Friday, December 17, 2010

2 Month off & Now back to business

I was told the other night "If you don't post something soon, you are going to be unbookmarked". Ouch!

All excuses aside, I just needed some time off from this to get my act together on what is happening. I think I have it.

First, a quick recap of the last 2 months.

* Took my beautiful wife on a 15 year anniversary trip to the Bahamas. 2 night cruise. First time away from the kids for more than 2 nights in 12 years. Ran on the treadmill on the ship as it "Pitched and Rolled"
* Attended the Larry and Colleen Peterson benefit run. I won the race I ran with an official distance of "Some", and an time of "Elapsed". Zach claimed to have beat me, but I ran the outside tangents on the course, so I ran at least 10 feet farther than him. SO THERE!
* Have run in Austin, San Antonio, Dallas (Katy Trail.... which is not a trail), Lapham Peak, Denver, and a bunch of treadmills in between.
* Working on new running technique
* Happy to be running
* Ready to start a new chapter on running.... not sure what that means, though

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I recently read Dr. Nicholas Romanov's book "POSE Method of Running". I had heard about it, but never quite understood what it was. So, out of curiousity, picked up the book. Interesting theory.

Not sure if I can do justice trying to summarize the concept, so google it and see what you come up with.

What I can say is, the basic premise makes sense. Runners, for the most part, have never leared proper technique or form. Now, "Proper technique and form" can be very subjective, but I think very few people ever learned ANY technique or form. Most runners just started running. The academia came up in training, not the core form and technique.

For me, trying this was a quest in curiosity. I was bored and unmotivated. This gave me somehting to try and see what I could do with it.

After 6 weeks, here is what I can say.

* It is different. My calves hurt for the first week
* I thought at first "how can anybody run like this more than a few miles?"
* I slowly started to realize "wow, I am not at all sore after a run (once the calf soreness went away)"
* I almost look forward to runs, because they are feeling effortless (relatively speaking)
* It takes some skin adjustments on the balls of your feet
* My balance has improved 100%
* I learned that after thinking and telling people for years that I don't heel strike........ I heal strike.

I will dedicate some posts to this, and the progress. But that is a quick insight into what I have been doing.

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Check out the Lapham Blog for Craig Swarthout's 200 mile run in November. It is a great story.

And as he said himself "No good deed goes unpunished". Check out one of the comments from the "Off the couch blog" from "Kettlekid". I really have a hard believing anybody would categorize a 200 mile run...... any 200 mile run.... in under 60 hours.... as anything but AWESOME. Hence me as "The Slowest Matt" had to chime in.

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Great job to Helen for her job going to Hellgate. A belated "great job" to Brothergrub at his performance at Pinhoti 100 (Although, 30 minute miles isn't really running... is it?). Not sure if I can walk that slow.

I had the honor to go out and have a beer with Santa this week. He divulged to me who's been naughty and who's been nice.

He knows..... Yes... he always knows.