9/52

Week 9 Recap

Short and sweet, not forgetting the joy of running.

This pretty much summarizes this past week. Didn't overdo the distance, and certainly didn't overdo the pace.

Pains within the shins dissipated now that I accumulated some formidable mileage to break into my new pair of training runners. One of the other things I adjusted this week in my runs was my posture and how foot landing within my strides. In anticipation of the upcoming races, I transitioned towards keeping my back straight and avoiding to lean overly forwards and backwards. That being said, I lowered my height clearance a bit so I can maximize the strides within my lower body. This seems to be efficient for me so far as this allowed me to speed up my pace a bit more efficiently while not tiring myself off. But is this method acceptable? I'll probably do more research myself and share my findings in the future...

The other is the foot landing, in which I followed through from this Instagram post:

#techniquetuesday the biomechanics of running is described as a "spring-mass" model. This is why! Your Achilles' tendon is a spring(as well as your patella tendon) to maximize this free energy you need to fully compress the spring! Heel striking bypasses this and force is transferred directly through the ankle to the knee! Excessive forefoot running that doesn't allow the heel to drop after initial contact doesn't allow full compression of the spring. Mid foot striking allows the ankle to move letting the heel down maximizes the compress of the spring(Achilles). Running is jumping from one foot to the other! #learnmoverun #buildingbetterrunners #runto #run416 #runchat #runner #technique #runforlife #runstrong #runfast

A post shared by The Runner's Academy (@therunnersacademy) on Feb 14, 2017 at 12:54pm PST

My feet feels exponentially better from that plus that extra cushioning from the new pair of runners. Sometimes, you never know how much you can self-learn from learning by example! Just like what I mentioned in my post, I consider myself to be a social media learner by cautiously following from other people from Twitter, Instagram, Strava, and selective running blogs that actually teaches you content than torrents of brand endorsements.

In the coming weeks, I will be writing a more thorough review of my daily training runners, the ASICS Gel Nimbus 19 for a number of reasons. A, because there are barely any relevant reviews when I was initially researching. B, because there were too many bad reviews that overshadow the good merits of what Gel Nimbus are well-known for.  Stay tuned!

What's Next

I have been looking through the #ChillyHalfMarathon hashtag on Instagram over the weekend, and that itself was more than enough to convince me to sign up for the 2018 edition of the half-marathon myself!

Better yet, there is an early bird pricing of $55 until March 28, 2017! That's seriously a great value in terms of half-marathon races.

It's a tease for things to come in a couple of weeks until the Around The Bay race in late March. Until then, I will gradually be re-introducing my race shoes into my weekly training regime so I don't experience any unexpected pains from the race shoes or from lack of preparation of not applying anti-chaffing ointment!

​Cheers, MW