Where art thou KSOs

After a couple of days off due to some general soreness and time constraints, I set out for a lunch time run.
The plan was for 30 minutes at a relaxed pace. I did try someting different today in that I wore my Merrell Trail Gloves instead of my Vibram KSOs. Fail. I did this partly because I was getting a bit self conscious about some of the looks i was getting walking out of my work building. After today I've decided that I don't care about that anymore. I think the problem with the Trail Gloves are the aggressive lugs on the outsole. When I run in my fivefingers I am very quiet, but in the Trail Gloves there is a distinctive slapping sound and they just feel a little stiifer to run in. Based on this I sometimes think that it's never going to be easy to surpass Vibram's designs as a minimalist shoe. Vibram, please don't mess with the KSO. Having said all that I still had a good run of 5.23 km in 30 minutes but would've been better if I wasn't so conscious of my shoes.
On a separate running related matter, I have started reading "Run - The Mind Body Method of Running by Feel" by Matt Fitzgerald. I'll post some kind of review when I'm finished, but the first few pages have got my attention.

No news = good news...maybe

I've been having a good week running-wise and really have been enjoying my running more than thinking about it. A bit of this has to do with the fact that my body has finally adapted to some extent and am running up to an hour at a time comfortably. I am choosing to limit my running to a maximum of four times a week to still allow me 3 full days for recovery and so far this has worked fine.
I ran on today and on Sunday and plan on running tomorrow and Thursday before having Friday and Saturday off....hang on a minute that sounded suspiciously like a Rebecca Black song.

On Sunday it rained alot in Melbourne and found myself with saturated fivefingers at the end of the run. This resulted in some painful blisters on the knuckles of my big toes from the wet fabric rubbing on the skin. I ran again today using band-aids to cover the sores but I may have to use my Trail Gloves for tomorrow's run as they have a bit more room in them and no rubbing on the area. Hopefully this will let the blisters heal.
I have been noticing that my overall pace is beginning to come down which makes me happy.

The Hungry Caterpillar

I’ve been reading ‘Zen and the Art of Running’ by Larry Shapiro and have been finding it quite a good read. I really like the idea of running as a form of meditation. It’s been dawning on me that this requires a lot of self focus and really listening to what you are doing. I used to run while listening to music but now I’m wondering if I wasn’t inadvertently ignoring signs of impending injury. Since I hurt my knee I run sans headphones, besides, I need all my concentration on my footstrike, posture and cadence.


Lately I’ve also been doing a lot of reading about the explosion of minimal shoes coming on to the market. I do quite like the look of some but I just can’t believe that any would be able to better the look and feel of Vibram Fivefingers. Vibram if you’re reading this, please don’t mess with existing models, especially KSOs.

I have found it surprisingly easy this week to avoid chocolate, in fact it’s been something like ten days since I had any and overall my diet’s been pretty good. It will be interesting to weigh in at the beginning of July. Speaking of July, I can’t wait for the southern hemisphere winter to be over. Now that I’m running consistently and without injury, I’m dreaming of the warmer weather and running topless in my fivefingers…

Happy Happy Bastille Day

I normally do most of my running during the week in my lunch hour, but yesterday I just had to much to do to take that time during lunch. I decided to bite the bullet and run home after work. The only problem with this was that the distance from work to my home is roughly twice the longest distance I had run as a minimalist. With the mantra of TMTS ringing in my head, I told myself that if I wasn't feeling good by the 6km mark I would simply walk or catch a train as the path I was running was along my train line.
Well, under some beautiful late-afternoon winter sunshine I got home running all the way. According to my Garmin, 10km in 62 minutes and I felt great. The most pleasing thing about the run was that for the first time in a long time I actually forgot about my knee because it felt like there was nothing wrong with it at all. Today, I am feeling surprisingly good considering the length of the run, but I think this is a result of listening to my body during the run and not worry about how far or fast but just keeping myself comfortable. The only thing that could have made my run more enjoyable was if I didn't have a sloshing in my intestines the whole way. I have also got a blood blister under my middle right toe which isn't painful. I'll take today and tomorrow as a rest and attempt a similar length run on Sunday. Happy days.

Discipline

Over the last few days I have been thinking about my running, health, fitness, body, ageing etc All the things that a man approaching 40 years of age probably thinks a bit about anyways, provided they’re interested in running of course.

Slowly my mind is formulating short, medium and long term plans for all these facets and I will be talking about these a lot in future posts. Here are the types of things floating through my mind at the moment and apologies if what you are about to read resembles a stream-of-conscience spew onto a page.



