Clunk Clunk Clunk (Adventure Race)

My first adventure race was this past weekend.  It is labeled a 'sprint adventure race'.  Our distance traveled was approximately 30miles.  (No way to track that since no electronic devices were allowed.  I was on a two-man team, competing in male's duo.  We made a funny team since my teammate in an excellent mtn bike rider and I am a better runner - therefore we took turns slowing each other up :).  I'm kidding, we were a great duo placing third in our division.  

Half the participants dropped out of this race or didn't complete the checkpoint assignments.  I don't fault the DNF'ers our conditions were horrible, windy, cold and down pouring rain.  I was one wrong move on a mtn bike from not finishing!  In the middle of a run we had to dive into the lake for a checkpoint and then trudge fwd to the next waypoint in wet(ter) clothes.  The rain, mud, woods, bike riding, canoeing, swimming, etc made me think about our gear selection.  

A guy in the parking lot asked me if I would be wearing my Merrill Trail Gloves for the race, I said yeah-why not.  He shook his head and it was clear that the other competitors were concerned with shoe selection as the park was called Rocky Gap for a reason.  Everyone else had thick, heavy hiking boots or low cut boots.  The lightest pair of shoes I saw were La Sportivas - which are great shoes, but the toe boxes are small!  But I looked at the half worn tread on my trail gloves (having about 1000 miles on them) and shrugged and thought out-loud 'we'll see'.

Maybe I am a little biased, but my shoe selection for this race seemed the only choice that made any sense.  In these conditions, a water proof shoe just meant "keeps the water inside your shoe".  Even the long wet grass would deposit water inside your shoe, why would you choose goretex covered shoes to keep that water against your foot?   We were waist deep in water flowing streams, a few steps later on the shore all the water was out of my trail gloves.  They don't weigh more after such a hike.  Speaking of shoe weight - which I appreciate the lightness of a shoe, AND (more so) the lightness of my steps.  People running in those hiking shoes sound like horses clunk clunk clunk.  It makes me wince.  My cadence is so quick and my feet are on the ground for such a short period of time, I don't have time to to slip.  My foot strike is straight down and straight up tap-tap-tap, there's no sagital or planar forces to send me sliding.  

When are knobby treaded, thick, inflexible shoes the correct choice? 

I, Caveman

Curiosity Videos: I, Caveman

Answered by Curiosity

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   From Episode 9: I, Caveman
   
   

Dynamical Analogies

I'm probably guilty of over using analogies in my daily life, I'm like a bulweavel in a.... see, there I go again!  But the "spring" can be used to represent anything.  One could string together a set of springs in a certain way to completely mimic the behavior of a building in an earthquake, or a table's jiggle'ability.  A spring's springy'ness or compliance is measurable, hang weigth from it and it extends only so far, it has a resonant frequency, etc.  these are all properties of the muscles and tendons in your "running chain" .  

The beauty of the springiness of your legs is that it's variable.  The engagement of muscles change tension, resonance, compliance of this spring.  It's a wonderful thing!  

Have you ever tried to run on a trampoline?  There's only one slow speed you can go other wise the springiness of the trampoline will push back so hard it can drive your knee into a tooth!  This is what's happening when you add 'springs' in series with your running chain.  Why would I insert a spring?  It's what you're doing when adding a springy cushion under your foot, or running on a rubber track, or spring loaded treadmill.  Cascading these compliances adds to your work load.  You are now in charge of absorbing your weight, absorbing energy returned at a different rate due to these dissimilar cascaded resonances.  

Remove the cushions and you will see!  It's less work, more economical, and more conducive to long term injury-free running.   (...more to come).

Article: Is CrossFit Only For Maniacs?

Penny's point in this article is that by watching youtubes of crossfitters she can tell that they're all on the way to injury.  She professes that 20-30min of cardio and pushup/situp regimes will allow you to 'live just as long' as any crossfitter.   She is a 'fitness expert' and has a following, and the is horrible and sad.  If she'd tried crossfit and had bad things to say, or she could cite a study to support her opinion.  It seems like people can say whatever they want these days and there's no consequences for unsupported data.  She actually ranks herself as a non-idiot, you decide.  Tide comes in, tide goes out - you can't explain that!

 (check out the comments below her article)

By Penny Love Hoff: Is CrossFit Only For Maniacs? (Found here)

Just to keep me on my toes, I'm going to resist the urge to use the term "audacious radical fitness zealots" when referring to CrossFit, a strength and conditioning program for what I would call the "over-the-top" athlete. On the CrossFit website, they summarize their program in 100 words:

"Eat meat and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch and no sugar. Keep intake to levels that will support exercise but not body fat. Practice and train major lifts: Deadlift, clean squat, presses, C&J, and snatch. Similarly, master the basics of gymnastics: pull-ups, dips, rope climb, push-ups, sit-ups, presses to handstand, pirouettes, flips, splits, and holds. Bike, run, swim, row, etc, hard and fast. Five or six days per week. Mix these elements in as many combinations and patterns as creativity will allow. Routine is the enemy. Keep workouts short and intense. Regularly learn and play new sports." 

