Remembering how to run

They say that “you get good at what you train to do”. Well for the last couple of years I’ve been concentrating on running ultra’s, so I’ve been focussed on distance over speed. In an ideal world I would be splitting my time between speed, distance and hills, unfortunately I don’t live in that ideal world. The reality is there just aren’t the hours in the day.

Running between 50-60 miles a week at the peak of my training, there’s little time for rest days and especially as I often fit training in around running into work. Somedays I barely have the energy to do much more than shuffle around those training miles.

Watching the Olympics over the past couple of weeks I’ve noticed not only how impressively fast they are but just how different their technique is from my own. The heals of the olympic athletes coming that high that they practically kick themselves in the bum as they go along.

Running into work on friday morning I was about as far as its possible to get from running like an olympic athlete. It was 2 weeks since I’d ran the Lakeland 50, I’d just stepped up from a 12 mile week to a 30 mile week, and my calfs felt like they were made of stone, but it suddenly occurred to me that I could be pushing off a little harder.

Without really thinking about it I gave it a try. The extra boost from the push off brought my heals higher and to my surprise it also propelled my knees further forward extending my stride. I went from a 10 minute mile to an 8 minute mile. What’s more my calfs actually ached less when I was running at this faster pace than when I was running at the slower pace. I alternated around every half mile for the rest of the run, going between this faster pace and my normal pace. Instead of running a recovery run time I ran one of my fastest runs into the office i’d ran all year.

I’d experience improves in my pace before, after reading ‘born to run’ there was a gradual improvement over the course of a couple of weeks or a month, this was much more sudden, almost like flicking a switch. It was like I’d suddenly remembered how to run again. I just hope that I  can do the same again the next time I go out.