I was working with a client this morning who has had a little flare up of the dreaded plantar fasciitis.

We practiced running will soft feet, landing midfoot, circular foot motion and hip rotation. In order to prevent a flare up of PF, it’s really helpful to focus on not pushing off with your toes, not holding any tension in your lower legs.

In order to really feel what it’s like to keep your lower legs completely relaxed, it’s easier to stand and begin walking, practicing the heel lift: Stand with correct posture, and imagine your psoas muscle (the deep, vertical muscle that runs between your pelvis and your middle spine) doing the work of lifting your leg. It’s a very strong muscle and can lift up your feet all day long without getting overused.

Walking around on the track this morning, my client had a moment of “ah-hah!” practicing the simple exercise of lifting his feet off the ground: he was really Body Sensing his ability to let his lower legs relax completely and rely on his psoas muscle to do the work. I explained that the more he can practice that all day every day: walking around the house, in the grocery, to the mailbox, even up and down stairs, the more easily it will become for him. Then, when he goes out to run, the ankle lift will be like second nature.

For those of you who have bouts of plantar fasciitis:

• Use tennis balls on the plantar tendon, and really push down hard with your foot to stretch and passively activate that tendon.
• Don’t walk barefoot at all! In fact, if you can wear sandals in the shower and as soon as you rise in the morning, that helps enormously.
• Keep walking and running, if you can stand it. PF gets worse the less you move and the more you sit still, because it gets stiff.
• Ice your tendon after exercising: frozen veggie bags or Dixie cups of frozen ice work well
• Stay Positive! You’ll get through it, you just have to listen to your body!

It was very fun to help my friend and client have this ah-hah! moment of recognizing a completely relaxed and passive lower leg by practicing ChiWalking: it will help him recover from PF and it will also help as he continues to run, recognizing the difference between toeing off VS lifting the ankle.

In the past week, I’ve gone running three times. Lately, that’s a lot for me! I’ve been making the time to get outdoors and enjoy the crisp fall mornings.

Sunday I went running for 3.8 miles with the dog, surprising myself, and the dog as well. We had great weather that morning and going running sounded like just the perfect thing to do. I was focused only on not stepping past my hip and landing midfoot. I felt great the entire run, and couldn’t believe when I got home to map it that we’d run that far; I felt like I’d barely done anything!

Yesterday morning, I took Oliver the dog and went running at the park near my house, where we happened upon a Great Blue Heron standing in a puddle of water, the remains of three days of solid rain. Oliver stopped dead in his tracks and simply watched in awe, as did I. That was a nice way to start the morning.

Then, today, I went running with 5 other Certified Instructors; this weekend is an Instructors-only event here in Asheville, to work on our form, our teaching, and our business practices… I took them to one of my favorite little forest areas that Danny introduced me to. My focuses were landing midfoot, and on the trails, keeping my lower legs as limp as possible. I can distinctly remember, not too long ago, when the idea of trail running with other people would have been absolutely out of the question for me. What progress, thanks entirely to ChiRunning.

It was a glorious morning for ChiRunning, and when we finished, I felt so inspired and refreshed. I usually run solo, so running with others was very nice. I highly encourage any of you who usually run solo to try to find the right time and place and partner(s), and have a bit of a social time. It was so much fun to go running together, watching our forms, commenting, speeding up and slowing down, laughing and enjoying moving our bodies together, painlessly and joyfully.

Thanks everyone!

I wasn’t planning to go running today, but the weather was beckoning, and I found myself without anything pressing to do (!), so I headed out into the sunshine for a 25 minute jaunt ’round the neighborhood.

I got a new pair of 790s in the mail earlier this week, and took them out for their inaugural run. They’re pearly white, and upon my return, weren’t anymore (the rain and the dirt around here create some beautiful mud).

I started off very slowly, listening to my body and getting used to the sensation of movement. I focused on two things during this run:

• Keeping my hands even extensions of my arms. I have this strange habit of torquing my hands downward when I run, and so I want to work on that. It’s an easy “bad” habit to slip into.

I looked at my shadow (the sun!!) to see if my wrists were torqued, and tried to Body Sense what it’s like to really keep my wrists neutral. I really had to look down quite a bit to ensure that my wrists weren’t torquing down again as I was running. It’ll be a practice that I’ll be able to correct, but will take diligence.

• Landing mid-foot. With new shoes, I want to make the effort to really watch the wear on them, wear them only when running and see how the tread wears. (My other shoes are showing an embarrassing tendency to wear on the outer heel.)

I have long legs. That’s my excuse for the heel wear on my other shoes. I wish I believed it, but it’s not a good enough excuse. What I am going to experiment with as I run with the new shoes is to really think about getting my heels high, knees down. At the end of my stride, if my heels have come far enough up, and my legs are properly swinging to the rear, my foot should naturally strike in the fleshy middle part. I’ll keep you posted. Already, on this first run, the only place I see any wear is unfortunately at the same place on the shoe as my older pairs of running shoes show… Sigh.