Okay, I agree with a lot of that. But after looking at some YouTube videos of some of the main CrossFit workouts, I'll bet that in ten years, they will have bad knees, torn rotator cuffs and more artificial joints than me. And the sad thing is that they won't be able to keep doing what they love to do, which is continue to move with ease and speed. CrossFit is a fitness craze. Virginia Heffernan wrote about it in The New York Times Magazine. She called it a "grueling online exercise regime that requires near-devotional commitment" and in my (sort of) humble fitness opinion, she is politely understating it. Of course, nothing's wrong with have a Goliath-style work(out) ethic and a lofty Olympic-like fitness threshold, but this workout is a joint-buster. It puts the "man" back in "maniac." Although I did find myself lusting after their handstand pushups and their rope climbs, their hurling, snatching and dead-lifting with near impossible speed. After all, I'm still working on mastering one pull up, but I also imagined their knees exploding on the next ever-deeper squat or their shoulder dislocating as they balanced in a dangerously unnatural angle on the gymnastic rings. My reaction could just be the mom in me. Or the CPR certified aerobics instructor. Or the non-idiot part of me. Then I had a horrifying thought. What if some of my readers who read my articles about working out look upon my fitness suggestions with an equal sense of disbelief or a similar feeling that I had while reading about CrossFit -- that the exercises prescribed are equally impossible? So the point I want to make is that nothing you have to do to be healthy is super-human --although on some rainy Mondays mornings, it may feel like it. All I believe you need to do in order to live just about as long as the CrossFit cult members is 25-30 minutes of cardio exercise (meaning that you are sweating and you could talk but not sing) four times per week, fifty crunches and twenty push-ups, modified to your knees if needed. Do these most every day. And you will live just as long. Unless there's a natural disaster and it's survival of the fittest, then the CrossFit peeps will survive beyond most of the rest of us. But that's okay with me. I'm not into sleeping on the ground and I'm not much of a survivalist anyway.

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(thanks Jen)

Get Your Kids Into Minimalist Shoes to Ensure Natural Foot Development

By Mark Cuczzella  Entire article here


Posted on 28 September 2011

As a family physician, I firmly believe that children should play in their bare feet or in activity shoes that complement natural foot development and proper biomechanics of movement. Runners, walkers, coaches, and the medical community are all awakening to the benefits of allowing proper natural foot motion to occur in all of our daily activities.  Leaders in the running mechanics, sports medicine, dancing, and yoga/tai chi communities all understand that the smartest design that will ever be developed for human movement and injury free activity is the human foot itself. Running shoe companies are adapting their product lines to create footwear that allows your foot to behave like a foot, but most have only applied this new thinking to adult models. 

...Here’s an important point to keep in mind – a child’s foot is not a miniature version of an adult’s foot. In early development, a child’s foot is widest across the toes. If our population wore shoes that were designed with this functional shape from birth, most adults would also have feet with the widest part across the toes, and the toes would be perfectly aligned with the metatarsals (long bones in midfoot). Most of a child’s developing foot is composed of cartilage, which is gradually replaced by bone. If the cartilage is deformed by badly shaped or rigid shoes, the bones will take on the deformed shape. More than 80 percent of foot problems, bunions and injuries are a result of misshaped and inflexible shoes. It’s vital that kids’ shoes allow enough room for natural growth, until the foot bones mature. This doesn’t happen until ages 18-19 for girls and 20-21 for boys. Simply put; inflexible, poorly shaped shoes are potentially harmful – they restrict the natural movement and development of the foot.

Top 10 Mobility Exercises For Runners

Updated: Sep 1st 2011 10:15 AM UTC by Competitor.com

• Mobility Exercises For Runners
• 1. Unglue Your Sticks
• 2. Quads Or Spine?
• 3. The Runner/Split Jerk Dream Mob
• 4. Recovering Your Jumping Calves
• 5. Lower Leg Business
• 6. Heel Cord Love
• 7. Sumo And Medial Chain Business
• 8. Hip Extension/External Rotation
• 9. Hamstring Stiffness
• 10. Mob Those Lower Leg Bits

Something to Think About During Your Next Run

Don't be a foot-lander, be a foot lifter.  During your stride, you will notice that your foot is coming back down to the Earth no matter what you do.  Let's call this a physical certainty due to gravity :). 

Avoid pain: If you're sticking to the barefoot or minimal foot padding as we suggest (or insist) you'll land correctly because you're avoiding pain.  So let it happen and put it out of your mind. 

Quick turnover: Whether you're running quickly or slowly, the cadence is quick.  In this post, we are suggesting us to think about lifting your foot - or popping it up.  Pop-pop-pop, can only lead to a quick cadence and shortened stride.  The questions you can ask yourself: 'how many foot lifts am I doing per minute?'  'how many milliseconds passed before I lifted my foot?' 

You burn no energy when your feet are off the ground, you can't lose traction on a slippery trail when your feet are off the ground, no impact injuries when your feet are off the ground.  Lift that foot straight up as if you're on hot coals and say 'pop-pop-pop-pop' to yourself.  Let us know how it feels!!

Working Out Barefoot

by ADMIN on SEPTEMBER 25, 2011

Barefoot running is one area that has been obtaining a large amount of recognition of late. Depending on who is responsible for having to pay that attention, barefoot running is actually possibly a big unique trend or even the most current trend. There are a lot of claims and counterclaims created forbarefoot running. On one hand, people who foster barefoot running claim over it really being the easiest method to fix excessive use problems within those who workout. On the other hand, those doctors who handle running injury happen to be declaring they see and treat a lot of overuse injuries frombarefoot running You will discover states of which barefoot running reduces the impact forces at a your back heel when they hit the floor on the front foot, but there is little facts that hindfoot ground contact is a concern and its is rarely credited from those pushing barefoot running that we now have accelerated loads thru a lot of the joints inside the foot along with ankle anytime front foot first. What exactly is getting increasingly obvious that there’s not one jogging style that’s much better than another. You will see a unique jogging gait that’s better for every individual athlete and then for quite a few, that’ll be barefoot running.