Most of us probably run on a road or some other kind of cambered surface. Have you given thought to what this might do, to both your body and your running?
I know I’ve thought about how a camber might affect both our injury risk and our efficiency.
Well, there’s a study out that addresses efficiency. The good news is that, while the data is a bit noisy, it doesn’t appear that camber, on average, makes our running efficiency worse. It does affect our form. Primarily, the upslope foot tends to land closer to our midline, slightly downslope, of where it lands on level ground. However, that form change doesn’t appear to have a negative effect on our efficiency.
I would like to see some follow up on injury risk but, admittedly, that would be quite a bit harder to study. In the meantime, at least one of the questions I have about running on cambered roads has been answered with promising results.