I’ve received a lot of ChiRunning email lately responding to my blogs about trail running. One topic that has popped up more than once is poison ivy, that nasty little plant that loves to make your skin look like an overcooked cheese pizza. I’m highly allergic to it, so I can empathize with all of you out there who spend a good part of your summer running in places other than your favorite trails, because they’re covered with the stuff. I flatly refuse to let a little toxic plant ruin my trail running so I spend a couple of hours a week covered from head to toe, in 80º heat, clearing trails near my home here in Asheville. I’ve never run in a place where poison ivy is the predominant ground cover.

Apart from resorting to clearing trails, I have found a great way to prevent the onset of a rash or to cure an infestation before it grows into a full-blown systemic case (which has happened every summer since I moved here three years ago).

Here’s what I do. When I return from a run where I know I’ve brushed up against poison ivy, I immediately throw all my running clothes in the washing machine with plenty of soap and a small amount of bleach…even my shoes! I then take a shower and pretend that I’m trying to scrub my skin off of my bones, using plenty of soap. I use a soap made from Jewel Weed which is an antidote for poison ivy, but any strong soap will work. Never take a bath after being in poison ivy or if you have an existing rash! Always take a shower.

As soon as I get out of the shower and dry off, the first thing I do is swab my legs with hydrogen peroxide to neutralize any oil residue that might still be on me. So far (knock, knock) I haven’t had a single case of it this year…and I’ve waded through plenty of it!
If I happen to get a rash (it starts of as little blisters on your skin) I immediately reach for the hydrogen peroxide, in which I soak cotton balls, and scrub the little blisters hard enough to break them. Then I repeat the hydrogen peroxide scrub about 4-5 times a day until the rash dries up and goes away. This technique has worked 100% for me and since I discovered it at the end of last summer. Since then I’ve never had a case of poison ivy last for more than about 3 days, which is completely acceptable compared to the usual 3 weeks (after a round of steroids) it used to take to get over it. So, now you don’t have to let a little poison ivy stop your summer trail running fun, you can go running in the hills to your heart’s content.
Happy trail running,
Danny

When I ask attendees at my ChiRunning workshops, I’m always amazed at how many runners don’t run trails. I suppose there are lots of reasons why someone might be a bit shy about heading out into Nature with nothing but dirt to land on. Could it be the wild animals that lurk in the woods? Or maybe it’s just the serial killers. Whatever the reasons are for anyone, I’m sure it’s based in fear of some sort. There have been only a very few times in my 35+ years of trail running that I’ve felt fear. I’ve never been chased by a wild animal and certainly not by another human being (with the exception of my competitors in racing events). I have been caught in a lightning storm at 11,000′ elevation in the Colorado Rockies and I’ve jumped over a rattlesnake that I mistook for a rock. I’ve run along trails where one misstep could result in a vertical plunge of a couple hundred feet. But, generally I feel trail running to be much safer than running in a city. So, if we can take some of the fear out of running on trails, maybe we can turn more runners on to the joys of running “pavement free.”

Here’s my contribution to dissipating some of the fears that might come up. I’m guessing that one of the reasons for not trail running has got to be either the fear of running on an uneven or slippery surface or even worse…falling down on an uneven or slippery surface. So, here are a couple of tips for you newbies.

Running Downhill on Loose Gravel
If you’re running downhill on a single-track trail and the surface is loose dirt or gravel there are a couple of things to do. If there is grass growing along the sides of the trail I suggest running there where the traction is better. The next best thing to do is look for spots on the trail where your feet won’t slip. These could be buried rock, roots or any place where you can see solid ground. If you begin to train your eye to see only the solid places on the trail, pretty soon all of the loose footing will disappear from your field of view and all you’ll see will be the multitude of safe places for your feet to land.

Spring is in full force and summer is quickly edging around the corner and I’m watching the trails turn from the starkness of winter into the million shades of green that pop out at this time of year. I love running trails because it allows me to witness the changing of the seasons firsthand with all my senses.

Since I spend many more hours running trails than on roads and streets, I’d like to offer some tips and suggestions for making this particular aspect of running, even more enjoyable.

Take care of Mother Nature and she’ll take care of you
The most important thing I’ve learned from my years of trail running is how important it is to take care of the trails you’re running, and there’s no better way than to devote a couple days every month to doing a little “housekeeping” so that you and everyone else can enjoy those trails more. Here are some things you can do.

