ChiRunning Fatigue Fixers
This morning I woke up and my body felt a little weird. I was slightly shaky, and feeling “underpowered”. But, I planned on going for a run today, so I ate a pre-run snack of homemade yogurt cream, chia seeds, 1/2 banana, raw honey, and raw cacao bits. I headed down to the Ventura boardwalk, where I like to run on the weekends. When I started running, my rational brain assured me I’d just run until I was too tired to keep my form in check and then walk the rest, but my competitive brain (what, I can’t have two brains?) told me that I should try to increase my mileage today and run up and over the bridge that I stopped at last week. Although now I’m quite exhausted, I’m proud to report that on the run I was able to both increase my distance to about 6 miles, yet not have to stop and walk, with the help of the ChiRunning Fatigue Fixers.
Today, at about mile 4.5, I thought I was ready to stop and walk, as my quad and calf muscles were getting fatigued. Having spent 2 years now working on my ChiRunning form, I can tell when my muscles get tired and cause my form to break down, because I get mild pains in certain joints and tendons. If I can rally the strength to bring the form back in check, the pains disappear. On page 254-255 of the ChiRunning book, Danny Dreyer lists some great tips for reducing fatigue on a run. I had read these a long time ago, but this morning I found myself cycling through the ones I remembered to keep me going. Happily, they worked! I’ve ordered them below—1 being the most helpful for me, 2 the next most helpful, and so on:
Tips for Reducing Fatigue
- Slow down your pace until you recover some strength.
- Imagine your upper body as suspended, with legs relaxed and simply swinging from spinal pivot point in the middle of the back. Engage arm swing in upper body to maintain efficient pelvic rotation. (I added this, because for me it’s the magic focus that brings everything else into line. If I’m too tired to do it, then it’s time to walk.)
- Breathe more from your abdomen.
- Relax your shoulders. Let your arms dangle at your sides for 30 seconds every 2 minutes.
- Don’t focus on your fatigue, or you’ll get more tired. Look up and take in the world around you. (I tried to smile at everyone I passed.)
- Engage your lean again, but don’t bend at the waist.
- Correct your posture. Make sure your feet are hitting behind your upper body, not in front of it.
- Stay away from a shuffle. Pick up your heels and get your feet moving in a circular motion.
- Shorten your stride.
Hope this helps you run further, pain-free and without injury!
How Racewalking Affects My Running
So, last week I posted about how Walking Is Underrated. It’s been another week of walking and strengthening exercises in the mornings since then, and while I was running this morning, I noticed some interesting things about my abilities:
1. Racewalking helps me practice rotating my pelvis. I’ve been working on my ChiRunning form for the past two years, and only now do I feel like I’m getting the Pelvic Rotation form focus figured out. If you have the ChiRunning book, it’s described on pages 99-101. Doing all that walking and really swinging my hips as I do it makes my body used to that kind of motion, so it’s easier to implement in a run. Also, it strengthens my abdomen so I can keep my pelvis leveled for longer periods of time. When I do focus on rotating my pelvis in this way while running, I start to feel my legs relaxing and the rest of my form solidifies.
2. Proper ChiRunning form requires upper body strength. My arms are getting stronger with the push-ups, triceps dips, shoulder presses, etc. that I’m doing in the mornings. But, because I do them every weekday, by Saturday my arms are a little tired. On the run this morning, my arm swing was great and I felt a powerful momentum and balancing effect from it, but I think my arms pooped out before my legs did! I’ve realized that the ChiRunning arm swing technique is something that I have to make an effort to do, to pull my elbows backwards as I move forward. To me it feels more like an arm “pump” than a “swing”, because the idea of swinging my arms makes me think they’ll just do it on their own, which they don’t. That’s why it takes some extra muscle and control to make the technique work well for me.
3. Racewalking strengthens my calves, but not my quads. Usually, when I’m out for a long run, I know it’s time to stop when either I’m too tired to keep my form solid which leads to my tendons/joints hurting, or my calves start tightening up. Walking in my FiveFingers makes it easy to remember to peel my foot off the ground, heel to toe, and that is a great calf workout. Today I ran about 5.5 miles, and surprisingly, I felt my quad muscles aching. I say surprisingly because I’ve never really felt my quads on a run unless I’m doing sprints or something. This tells me that training for long weekend runs by running on the weekdays builds up my quads, but training for long runs by racewalking builds up my core and calf muscles.
