park or county
park once a month to run in a new and picturesque area.
When trying to improve your
running form, it helps to watch the best runners in action.
Try and visualize yourself running with similar form the next
time you run.
When you are running hills,
imagine that a thick towrope is attached to your chest and is
pulling you up the incline at a firm, steady effort.
If you run the same loop day
after day, resist the temptation to improve your time.
That can lead to frustration and injury. Instead, run
the course backward for a few weeks and leave your watch at
home.
Leave something in your
"mental" bank. It's good to finish a hard
training session thinking: "I could do one more repeat
mile...." or "I could do that hill
again...."
Form multi-tiered goal strategies. Have a "doable" goal, a
"challenging midrange" goal, and a "dream"
goal that seems out of reach.
Tips for the Experienced
Every
5 years, wipe the slate clean in terms of your "personal
bests." That is, have a lifetime list for your 5K PR, but
also for the 40-45 years, the 45-50 years…and so on.
Strength training becomes even
more important for older runners. To hang on to muscle
mass, schedule 2 or 3 strength training sessions per week,
even if it's just 20 minutes per workout.
As we age, injuries take longer
to heal. Pay more attention to the little aches and
pains... the ones you might have trained through at age 22...
and take 48 hours off.
Don't listen to "the
voice" - the one that say's, "You're too old for
this kind of exercise." (Ed. note - After all, I
did not start running until I was 52 and ran a marathon that
year.)
Older runners have to work at
hanging on to their natural speed. Try adding a
half-dozen 100 meter strides at a fast, but controlled pace at
the end of a 30 minute easy run.
It's a fun challenge to see how
fast you can run a mile. Some track meets have special
"master miles" you can enter.
Schedule more rest days.
You'll be surprised how well you can race on just four or five
days of training per week.
Tips for Young Runners
Different
sports are fine for young runners. Soccer and track are good
combinations, as is cross country. Sometimes it's a good idea
not to specialize until your high school or even college.
It's fun to participate in
local road races, but young runners (16 or under) should
probably stick to races that are shorter than 10K. Avoid
marathons until you are older and more experienced.
Relay races are fun and help
cement team relationships.
Double-knot your running shoes
on race day.
If you have a competition in
the afternoon, make sure you eat a good lunch and drink lots
of water throughout the day.
Training Tips
Don't
wait until the end of the day to run. Studies show that both
mental and physical reaction time is slowed by as much as 50
percent after subjects are awake 17 to 19 hours - the number
of waking hours in a normal day for many people.
To avoid muscle cramping during
your long runs, imbibe a sports drink, which supplies both
carbohydrates and electrolytes. Drink about 6 ounces
every 15 to 20 minutes.
You don't have to pound the
miles every day. Logging some so-called "junk
miles" can make you a much stronger runner, because slow
miles build strength and endurance as well as burn the same
number of calories as hard miles. They give you time to
relax and enjoy your run too.
If you're out on a run and your
shoulders begin to feel tight, unclench your fists.
Clenching your fists causes tightness all through your arms
and can wear you down on your run. To fix this, pretend
you are grabbing for apples or oranges. This will help
keep your fists relaxed.
Pack a small kit to bring to
races, just in case promoter-supplied goods run low.
Bring spare safety pins to secure your race number, a bit of
toilet paper, a bottle of water, and an energy bar. You
might not need them, but you'll be glad you thought of them if
you do.
To avoid a treadmill induced
injury, be sure the belt on your machine has been at least
eight square feet of surface area. The smaller the
running area, the more likely you are to fall off.
UW-Health Runner's Clinic at UW-Madison
UW
Health Runners Clinic – Dr. Bryan Heiderscheit
Dr.
Bryan Heiderscheit, a physical therapist/biomechanist runs a
Runners clinic at the UW-Madison. His facility is in the
medical school of the campus. He sees patients on Wednesday
afternoons from 2-5 pm. Regular doctors don’t always have
the answers to why you are injured or what to do about it.
Five things he looks at are:
Looks at your training logs. 80-90% of injuries due to poor
training.
Looks at your goals and what is going on. Your pace,
background of running, injury and performance.
Does a complete Muscular
skeletal evaluation
Treadmill work- watch you
walk barefoot, put shoes on
and have you run and video
tapes you doing these.
Checks mechanical
efficiency.
Usually gives you some sort
of exercises to do-
including hip flexors,
mechanical and physical
exercises that you won’t get
at your family doctor. He
caters to the runner.
Dr. Heiderscheit developed an interest in running about 4 years
ago. He is a plodder . He does not do marathons, more
5K’s, 10 k”s and ½ marathons.
Dr. Heiderscheit was a consultant to several shoe companies and
spoke about how to pick shoes. You cannot tell by looking at
you standing if that shoe is right for you or not. You
should be concerned how the shoe feels on your foot.
Typically only 2% difference between a motion, stability or
a cushioning shoe.
