Another race day today. I ran in the Asheville Citizen Times Half Marathon. The week immediately following my 10K Trail Championship race I ran easy but hilly runs and then, since these two races were only two weeks apart, stepped right back into resuming by training for this race. In order to do race specific training, I did most of my training runs on the half marathon course, which is an extremely hilly course meandering through the neighborhoods on the north side of the city. I basically trained right up to the race, doing 6-7 mile runs every day (with the exception of a bike day) until the Friday before the race, when I “tapered.”

My strategy during my training runs and during the race was to use my legs as little as possible on all the uphill sections, while at the same time exaggerating the use of my upper body (forward armswing and increased lean). On the downhill sections my objective was to lean into the downhills and allow my stride to lengthen as much as possible. I was basically trying to run as fast as I could safely manage on all the downhills by cooperating with the pull of gravity.

On the uphills and flats I was also toying with a new concept I’m working on with my stride where I’m using my obliques to drive my pelvis (the active use of pelvic rotation) which in turn drives my legs. Running this way allows me to hold a good pace on the uphills without using any leg muscle per se because my legs become simply an extension of my pelvis. It is proving to work incredibly well, and tonight as I’m writing this blog I don’t sense even a smidgeon of fatigue or soreness in my legs. For those of you just learning the ChiRunning technique, I don’t advise attempting this technique until you are at the point with your running where you are adept at neutralizing your legs, using them strictly for momentary support between strides and never for propulsion. I’ll talk more about this technique in future blogs and I hope to incorporate it into future “advanced” ChiRunning courses. Let me know if you’d be interested in hearing more.

The physical details: I finished first in my age group with a chip time of 1:37:38, an average pace of 7:27/mile. I’m guessing the course had a total elevation gain of over 1000′. I ran the race in a pair of the new Newton shoe called the Isaac. We had absolutely perfect race weather with heavy cloud cover and temperatures in the 60’s-low 70’s. The race was extremely well organized and supported with aid stations about every mile and a half! The volunteers were fabulous.

If you’d ever like to run a challenging but beautiful 13-mile tour of Asheville I highly suggest training for this one. It’s right up there in my list of the most beautiful race courses.

Katherine and Journey and I were out on a run today around the lake near our house when we ran into a neighbor. As she stopped to say hi, she said, “I promised myself that the next time I saw you I’d tell you what has happened to me since you told me something at a neighborhood party last year. You told me to take it easy running the uphills and to let myself fly on the downhills. I always thought I had to work really hard to get up the hills so I wouldn’t lose any time in my races. But, you know what, since I’ve been following your advice and going easier on the uphills, I’ve actually been doing much better in my hill running. I’m not so tired at the top of the hill that I have to spend most of the downhill recovering my strength. Now I just treat the uphills like they’re the resting phase of my runs and I can blaze down all the hills and more than make up for any lost time.”

Then she continued, “I was in a leadership class last week and they were telling us all of the same principles… like, ‘maximize your strengths’ and ‘treat your weaknesses with respect.’ It’s all the same stuff that I’ve been practicing in my hill running and I find it working well in the rest of my life.”

It was so nice to hear her story and how she’s been using her ChiRunning practice to teach herself great principles to live by. For myself, the longer I practice ChiRunning, the more I find out that it’s not about the running. It always comes down to what I come away with, that I can then apply somewhere else in my life.

Let us know what transferable knowledge you’ve come across in your running practice. I’m sure everyone following this blog would love to hear your story.

All the best,
Danny

Yes, you can say you heard if first right here in the blog. All of my ChiRunning race-specific training paid off and I actually won my age group at the 2009 USATF National 10K Trail Championships last weekend. But, let’s be clear about this. It doesn’t mean that I’m the fastest 55-59 year old trail runner in the U.S. It just means that I was the fastest old guy who got it together to show up on race day.