Obviously, a combination of both walking and running for training is in order if I’m going to have a successful half marathon in December. I think I’ll eventually add in one weekday run after school, maybe a sprint workout, and see how that feels. What do you think?
Walking is Underrated!
I am getting a sneaking suspicion that my speed walking for 30 min. every weekday morning keeps up my endurance as much as running 2 times on weekdays used to. A fitness goal I’m about 60% committed to right now is to run a local half marathon at the beginning of December. For the other halfs I trained for, I used the ChiRunning Pain Free Half Marathon Training Program and it was great. But, I had to run a lot after work, and I was always so unmotivated and tired or hungry or whatever when I started running that day that it was difficult. (Over the course of the run I usually would feel better and then be glad I did commit to it.)
I started the school year a month ago intending to train again, but to do my runs before school because I don’t teach first period this semester. With my husband’s encouragement to not jump into a drastic schedule change too quickly, I started speed walking with him in the mornings instead of running right away. And now I like the walking routine so much I don’t want to run instead! Here’s what my morning currently consists of:
We get up at 6:00, are out the door by 6:10. Walk around the neighborhood till 6:40, then I do my 10 min. morning workout that I talked about in my last post. Meanwhile, husband is juicing veggies so when I’m done with the workout I can gulp down a GAPSdiet smoothie of carrot juice, a raw egg (pastured), and homemade sour cream (you’ve gotta try it to believe it, but YUM). Then I shower and and am out the door again by 7:10 and off to school. This routine does take advance planning the night before to have my lunch packed and school clothes ready to jump into after the shower, but after 3 weeks of doing it, I’m finding it energizing and worth the thinking ahead!
The wake-up call about walking being underrated came this past Sunday when I went for a run and I was able to run a full mile and a half further than the last run I did two weeks ago. I felt strong in my muscles, lungs, and heart and was really surprised. I went into the run feeling like “Oh, I’ve been bad not running during the weeks, but I’ll just go as far as I can”. I guess I needn’t have worried. That experience psyched me up big time because the speed walking is already built into my get-ready-for-school routine, so I know I won’t slack off or forget to do it. I’m curious to see if I can keep increasing mileage every weekend while only walking during the week.
Maybe I should buy the ChiWalking book. Maybe it will be my new thing…anyone else try it?
My Updated Morning Workout
I originally posted this workout a year ago, and since have upped some of the reps and added some new exercises. My arms are getting strong! Especially with all the bone broth, butter, and lentils that I’m eating :)
RIP Garmin Forerunner 305 :(
Never. Leave. An. Expensive. Electronic. Gadget. On. Top. Of. Your. Car.
You will forget about it, drive off, and let it slide down the back window and out into the fast moving freeway to be lost forever. Well, that’s what happened to me anyway after a run last weekend. I had been in a rear-end car accident the week before, so when I heard a strange clunking noise from the back of my car as I was driving home from the run, I figured something fell off as a belated result of the accident. But no, it was the Garmin bumping off my bumper. At least that’s what I think happened. My husband and I drove the section of the freeway where I heard the noise probably 10 times, trying to see it on the side of the road, but it was just too dangerous to go any more slowly, and I couldn’t get out and walk it on foot. Such a stupid mistake!! Lots of foot stamping and tears ensued.
So, a wedding present from my brother that got me through training and running two half marathons and a ton of other outdoor activities is now dead on the side of the road somewhere. It seems silly to be so upset about a gadget, but it actually had a lot of sentimental value because of the places it went with me and my husband. It was a fun toy to check elevation and distance on our hikes. My natural hippie side is telling me that I lost it so I could learn to run without obsessing about my pace/mile and to just run how far I feel like running, but I haven’t gone on a run since I lost it. Now that I speedwalk 30 min. and do my workout before school every morning, I feel less motivated to run in the afternoons! But I still am interested in running the Santa to the Sea half marathon in December, so I’ll try to get back on track.
