Ryan

Analyzing form

/ Roundups / 1 minute of reading

How do we determine what is good form? Knee angles? Foot angle at initial contact with the ground? Various other specific details?

What if we zoomed out? A new paper suggests that may be the way to go. Instead of focusing on all those minute details, this looked at just a few variables and found meaningful differences between elite runners and very good ones. These things basically fall into line with what we would expect but the power is in that we don’t need to get down to minute details that would be hard to analyze. These are things that can be looked at without too much in the line of specialized equipment or technical knowledge.

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Difficult race day? Focus on competing

/ Racing / 2 minutes of reading
THIS is racing!

This past weekend, both my daughter and I ran races. We both had in mind times we thought we could hit and wanted to target. However, as race day neared, it became clear that the conditions were going to be challenging. Because of that, I repeatedly reminded both of us that we shouldn’t worry about our times. Just compete.

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Ask me anything

/ Miscellaneous / 2 minutes of reading

It’s that time again! Your chance to ask me anything you would like. As I always seem to mention, this is always one of my favorite things to do.

Almost nothing is off limits. Feel free to ask me about training, racing, my thoughts on training and racing as race calendars begin to fill up, what’s going on at HillRunner.com. This is my invitation to you to ask whatever you would like.

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How to predict running injuries?

/ Roundups / 1 minute of reading

We’ve probably all heard these ideas. Over pronation causes injuries. Strength or flexibility imbalances or simply lack of strength or flexibility cause injuries.

Heck, these are things I’ve said. But are these things true? Maybe not.

Well, there are some interesting caveats offered in that article but the short story is, on the whole, it’s hard to pinpoint any specific things that increases overall injury risk. Interesting to think about.

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Racing is a skill – practice it

/ Training / 2 minutes of reading
It’s been a while

I was just talking with a runner I coach about racing plans for this year. She’s not into racing frequently, instead picking and choosing races when she will be ready to really get after it. The easy call for her was to target a race this fall, build up to it over the summer and be in real good shape.

However, in talking, we commiserated about neither of us having run a real race in over a year and a half and I immediately thought she needs something else.

I told her to definitely pick out that target race in the fall but also think about finding something in the summer. Know she’s going into it not fully ready to race but practice the act of racing.

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