Trimming the trails
I went out this morning packing a pair of rose clippers, the kind you use to trim small shrubs. They’re easy to carry with you when you’re running and are great for clipping away overhanging branches that are a hazard to your head, or small roots that could snag your footfall. When I go out for a trail maintenance run I don’t plan on actually getting much of a run in. I stop for every obstruction that I can clear up with my clippers.

It’s springtime and new shoots are springing up everywhere along the trails. Some grow so thick they can block your view of the trail or soak your shoes if you brush them with your legs. These are the ones I’m after. I clip them close to the ground (or pull them up by the roots if they’re really small) before they can grow large enough to create problems. I always throw the clippings as far off the trail as I can so as to keep the natural beauty of the trail intact. In fact, I do my best to leave a trail looking as if it just naturally grows as a clear path.

Remove any loose rocks
Another thing I do is practice my foot agility by flicking loose stones off to the side of the trail with my toes like a soccer player maneuvers a soccer ball. Don’t ever try to kick a rock off the trail. You never know how deeply it might be buried. If it’s obviously lying there on top of the ground, it’s fair game. There’s nothing worse than landing on a loose rock and rolling your ankle, so these are constant targets for me.

Poison ivy removal
I am extremely allergic to poison ivy, so I caution any of you that are thinking of thinning the sides of your trails, to know what it looks like and take protective measures if you’re going to take it upon yourself to rid your trails of this toxic plant. I wear long sleeves, long pants and gloves when working with poison ivy. When I’m done, I wash my clippers in detergent and throw my clothes in the laundry by themselves, being careful to not touch anything but the inside lining of the clothing. Getting rid of poison ivy along the trails I run is a definite hazard, but it gives me lots of peace of mind. So, for me it’s worth the risk.

There are plenty of other things to do to help out your fellow runners and I’ll write about them in future blogs. Until then, this will get you started on doing your best to give your fellow trail runners a nice clean trail to run on and everybody will go home happy.
Happy trails,
Danny

P.S. As an added note to this series on trail running, I’d like to let you all know that a new revised edition of the original ChiRunning Book has just been released and it has a new chapter on how to run Hill and Trails. We hope you enjoy reading all the new material we’ve come up with since the book was first released in 2004.

View looking uphill and south along the Matt Davis Trail - Marin County, CA

Funny you should ask that. I was just out running this morning and came up with the answer.

Since I moved here to Western North Carolina almost three years ago, I’ve been learning how to play the fiddle (when in Rome…). I have a great fiddle teacher named Jamie Laval and I highly suggest you check out his website if you’re interested in any form of Celtic or Scottish music. He’s one of the best around.

I’m still very much a beginning fiddle student and so Jamie has me do these great warm-up exercises where I’m learning finger placement. I begin by playing one note at a time with my first finger, and then matching it with an accompanying string so that I get the right pitch. Then I do the same thing with my second finger and so on until a four fingers of my left hand have practiced their respective positions on all four strings. When I can hit a good pitch with all 16 notes I get to move onto playing the songs I’m learning. What this does is get my fingers to always land on the right spot on the finger board so that playing the song is much more fluid and  accurate. I’ve already noticed a huge difference in my playing when I do these warm-up exercises.

So, I was out on my run this morning doing my 1-minute intervals on the trail. It was a one-hour run and I started out the first five minutes pretty easy and then got into alternating one minute of race pace focuses with one minute of easy resting pace. As I progressed through my workout, I noticed that my body was feeling more and more relaxed and the speed intervals were feeling easier and easier. So, I started doing 2-minute race focus intervals with one minute of rest. Throughout my run I gradually increased the length of the fast intervals and kept the resting intervals at one minute. By the end of my run I finished the last ten minutes at race pace feeling very little effort because I’d spent the better part of the run warming up and working on focuses.

My goal is to get to the point where I can run at race pace for an hour without stopping for a rest break. My race is at the end of August, so I don’t see any problem with working my way up to that. And, as you can see, it is absolutely the same thing I’m doing with my fiddle practice. It’s built on the premise that if you do your technique work up front, the rest just falls into place. I meet many people who think that speed comes strictly from strength and I couldn’t disagree more. Speed with running, just like speed with the fiddle, comes with efficiency, accuracy, and most of all relaxation. If you don’t have all three, you’re going to have to work harder to get that speed you’re looking for. It doesn’t matter whether you’re watching Salina Kosgei (the Kenyan woman who won this year’s Boston Marathon) or Itzak Perlman, they’re both doing the same thing underneath it all.