Shoes are designed to fit a whole lot of people. Each person has a
different level of stiffness as each person responds
differently.
Shoes look nice. In the industry color does make a difference in
the studies. They did a survey and gave people several pairs
of shoes (the same shoe) but in different colors and asked
them to rank them. Testers found the shoes that looked nicer
made them run faster and felt better. Shoe companies know
this and target consumers on that. Shoe companies have huge
R&D departments for color analyst sections 5 X the size
of the Marketing dept.
Shoe companies don’t look into the Injury and prevention end of
the market. They are worried about performance.
Doctors thought that running injuries begin with the foot, but they
are finding more so that the injuries are hip and knee
related. Comes from repetitive impact, don’t know how
severe, where, when will have injury.
They are finding that the hip flexibility is causing more
injuries.
Harvard research showed older individuals and walking, one group got
1 exercise to do a couple of times a day versus the other
group who did nothing but walk. The group with the exercise
for hip flexibility had a greater stride length and greater
propulsion and push off.
Flexibility goes hand in hand with performance.
Stretch before and after running; light 5 minute warm up-stop-
stretch then run. You can mix your stretches throughout the
day. #0 seconds long enough to hold the stretch, repeat 2x
each leg, 4-5 x a day.
Don’t try to be more aggressive with stretching.
For isolated muscle weakness the machines are great.
Dr. Heiderscheit has brochures regarding the Runner ‘s Clinic
for those interested. See the link posted at the top of this
page to the Dr’s website for more information.
Running in Top Form
Follow these 6 easy steps to
improve your running form, increase efficiency and fight off
injury.
By Matt Fitzgerald
Most runners believe that, for better or worse, the stride
they’re born with is the stride they are stuck with. While
its true some are blessed with enviable running form,
an imperfect stride is no reason to throw in the towel in
favor of lawn bowling or channel surfing.
With a little knowledge and discipline, a variety of small but
critical adjustments can improve your running, helping to
increase your efficiency and reduce your risk of injury. The
foundation for most improvements in running form is cross
training for core strength and dynamic flexibility. While this
is a critical form of run training, there are also specific
technique improvements you can make. To make these stick
you’ll need to take the same approach golfers take to
improve their stroke: conscious manipulation and repetition. It’s
a two-step process. Step one is to select one specific
alteration to your stride that makes it either more efficient
or more stable, or both. Step two is to consciously recreate
this new pattern with every
stride of every run until its second nature. Allow at least a
couple of weeks for this to happen. Then you can make another
change. Here are 6 basic technique changes to work on:
Reduce your stance pause. One of the key traits of the most
efficient runners is the lack, or near total lack, of any
pause during the stance phase of the stride. The stance
phase is when the foot is flat or almost flat on the ground,
between the foot strike and toe-off phases. To reduce your
stance pause, begin to retract your leg just before your foot
lands with each stride, so that you’re already thrusting
backward when your foot makes contact.
Run tall. Many runners tend to
collapse at the hips and pelvis
when their foot comes in contact
with the ground. This wastes
energy and can lead to a variety
of overuse
injuries. To overcome this type of collapsing, concentrate on
running more erectly. Imagine wires attached to your shoulders
and pulling gently upward. Thrust your hips forward just a bit
and gently engage the muscles of your lower abdomen to keep
your pelvis neutral.
Relax your upper body. Most
runners run with unnecessary
tension in their arms, shoulders,
neck, and even their faces,
especially when running hard. All
of this tension equals wasted
energy. Practice running with
loose fingers, forearms and upper
arms, and with no
hunch in your shoulders and a relaxed facial expression.
Land on the mid-foot. Landing heel
first is like driving with the
emergency brake engaged. Not every
heel striker can transform himself
or herself into a mid-foot
striker, but many can. A good way
to begin the process is to
practice running with shorter
strides. Use the same technique of
retracting your forward leg before
foot impact described in tip
number one.
Use your big toe. The metatarso-phalangeal (MP) joint at the
ball of the foot was designed to actively plantar flex (flex
downward) during push-off. The rigidity of running shoes
inhibits the MP joint from actively plantar flexing, reducing
the power of your stride. You
can get some of it back by consciously pushing off the ground
with your big toe, beginning at its origin at the
mid-foot-forefoot juncture.
Bounce less. Runners need to
push themselves upward slightly
in order to float between footstrikes.
By becoming airborne you can
take longer strides than you do
when you walk. In fact, faster
runners spend more time airborne
and less time in contact with
the ground than slower runners.
As much as possible you want to
float forward not upward, and,
indeed, faster runners tend to
keep the top of their head
closer to the ground (relative
to their height) than slower
runners. Practice this scooting
style of running.
For more information about how
to improve your running form, check out Matt Fitzgerald's
latest book, Runners World Guide to Cross-Training (Rodale,
2004).
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