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?
