My Running Journal 041210

Today is a non running day. I think that I am going to spend a few minutes working on my jump rope technique, and maybe some of the skill building exercises that I learned yesterday in the POSE Technique class.

It turns out that the guy who taught the workshop yesterday Drew Miller, is also a Crossfit Endurance trainer as well as a POSE technique coach. He taught a great class, and it really helped solidify some ideas in my head about how things are supposed to work. It also became very clear that just reading about how to do something, and watching videos, does not substitute for good coaching. The workshop was small, a total of five of us. Two of the other guys were experienced mid to long distance runners and are training for the Eugene marathon - both of them knew about POSE, one of them the does Crossfit training, and the other one is starting to run in VFFs. The other guy, who had come up from Ashland, has been running in huaraches. The one woman in the group was not an experienced runner, which was probably good for her, since she didn't have to fight old habits, and was clearly able to focus on getting the pose right without having to contract old muscle memory.

We had a great conversation about Chi Running, the similarities between the two forms, and the bad blood between runners from all camps. I haven't encountered any negativity directly, but I'm not coaching people. Evidently there are loads of people who decide that if you aren't doing something their way, you must be doing it wrong ( I do this, but normally it is in response to other people's driving). And folks seem to be okay with criticizing other people's decisions, without knowing the other, "wrong" position. You see it in everything that has been systemized, and I guess running techniques are no different. Of course, the whole push behind the Pose technique and forefoot striding, along with minimalist shoes, is a threat to the current paradigm of running. Especially when you factor in how much money there is involved with shoes. Sarah, the woman at the clinic yesterday lamented a little over the fact that she had purchased a brand new set of nicely, heavily protective New Balance shoes based on the observation of what her foot did when she heel strikes.

The funny thing is that, and this keeps getting repeated to me in various forms, you cannot pronate or supinate your foot if you are utilizing the Pose technique. Your general center of mass is over your point of support, which happens to be your forefoot. If you aren't heel striking ahead of your hips, then there is no way that you can pronate or supinate your foot without really injuring yourself and doing it purposefully. I let Sarah know that I was in the same boat - I dropped a large amount of money on a pair of stability control shoes when I started ( those wonderful Brooks Addictions), and now they get used to transport me to the car on mornings when I head to Crossfit. Just to the car and the gym - I change over to my VFFs at the gym.

We went over tempo, body mechanics, uphill and downhill running, and skill drills. Drew videoed us running at the beginning of the class, middle, and end. And we all watched and picked apart our forms. I thought I had the forefoot stride down pretty well, at least as far as getting my foot to touch down directly below my center of mass, instead of ahead of it. Boy was I wrong. There were a host of other things that we kept an eye on, and by the end of the clinic I had improved a little bit.

Beside the specific skill drills and coaching that I got from the clinic, we also discussed effective training - this goes back to my thoughts on what it means to run as fast as you can. Drew reinforced my opinion in that it makes no sense to train poorly - if your basic skill set is deficient, and you have a bad running form, then you aren't helping yourself if you push yourself to run faster without taking the time to really improve your basic skills. You are a better runner if you have and can maintain good form throughout the course of your run. If you can't maintain a good form in a training run, then you are running farther than your skill, and aren't really benefitting from the exercise.

We also got some fun toys - a metronome and an EZ run belt. I'll discuss the belt in a future post, but it seems like it will be a very helpful training tool. The metronome is a much nicer one than I have been using, primarily because it is louder and has a belt clip.

Tomorrow I am going to go out and give my new found running skills a test. And hopefully I'll find other people who are POSE runners in Portland that would like to get together for group training and critique. Because Drew Miller is the only Pose certified trainer in Oregon.