Pain is a Good Teacher: A Focus on Form
Friday, March 26, 2010 at 4:33PM I decided to take my Classics out for a run. Four miles was the designated training distance, so I headed for a scenic area just outside of town limits. Running with a friend was a nice change, conversation and company both good. We averaged between a 10 to 11 minute mile over asphalt and occasional patches of gravel while trees along the creek bed passed by. The easy pace was welcome to my still aching calves from last week's fast paced race. First chance I had to check my GPS watch showed that we had gone a quarter mile passed turnaround, so we turned to head back, walking for a moment, then enjoyed the landscape in reverse.
How did my Classics do? They seemed to fit fairly well, but my heal had room to slide around a little. Perhaps this movement was the reason a warm spot formed on the ball of my right foot. I should have sinched the cord up a little. Perhaps it was moisture from wearing the shoes throughout the morning of that day. I should have given them time to dry out. Perhaps I was letting myself get a little distracted by deep conversation, and I was letting my footfalls get lazy. If that was the reason, the exchange of thought over educational solutions was worth the blistering pain, but I believe none of these excuses were culprit, at least not directly.
As the burning grew, I began paying more attention to my form. I was maintaining good posture, trying to keep my head up while scanning for particularly large or sharp rocks. That wasn't the problem. I was keeping loose, letting my body relax while I breathed easily. My cadence was between 4-5 steps per second, my heart beat averaged 145 beats per minute, and I was landing on my midfoot like I usually do. As I focused on how my foot was leaving the ground, I believe I found the problem.
The reponsibility of my forward propulsion was largely being left to my feet. I could feel the grind towards the forefront of the ball of each foot as I was pushing off of them. That friction was what was causing the issue with re-blistering, not necessarily shoe movement, moisture, or distraction, although they likely played some role. I immediately began practicing lifting my feet with my hamstrings. This seemed to pull them from the hard ground without much resistance. I leaned slightly forward at my hips to let gravity help pull me forward and was able to maintain the same pace as before.
The pain behind my toes lessened as I finished off the last mile. I learned another valuable lesson about running in minimal footwear, something I had already known from reading about barefoot running form, but I guess some of us continue to have to learn things the hard way. Pain is a good teacher.
Reader Comments (2)
I spend that entire run worrying that I had suffered from some freak accident that made my lungs shrink. If you were able to keep all those things going in your mind (foot fall/second, heel strike, quad muscles, bpm), while making such great conversation...wow.
Don't forget that the intensity and seriousness of the conversation dwindled considerably somewhere around mile 3 to 3.5. It was about then that I mentioned to you that I was feeling a warm spot possibly due to the looser Classic. That's when the wheels shifted directions, cultural anecdote from educational rhetoric. It left a little room for my mind to wander to what my feet were doing. BTW, for someone complaining about shrunken lungs, you had me fooled. Good run.