 For Spring Break our family traveled to the San Francisco Bay Area where ChiRunning was conceived and launched. I thoroughly enjoyed seeing many of our old friends and doing a little sightseeing, which for me means trail running in the Marin Headlands, home to arguably some of the most beautiful trail runs in the world. Over the next few blogs I’ll post some of the photos I took just before my camera died an untimely death at Stinson Beach.

Spring is upon us and I hope these shots inspire you to get out and see Nature in its finest season (in my opinion). There’s nothing better than feasting your eyes on the millions of shades of green that paint the landscape this time of year. I had a wonderful 90 minute run through redwoods, past waterfalls, and along vast fields of blooming Lupines. I hope you enjoy these pictures as much as I enjoyed running to find them. I find that it’s really hard to match trail running for connecting your eyes, your heart …and your legs!

Carpe diem!
Danny

This is a shot of San Francisco looking south from the top of the Matt Davis Trail above Stinson Beach. The tower in the background is Sutro Tower which rises above Golden Gate Park. The water you see is the Pacific Ocean as it enters the San Francisco Bay (to the left, out of the picture). 

Looking south from the Matt Davis Trail towards ocean side of San Francisco

Here’s an add-on to my last blog about running one-minute intervals. In the last half of this workout, depending on how I feel, I’ll begin extending the “racing” intervals to two minutes instead of one. I still keep the “resting” intervals by running in 1st gear for a minute. (Just as a side note, I avoid walking during my rest breaks. It does nothing for my conditioning or my psychology to be giving myself an “out” unless I absolutely need it.) Lengthening the time of the racing intervals, especially once I’m well warmed up, is fun and it stretches the conditioning phase of the workout. My goal is to very gradually increase the length of the conditioning intervals over the next few months until I can comfortably run at race pace for an hour, taking “rest” breaks only when I absolutely need them.

When I transition into running the “race” pace intervals during these trail runs, I’m not focusing on speed per se, but on the running form required to run the fastest through whatever section of trail I happen to be passing through. Then, instead of working harder and harder, I’m actually making it a fun game. I’ve only played a few video games, but approaching my runs in this way feel much like playing a video game where you’re working through different levels of difficulty and developing new skills in the process. I would have to say that this is a far cry from a video game because it’s in real time and it has a direct influence on my mind/body connection in ways no virtual reality could possibly do.

Happy Trails,
Danny

In preparation for the 10K trail race I plan to run in August, I’ve started my race-specific training by doing hill intervals on the trails above my house. I have a half mile loop that is just about exactly half uphill and half downhill. I began with six repeats of this loop with no rest in between loops. I use the downhill section to recover from the uphill section and to work on lengthening my stride.

Here’s how I run hill intervals.
I start at the top of the loop and begin by running down to the halfway mark. In this section I’m trying keep my upper body as far forward as I can while at the same time allowing my pelvis to rotate as much as possible to absorb the shock of running downhill at a fast pace. If I do it right, I don’t feel like I’m expending any energy. In fact, I feel like I’m resting even though I’m going at a very fast pace.

Then, when I hit the halfway mark and begin running the uphill section back to the top, I change a number of things. The first thing I do is shorten my stride so I’m running in a lower gear. This saves me a ton of energy without sacrificing a lot of speed. Next, I pull my hands in closer to my chest and swing my arms with a powerful forward/upward motion. Believe it or not, this helps my obliques to drive my pelvis which then drives my legs in the most efficient way. This feels like “whole-body” running, and it should, because I don’t want to rely solely on my legs to get me up the hills…especially those long, steep ones.

Another thing I do on the uphills is lean my column into the hill so that I feel as though I’m falling up the hill. This saves my hamstrings from having to work to “pull” me up the hill.

The most important thing to me when running hill intervals is to keep my perceived rate of exertion (PRE) as consistent as possible on the uphill sections. I’m trying to maintain a PRE of about 7 (on a scale of 1 to 10) on each of the six uphill sections.

Here are my chronological split times for each of the six intervals:
1. 4:27
2. 4:30
3. 4:26
4. 4:18
5. 4:11
6. 4:03

As you can see, each interval with the exception of the second one was faster than the one preceding it. I lost focus on the second one, which is why I lost 3 seconds. The idea is to have each progressive interval just slightly faster than the one before it…without increasing your PRE to get the job done. By maintaining a very consistent sense of energy expenditure my body will learn to run more efficiently which should always be way at the top of your list if you want to do well in your event.