Those were two strong enough and important enough focuses to keep me going today as I was running. There were lots of other people outdoors, and it’s always inspiring to see people out with the animals and kids when the weather is good.

Trust you all enjoyed a nice Sunday, wherever it was; in North Carolina in the sunny and dry day, or in Colorado, with 3 feet of snow and cold!

… so while most of Asheville was gearing up for St. Patty’s Day celebration by drinking green-tinted beer, I went for a run with Brynn.

I have one word: Rough.

Don’t ever stop running. I am totally motivated now to not take such a long ‘break’ from running. I could totally feel it today, and even though we only really ran about 3 miles, it was rough. We weren’t particularly slow (given my lack of training) but still, it was uncomfortable.

But, I still felt leagues better and more efficient than I used to when I was a non-enlightened runner.

We ran this route, which I have run before, but we shortened it just a bit. It was probably closer to 3.4 or 3.5 miles, which STILL put us at a good 10 minute pace, but I could just feel it.

At the end of my training for the first 1/2 marathon, I had about a 165-170 HR and fairly low PRE (4 or 5 on a scale of 10) for a similar run. This time, my heart rate peaked at 185 and my PRE was about 6, pushing 7. I even got a little nauseated at the end, which was annoying and alarming.

This route has some pretty minor false flats, but I could feel them, and just used my arms as best I could to keep my momentum going. I concentrated on high ankles to create a midfoot strike. I tried to stay nice and tall, too, which I noticed at the end really helped my lean be more efficient and I had a last minute burst of quickness to finish off the run.

I am gonna get out there again tomorrow, I believe. Apparently Seattle is not the flatest route, and I have great training tools here in Asheville with all of these crazy hills.

There are a bunch of ChiRunners participating with me at the Expo and the race, so please holler if you’re going to be there, too.

Here’s to NEVER STOPPING. Ever. It’s way too hard to start again.

“keep on keepin’ on” is the word.

got up early this morning and headed out the door… was gone for awhile, but I don’t know exactly how long because I chose not to wear my watch/HR monitor at all. I just wanted to get out there and see how I felt without feeling the ’should’ stuff.

Here is the route, it was about 4 miles. I felt pretty decent throughout the run, but my right hip is sore and my knee was a little strange.

I have been going to acupuncture regularly for the last month, once per week, to tackle the knee issue and yesterday for the first time since race day afternoon, it didn’t bother me. That was pretty awesome. The run didn’t seem to excacerbate it either, so it’s just a matter of keeping up with stretching and preventive maintenance.

My hip is another dumb thing. From WAY back late last summer, right before I really got into training, my poor hip has been struggling. It comes and goes, but I also think the cold weather doesn’t help much.

In any event, I felt great today running. I was trying to envision my column just falling over and over again and making sure my midfoot strike was landing behind my center of mass. It felt right and the reflection in the glass windows of retail fronts seemed to reflect the same!

I ran with music again, just to keep a smile on my face. Although this isn’t the exact order that the music played, here are some of the songs that kept me going:

1. Pictures of You, The Cure
2. I Feel it All, Feist
3. Free Your Mind, En Vogue
4. Lovin’, En Vogue
5. Rebirth of Slick, Digable Planets
6. Hey Tonight, Credence Clearwater Revival
7. Some Days You Gotta Dance, Dixie Chicks
8. … then my iPod died. No batteries left

Hope you are all having a wonderful Sunday.

Today is Monday, September 15. I had my long run yesterday in Morganton because Ivan and I were there for the weekend to help Frans and Gloria with their porch.

I decided to run on the Greenway which is nice and flat. I left about 830 so wasn’t super hot but wasn’t super cool either. It was pretty shady but there were spots of sun. The path runs next to the Catawba River, which is a nice ambient noise since I don’t run with my iPod anymore (sob.)

I would say the first 30 minutes were absolutely at 10 on a scale and by the end of the run I was probably about nine. I think I ran just over 5 miles - felt really good. I tried to focus on keeping quick arms. I worked on keeping my ankles up and my knees down, and I did that high heel drill that Danny taught me earlier this week to work on my midfoot strike. I worked my breathing and it worked really well.

I had a little twinge in my ankle but I think I realized I was trying not to dorsiflex, and so I was twisting my foot funny–my right foot– so I adjusted that. It ended up going away. That ache went away and I never did get a side ache. My breathing was pretty good and during the last 10 minutes of the run something happened and I started going fast. I didn’t want to stop! I was probably going somewhere around second to third gear. I didn’t want to slow down, so I figured “What the heck, I’ll keep going.” It was a great run  andI felt good about it. I was wearing ChiWalking tank top while I was running and two women stopped me at the end of my run asking “what is ChiWalking?” We had a nice conversation and I plan to do some work with them in the future. Great run, made me happy that I can actually run and enjoy it!