The race was extremely enjoyable as well as being an extremely challenging experience. In the 6.2 miles of the course there were 1310′ of vertical gain (climbing) and the same amount of vertical loss (plummeting).
The race started literally on top of a mountain and was shaped like a cloverleaf where you had to descend the four sides of the mountain in separate loops, returning to the top of the mountain at the end of each loop. The best word I could come up with in describing the course was “treacherous.” It looked like it had been built by a work crew using only weed-eaters and pickaxes the week before and I had to rely on my wits (as well as my hands) to keep myself vertical a few times. The views were off the charts but, as you could guess, I didn’t have much time to take them in. I was busy using every ChiRunning focus in the book.

I don’t mean to sound like I didn’t like the course. On the contrary, I thrive in these conditions. I get to put everything in know to the test and this event felt like a final exam in a graduate course. I finished the race in 1:02:46, a mere 16 seconds behind my training partner, Billy Jonas. The winner of the race ran it in a totally unbelievable time of 39 minutes and some change. Do the math. That’s a 6:20/mile average for the course I just described! I figure the guy who won had one of three things going on: a.) he’s bionic… b.) he’s carrying a major death-wish… or c.) he forgot to do one of the required loops.

Hats off to Jason and his outstanding race crew for putting on such a “well-run” event. Y’all did a great job!

I’ll be running the Asheville Citizen Times Half Marathon on September 12th and I’ll be using the same race strategy…pass every gray-haired guy I can find.

Keep on Truckin’
Danny

In case you missed it, there was an article in last Sunday’s NY Times about how the “barefoot running” trend is effecting the shoe industry. Actually, it’s not so much a barefoot trend as it is a current upsurge in the questioning of the running shoe company’s ability to produce a shoe that actually has any effect on running injuries. ChiRunning was named as one of the organizations helping to promote good running technique and endorsing more of a minimal shoe approach to running.

The big debate is whether or not building more cushioning and structure into running shoes has the advertised effect or if it’s just another case of corporate marketing looking for an effective way to sell shoes to an uneducated populace. Well, in answer to the first part of the debate, as we’ve seen by the percentage of runners who get injured every year, nothing has changed since running shoes for the general public began being produced in the 1970’s. If anything, the injury rate has gone up. And, in answer to the second part of the big debate, yes, it seems to have been a very good marketing ploy that sold gazillions of shoes to people thinking that they’d be safe in their running by buying the right shoe.

I’m so thankful that articles like this are starting to surface in the national media. More attention needs to be paid by the shoe industry to make shoes that fit the needs of an ever-growing population of runners who are working on changing their running form, to prevent injuries, instead of thinking that the right shoe will do the job. For ten years now ChiRunning and ChiWalking classes have been teaching runners and walkers how to run and walk pain-free, injury-free and faster. Check out our schedule of classes if you’re interested. And, while you’re there, check out the results of a West Virginia University poll done with 2500 ChiRunners which reports remarkable findings on the effectiveness of running technique improvement on injury rates.

There are a number of forward thinking shoe companies out there that are working on producing less of a shoe and that’s good news for those of us who are no longer willing to suffer through the over-built “corrective” shoes that have been the norm since the running boom started in the ’70’s. actually almost all of the running shoe companies sell shoes that are perfectly good for the midfoot striker…but many runners are scared away by the model name “racing flat.” Most racing flats have all the great attributes a midfoot runner craves: lots of flexibility in the sole, great ventilation, very minimal lift in the heel and (until the secret gets discovered by the shoe companies) a cheap price. I wear NB-790’s which cost $45 online (while the supply lasts) and which, in the past few years, have been one of the best selling running shoes NB has ever produced. But, as with all great running shoes…they’ve decided to quit producing what I’ve considered the perfect shoe. Go figure. I’m now looking at FiveFingers, Adizeros, La Sportiva, and yes, even the Nike Free for the next “ideal” shoe.

Viva la revolution!
Danny

p.s. Since the article in the NY Times came out it is the 8th most emailed article.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/30/business/30shoe.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1