To keep my energy expenditure constant and my PRE constant I use all the uphill focuses I mentioned above in varying degrees depending on which one I feel will help me most to accomplish that consistency.

Play with this on your own runs or walks, and challenge yourself to run or walk hills faster without changing your effort level. It sort of forces you to practice your focuses…and that’s always a good thing.

For some additional suggestions on how to run hills click here.

Happy Hills,
Danny

I was out trail running with my friend Bart Smith today, and when I mentioned that I was looking for a race to train for, he told me about the USATF National 10K Trail Championships which are being held this year in North Carolina (where I live).

It seems odd, but I’ve raced every distance from a half marathon to 100 miles, but I’ve never raced a 10K. So I’ve decided to give it a shot. What I’ll do is blog about my training program, since training for a shorter faster distance is very different than it would be for a marathon or an ultra. I’m in new territory here, so it’ll be fun to wee what comes up.

After going online and looking up the winning times for past races, I saw that the fastest times were in the 48 minute range. That means that the fastest, strongest, national-class runners are doing this course at an 8 minute per mile pace, which tells me that to say it’s a challenging course, might be an understatement. The only race I’ve done that could be similar to this one is the annual Dipsea Race held in Marin County California every year. It’s the second oldest footrace in the country (behind the Boston Marathon), with 7.1 mile of distance and 1200′ of vertical gain…followed by the same amount of loss. So, if the National 10K trail championships are anything like this (which I expect), I’m in for quite a ride.

I’ll let you know what I find out about the course from the race director. I’ll also let you know what my training plan will be and when I’ll officially begin to train. I’m thinking that tomorrow might be a good day to start. The race is at the end of August, and I want to be well prepared.

Happy trails,
Danny

We’ve all heard the old saying, “It takes money to make money.” Well, here’s my latest take on that. I was out running yesterday, having an ok run, but not feeling particularly energetic. I’m sure you’ve been there. I was running my favorite out and back trail run with my dog. It’s quite a hilly trail with virtually no flat spots anywhere.

It has an uphill start (which I never recommend) so I started off walking to warm up my legs before taking on the first incline. Once I began running on the trail I walked some of the steeper uphills in order to not over-use my legs early on in the run. This has always worked well for me in the past. Once my legs were warmed up they began to feel much more comfortable on the up hills. I ran to my turnaround point and began my return trip, as I usually do. But on the way back, my legs were beginning to feel exhausted running some of the last hills, even though I was shortening my stride considerably and slowing my pace. I felt as though someone had pulled the plug on my energy. I was body sensing and my legs were telling me that they were tired.

One of the interesting things about the Chi skill of Body Sensing that is explained in the ChiRunning and ChiWalking books is that as you watch and listen to your body, it is important to be as non-identified and impartial as possible. So, here I am, running along and saying to myself, “This is just a sensation.” I intuitively knew that my legs weren’t really tired, because I had done this same run only a couple of days earlier and had a great run. So, then I asked myself, “What can I do about this?” I was on an uphill section, so I shortened my stride, relaxed my legs and began swinging my arms forward and upward wildly, creating a huge range of motion. When I crested the top of the short rise I kept swinging my arms as I had been and leaned into the subsequent downhill slope. I did everything I could to lengthen my stride, rotate my pelvis and bend my knees. I must have looked like a crazy-man. I kept this up for about a minute or two and then relaxed my whole body. What I noticed after doing this, was that my whole body felt much lighter and energized. I had no problems with fatigue for the rest of the run. In fact, I ran smoother and faster than usual.

After my run, I realized that if I hadn’t chosen to swing my arms and focused on getting my energy moving, it wouldn’t have changed over and I might have finished my run feeling tired and worn out. As it turned out, I felt very energetic afterwards. And that’s when the phrase, “It takes money to make money.” popped into my head.

Whenever you feel you have a lack of energy, it could mean that your energy (chi) just isn’t flowing and you need to do something to “wake it up.” Doing something physical is always best, and don’t always think that just because you’re tired, that you have no energy available. It’s there, but you have to consciously “jump start” it to get it moving. This technique can, of course, be applied just as effectively to situations in everyday life. Try it…you might like it.

Keep the chi flowing,
Danny