I hope you had a great "Run at work" day today. I did, I had the pleasure of running with my assistant coach Katie through the area that our runners did their repeats today and through the woods a little bit on some trails. As we were running, I couldn't help but look over to her and watch her feet (and also feel where mine were landing) to determine how we were doing with preventing ourselves from becoming injured.
Here is what we focused on (aside from our interesting conversations!)
Don't over-stride! When we reach too far out, we tend to land on our heels. If we push our feet down through the ground hard and underneath our bodies, we didn't over-stride, and we landed on the balls of our feet. That's a good thing.
Push our feet through the ground. Pushing our legs down allowed our knees to recover and lift up. I don't know if I like the idea of focusing on a foot "drive down" or a knee "lift" better, but the more I study bio-mechanics, the more I realize the driving of the foot down will give us the improvements we're looking for. That also enhances the likelihood that we won't over-stride and we will land on the correct part of our feet.
Stop looking at Katie's feet! After a little bit, I realized looking over at Katie's feet was drawing my head down, which put me out of a great alignment of my body. Once I was able to remember to keep my chin up and my head up, I was able to do a better job of keeping my posture right and make great strides. I could feel my own feet striking the ground correctly, and hopefully Katie was doing things right. When I'm running, I guess it's better that I stop coaching for a few minutes!
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