I have always heard of fellow runners getting pain here and there, injured every now and then, being a runner myself, I know where might have gone, coz I learnt it the hard and painful way.
I am not writing a new running guide here, most of the tips or techniques a lot of u might have already read it somewhere or heard it from someone, if you are suffering some kind of injuries or difficulties in running, probably your problem is your did not LISTEN or UNDERSTAND what you heard or read.
So I will try to repeat what you may have already know, in my own way, with the hope that you will not only start LISTENING, but PRACTISING.
1st of all, not all of us are born with the gene to run fast, let me define fast (in my own way) before you even ask, at least from now on we are on the same page about its definition in my sharing; forget about Kenyan and world class runner, FAST in Malaysian context is 10KM in 40 mins, 21KM in 1 hr 30 mins and FM in 3 hrs 20 mins, I define it in such a way because if you are running this pace, you are getting some prizes at some race events already.
So, not all of us are born fast, not especially if we are not running when we were younger to build a foundation for running, then suddenly at this age (whatever age that you are at now), you pick up running either by health conscious, peer influence or inspiration or whatever reason you decided to run. Then you started your 1st KM, 5KM, 10KM and even 21KM. Now, you are at whichever state that you are now and you are struggling, struggling with some pain, struggling to get better and faster, struggling to challenge the new distance, a full marathon perhaps.
But, are you doing it RIGHT at the 1st place? Do you actually know how to run? Are you running with the right posture? Do you measure yourself to know if you are running at the right pace?
What I am about to share is from my personal experience, from doing the right thing (I think) and having done some terrible mistake (we all make mistakes, if you have not, you have not lived, :P).
1. Check your landing while you run.
- It may sound silly to ask u to run on a treadmill in the gym and admiring yourself of how u run and land your foot, but it is better to be silly for awhile than to let people laugh at you (at your back or from a distance) seeing how you run.
- No one else can tell u better on how u run or land than yourself, only yourself.
- Ask someone to video record how u run, view it yourself while comparing with those running guide videos in youtube, find out where could be your area of improvement.
- Then practice it on your run, it doesn't matter if you have to look at your own feet when you run, you are TRAINING, so train your landing, forget about pace and target distance (those are for Running 102).
2. Check your body posture.
- This is important, it doesn't only affect your long distance run, it also affect how you appear on the photos taken by photographer !!! Of course there are many ways of improving how you look in the photos, I promise you I will share one useful tip to instantly improve your overall running photo by the end of this sharing.
- Again, your probably have seen from your running photos that you may not look as cool as you thought you were, having a good running posture will do you good for long run. Your body is where the V12 engine is, so everything you read/watch about having the right body posture, the right arms position, the less bouncing running, the chest, the head, the butt, is as important as the design of the formula 1 car.
- Not having the perfect body (too fat too skinny) is not the reason why you can't run a good posture.
- To get to the right body posture, repeat the step 1 above on landing, no matter how reluctant you are on doing this, for the sake of the viewers of you running (for this I trust that your running buddies have been dying to tell you), please record and view it a 100 times, a 1000 times if you have to.
- Here is the thing, doesn't matter if you run slow, run with the right posture, in the photo you will look faster than it is.
3. Train your legs, your core, your joints, OUTSIDE of your running, not DURING.
- You are not elite, I repeat, you are not, so leave your running be about the 2 points above.
- Do your hard work on improving your muscles (calves, quads, hamstrings etc) outside of your running, your running will somewhat improve those muscles but you need to train them to prepare for the runs.
- So read back your guide or youtube videos on how to do the sexy squats, planking, etc. If you want to say don't know, try type in google search: HOW TO TRAIN ______. then you will have plenty of sites and blogs telling you how to do it.
- There are cheat tricks too, but unfortunately you need to do it the formal way before I share them in future posts.
4. DO NOT increase your mileage above the rule of thumb
- If you do not know the rule of thumb, go find out.
- I know how you may say you have done it and you survived, well good job and good luck, try doing it all the way up beyond 30KM.
- A healthy adult can run long distance even without training (is just that they have not done it before), our body is capable of doing that, but risk injury (immediate or later) and suffer the DOMS later (yes, google DOMS if you not sure what it means).
- You do not need to run the distance of what others (especially your poisonous peers) do, and if you do the above 3 right, your find this rule very easy to comply coz you no longer train for distance but train for running RIGHT.
- It may take you 3-4 months to get to a 21KM run, but trust me, it is worth it, look at all those that challenged the longer distance and suffered, the only way for them to save their face is to say that it is worth it and they are happy they did it and succeed. Then few months down the road, you will find yourself running strong while they are still running the same distance and complaint of pain here and there.
- So, do your foundation right, it is just a few weeks/months before you hit the target distance, but you hit it with strong base.
As you can see, there is no fancy new tips here, just new insight of why you should do what you already know. Here is some sharing about my journey that lead me to write this post:
I am not a fast runner to start with, in 2010, my 1st 10KM was 1:10 (something like that), I was not running right but managed to pull through a sub60 after 6 months of jogger mentality focusing on just doing the same thing in every run. 2011, 1st 21KM done in 2:20, suffered soreness from 15KM onwards, started to have pain and injury around shin and ankle, still not knowing how to land properly. Changed shoes and started to explore forefoot, managed to just made it to sub2 for HM after 10 months, with most of the training done below 15KM. 2012, Virgin full marathon in 4:18, that was when I started to train with right landing, paying attention to running posture, even by just training 10-15KM each time, I was still able to complete a full marathon 4 months later. But I left out step 3, which was why I started to injure myself after achieving 1st sub4 in full marathon, and it was injury after injury that took up the next 8 months of my life. So I not only know the pain, but also the suffering.
After returning from injury, I repeat the step 1,2,3 and 4, I managed to pull through TMBT 100K, and completed all the runs in final quarter of 2013 without a single injury and most importantly, without the same kind of suffering I had in 2012, with better timing.
But I never skip a day of doing step 3 (may be some days i did...), which will be covered in next post.
I promised a tip to instantly improve your running photo look, here it is:
I hope you find the tip useful. :)
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