Bare My Sole

Last week I finished reading the book Born To Run, by Christopher McDougall.  This is a great book, packed full of adventure, science of running and the most interesting people doing things others thought were impossible.  If you are a runner or interested in running, you should read this book.

This book has inspired me and reenergized my running.  I am now  more interested in trail running and looking more closely at ultra marathon distances.  Ultra marathons seem like a pretty lofty goal considering the longest distance I’ve raced is 10k.  Right now the thought of even traveling 50 miles on foot in a day seems super-human.  However, there are a lot of people out there doing it and there is more and more each day.  It has been said that ultra marathon running is the fastest growing sport in North America.  For now I will have to stay focused on improving my distance and speed at 10k.  I have registered for the Lindsay Milk Run (10k), on July 19^th at 9am.

I learned the hard way not to make changes to my running form until I know what I’m doing, because what I think I am doing is not what I am actually doing.  Last Monday I was all excited to go running after finishing the book, and I was thinking about trying to shorten my stride.  By Tuesday night’s track workout, my left knee was very sore.  I knew it was from the changes I had made to my stride on Monday.  I had the same pain in my knees when I changed my stride in the winter while running on the ice.  When I was running fast at the track, the pain went away, but when I slowed down it would flare up again.  I rested for the rest of the week, and then on Sunday went for a two hour barefoot walk on the Jackson’s Park path and some trails through the woods.  So far the knee is feeling better and I hope to do an easy run Monday on the Pub Run without making any form changes.  Dave says he will get the video camera out in July so I can have a look at what I am really doing when I run.  So that should help.

Here are some websites of people featured in the book.

Barefoot Ted

Luis Escobar (the photographer)

Micah True (aka Caballo Blanco)

Chris McDougall on The Daily Show

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 14th, 2009 at 9:00 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.