Running



Hopefully this is slowly taking care of itself and as I have stated before, I need to be patient and listen to my body. Doing this has produced two great runs in the last week. I will not try to stick to any rigid training program for now but simply aim to run 4 times a week for a minimum of 30 minutes each time. I will run less than this if my body dictates I must. The hard part here is getting deceived by my conscious mind telling me I can do something and not listening to the counter-argument from my sub-conscious. This is one event I’d like to participate in long term and there has already been some interest amongst work colleagues in putting a team together. My discipline here is to let things happen when they need to.



Health



This relates a lot to my diet and consequently my weight I think my ideal weight for doing the type of running that I really want to do is something between 75 and 80 kg. Currently I weigh in at 93 kg and I have a real battle with refined carbs-sugar-chocolate-ice cream that I need to get on top of. The way I am thinking of approaching this is to make small changes on a weekly basis and hopefully in the long term I’ll find myself on a diet that keeps me healthy, sustains my performance and brings me to my best running weight. My discipline will be simply to make the best choices about what to put in my mouth and decide whether I really need to eat as much as I think I do.



Fitness



My discipline here is to take full advantage of the gym membership I have and train my body to be strong and supplement/compliment my running. I need to try and do this a minimum of twice a week at best 3-4. If I do this the body will take care of itself and then…



Ageing



For the last 10 years I have been trying to convince myself that I was looking forward to getting older. Maybe because I was convinced by then I would be in the best shape of my life. Now that I am 39, I simply am not and am possibly in the worse shape of my life. This is my real spur to turn things around and my recent niggles and injuries have only reinforced this. My ultimate goal is to be in the best shape of my life in my fifties and sixties. My discipline is simply to do all the right things to make this happen. Simple right?

Warnnambool

After 8 days of no running, I decided that I felt pain-free enough on Saturday for a short, easy run.
I was away for the weekend with the family and was staying in Warnnambool for the annual school holiday kids festival. We were at a place close to the beach and I decided to head out along the main coastal walking path. Here's an example of the views I had on the run:

Within a few minutes, I was feeling great and was purely and simply running. Not looking at my watch, not worrying about my speed, not feeling my calves complain and not wondering if I'll ever be able to be a runner again. Everything felt as easy as it ever was and gave me renewed optimism and a determination to continue on this minimalist path. Me and my Vibrams. By the end, I had run 5.35 km in 32 minutes, my calves weren't sore and I knew that all I had to do from now on was just listen to my body and let it run when it wants to and rest when it wants to.
Today I had a scheduled follow up visit with my physio and my back is now nearly 100 % pain free and I'm assure that running wasn't causing any issues. In the coming days, I will be assessing my lifestyle and making some changes re diet and exercise. Stay tuned.

Runblogger: Running Form at the 2010 Boston Marathon: Slow Motion Video of Barefoot, Minimalist, and Traditionally Shod Runners at sub-3:00 Pace

Runblogger: Running Form at the 2010 Boston Marathon: Slow Motion Video of Barefoot, Minimalist, and Traditionally Shod Runners at sub-3:00 Pace A great example in differences of form between shod and barefoot/minimalist.

Back on the brink

I have mad an appointment to see a physiotherapist today and hopefully sort out my lower back/buttock issue. It is much better than it was on Sunday, but I still feel a painful pulling sensation on the right side when I am striding forward when walking. I'm hoping it's not being caused by any unconscious compensation on my right knee. As it stands, the state of my back will see me taking the whole of this week off and will return gently next week. Deep down I am feeling that I was struck by the TMTS syndrome because in May I had clocked just under 30 km for the month and then I followed that up with nearly 70 km in June. Hmmm what ever happened to the 10 % rule?

P.S. I have just come back from my first visit with this physio and am feeling a lot more optimistic already. I am now in a lot less pain after some massage/manipulation and he seems to think that I would only need one more visit. The upshot is that he thinks it's a slight strain that has caused the muscle to press on a nerve and that running was not the cause. It is a lot more likely that it was the way I am carrying my kids around and straining my back in the process. They are getting a little bit big for carrying around these days.

Fatso

July has not got off to a good start for me. I weighed in yesterday and discovered that I had gained 500 grams since the beginning of June, even though I managed to run 70 kilometers for the month. A big increase on the previous month. Clearly I am not out-training my atrocious diet. I should point out that I hardly tried to eat well, in fact I used my extra running as an excuse to eat a ridiculous amount of chocolate. So July will be the month of better eating and hopefully this will result in weight loss.
I think my extra weight is contributing to my latest injury. Just when my calves seemed to muffle their screams at me, I have now been afflicted with some lower back pain which is making it difficult to walk let alone run. So I canned my planned 50 minutes today and will see a physiotherapist early in the week for some treatment. Fingers crossed I won't be out of action for long and don't lose any gains I made in June.