Running forward ... on climate

I confess this is actually not about running. It's about yesterday's Forward On Climate Rally in Washington D.C. (See, e.g., http://350.org/en/about/blogs/stunning-40000-rally-dc-forward-climate). The march around the White House was the largest climate march in U.S. history. But, this is supposed to be a running blog, so I suppose I ought to make some connections to running. Well, I did see some runners running through the crowd of demonstrators. Hmm, that's kind of weak. Oh, how about the number of attendees at the rally (estimated at 35,000 to 40,000) is about the size of the field of a major marathon. :) See, I knew there was a connection! And, just as with runners, the wind chill in the teens did not deter the attendees.

We owe it to our children and all future generations.

The main thing I want to say is that I came away from the event hopeful. Not that any major climate legislation will soon come out of Congress (ha!). Not that President Obama will reject the Keystone XL pipeline. What I am hopeful about is the the multi-generational makeup of the crowd, from grandparents to young kids; the people who came from all across this nation; and, particularly the younger generation (many students) passionately engaged in something larger than themselves.

Just one example, not directly related to the rally itself. There were several homeless people huddled on the side of 15th St., NW, along the march route, in plain sight of the White House. A number of the marchers, in their 20's, stopped and dug through their backpacks for packages of food and left them with the homeless. They didn't ignore; didn't gawk; didn't pity. Someone was hungry and they fed him.

Running WBS

A couple weeks ago, for various scheduling and weather-related reasons, I had to run indoors on a treadmill--not one of my favorite activities. One of the scheduled runs in my running club's winter marathon training (WMT) program was a 10-miler, and I was desperately looking for a way to avoid boredom. Here's what I ended up with that worked for me to mentally get through that 10-miler on the treadmill. I began at ~10:30 pace (5.7 mph), which is my current LSD pace in the Sunday long runs for the WMT program. After the first 1/4 mile, I increased the speed by 0.1 mph. Then, after another 1/4 mile, I increased the speed by another 0.1 mph. And so on until I got to 7.5 mph or 8:00 pace. I then reversed and went back in a similar way until I reached 5.7 mph again (with a few steps repeated to get to 10 miles total). With each increment or decrement of speed, I focused on that specific 1/4 mile, which went by pretty quickly. For some of the 1/4 miles, I counted my steps, coordinated with my breathing (one count per two steps). For others, I focused on form (e.g., landing on the balls of my feet behind the big and second toes). Thus, I got through that 10-mile run without too much problem, a workout that's as much--if not more--mental as physical!

What I did for that run is kind of like the WBS (Work Breakdown Structure) that is commonly used in my workplace, a project management tool to decompose the total work into smaller components, each of which and the sum total of which are then more manageable. And, some of the components can proceed concurrently. Long distance running as project management? To some extent. But, alas, one can't break a 20-mile run down to 20 one-milers and run them in parallel!

How do you pass the time on long treadmill runs?

It's all relative (2)

The soothing warm water from the shower felt good. As the water flowed down the rear right ankle, I felt a tingling sensation. I was still recovering from the morning run, so it took a few seconds before I realized that what I'd felt towards the end of the run was not--as I'd feared--some possible injury to the Achilles tendon, but rather just a blister. I smiled. I've been pretty fortunate, over all these years of running, that I've rarely gotten injured. Perhaps it's the natural way I run; perhaps I'm just lucky. Even over the last several years, as I trained for the Marine Corps Marathon, the Baltimore Marathon, and, currently, the Rock ‘n’ Roll USA Marathon, with the weekly mileage significantly higher than my typical just-stay-in-shape average mileage, I've remained fairly injury free. I did, however, experience two relatively minor injuries. The first one was because of a too-fast transition from a pair of traditional running shoes to Nike Free. (That was the first step in my transition to minimalist shoes, currently at Vibram Fivefinger, with a pair of huaraches, the Tarahumara running sandals, waiting for warmer weather.) The second one was that from one of my morning runs in Paris last August. It was the latter injury that was on my mind, when I'd felt something in my right rear ankle during that recent morning run. So, I was so relieved when it turned out to be just a blister. It's all relative.

This incident got me thinking and reading about the high percentage of runners who get injured. So far, I've just dipped a little into the literature on this topic. Here's one quote (that, unfortunately, I forgot to note the reference at the time, sorry): "average of 4 injuries per 1,000 hours of running. This means that if you are running 5-10 hours per week, you could potentially get 2 injuries per year. Further, epidemiological studies estimate that between 19% and 79% of runners sustain an overuse injury in a 1 year period." And, here's another one, with the reference link ("The Analysis of Injury Rates in Running"): "... half of the running population gets injured in some way every year." So, the big question is why the injury rate of runners is so high. As the author of this reference stated, "If we hold the running man theory to be correct, then the only conclusion to be made is that a 50% injury rate is not inherent to our species. If it was in fact inherent to humans we would simply not [have] been a viable species." The author's hypothesis is that "habitually barefoot people who have a life long history of running are at the least risk of running injury, but as yet no conclusive research exists to support this idea." This hypothesis is consistent with another study on the Biomechanical Analysis of Injured Minimalist Runners, which suggests that "running in minimalist footwear without proper minimalist running form predisposes a runner to injury." I'll come back to this, as I read more into this intriguing topic. Here are couple more pages from Daniel Lieberman's Web site at Harvard University (Running Before the Modern Running Shoe and Why Consider Foot Strike?). Related paper is in Nature (Foot strike patterns and collision forces in habitually barefoot versus shod runners; Lieberman et al., 2010; abstract only; payment required for full paper).

I'd love to hear about your experience with running injuries (or no injuries!).