Category Archives: Running

First Ride

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Now that my bike is back in working order (thanks to Mad Duck Cyclery in Grapevine), I went for my first real ride Thursday night. It was the first time in my life that I had consciously gone riding for exercise rather than simply for fun or for transportation. So I approached it differently. My goal was not to get somewhere or just see the sights, but to burn up my quads.

Mission accomplished.

I put in about 5.5 miles at our local park, which has a really nice trail. In the process I became one of those cyclists that used to annoy me and make me nervous as a runner or walker on the same trail. Now I understand why some cyclists go so fast. Since I’m new to cycling and riding a 31-32 lb mountain bike, I only averaged 10mph or so. But I had a blast. You can see so much more of the world on a bike than you can while running.

Despite the heat (probably low 90s), the ride wasn’t too difficult, for two main reasons:

  1. Since I’m going faster, the extra wind helped keep me cool.
  2. My quads, not my cardiovascular system, were the limiting factor, the opposite of my running limitation. Before I could really push my heart and lungs, my quads screamed until I slowed down. That works out great, since my primary goal for cycling is to strengthen my legs.

So right now, my plan is to run three times a week (12 miles this week, 13 next week, and so on) and ride once, building up to maybe an hour. I have this crazy idea that my quads are the final piece of the puzzle – that once they are strong enough, I’ll be able to tackle a half-marathon. Or maybe even a triathlon, if I could ever learn how to swim more than a couple minutes at a time. I think Jenny will beat me to the tri, though. She’s planning her first indoor tri for September.

Quads of Steel and Puny Abductor Hallucii

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Yesterday I went back to see my podiatrist, Dr. Crane at FAANT, for a follow-up after my near stress fracture from four weeks ago. Since my last appointment, I’ve been running exclusively in my trusty Adrenalines and worked back up to 4-mile runs with zero foot pain. Awesome. So I had two questions for her:

  1. Is it even possible for me to run in the Vibrams, and if so, how should I transition?
  2. What can I do about my nagging left knee pain?

I love Dr. Crane. She’s very nice and knows her stuff and has a cool confidence about her, but she talks and works quickly so you have to listen fast. She knows I’m paying good money for her medical opinion, and she expects me to listen and obey. I wish more doctors were like that.

After running several simple strength tests on my feet and lower legs, she gave me the following conclusions:

  1. My foot muscles, particularly the abductor hallucis muscles (the main muscle in the arch of the foot), are “puny”. (Just what every guy wants to hear from a lady!) On the plus side, it helps explain why my feet are so flat. She prescribed six simple exercises to strengthen my weak feet.
  2. The backs of my legs are strong, but the fronts are too weak. I need to stretch my hamstrings and calves like heck and strengthen my quads and the muscles on the front of my lower leg. I’ve already been working out my quads, and it’s definitely helped my knee pain. Today I’m going to pick up my dad’s bike for crosstraining. My friend Logan helped his knee pain by cycling, so I figure a good ride once a week would be a nice addition to my plan. Once I have quads of steel, I’ll be ready for a marathon, right? =)
  3. I am “young, strong, and faster than average”, (thanks!) so I should be able to run in the Vibrams. Awesome. However, the transition period will be “like watching paint dry”. She recommends adding a few hundred yards a week in them and finishing the run in more normal shoes. So it might be 3 months before I’m actually running a 5k in them. I could also get an in-between shoe such as a training flat to replace my Adrenalines.

So overall a good report! I did 4 miles Wednesday evening with no foot pain and only a very mild ache under my left kneecap, which is significant progress compared to this spring. Right now my biggest challenge is the heat. I do most of my running in the evening these days so I’m out of the sun. I might go race Saturday morning if I can find one I like.

Vibrams Update

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Some of you might like an update on my experiment with Vibram Five Fingers, so here goes. Per the advice of, well, everyone, I tried to start off slowly, as I described a few weeks ago. On my first run, my calves became really tight and sore because my heel hardly hit the ground and I pushed off with my calves, so they worked like crazy the entire mile. I went extremely fast, but it wasn’t a good long-term plan. So I made a point to relax my feet, avoid pushing off with my calves, and let my heels touch on every step.

In that way I worked up to 1.5 miles and then 2 miles. My calves felt much better after that. As in my first VFF run, I ran faster with less effort. Fantastic. However, I started getting a bit of pain on top of my feet, a sign of excessive stress on the metatarsal bones in my feet. Partly because it’s so fun and easy, some runners who get into minimalist/barefoot running do too much too soon and develop stress fractures in their metatarsals. So I decided to strap on my trusty Brooks Adrenalines for the Family Promise 5k on Saturday instead of pushing my luck.

The race went GREAT. Even though I ran after working all night and should have been tired, I set a personal record at 23:44. My feet felt fine, and I felt only a minor ache in my left knee toward the end. This tells me that my form has improved since wearing the VFFs and/or that my body is getting stronger.

Then on Monday, I slipped on my VFFs and went for a run. Almost immediately I felt the same pain at the top of my right foot. Hmm, this isn’t good. I stayed a bit sore for a few days despite not running at all, so I returned to my favorite podiatrists (Foot and Ankle Associates of North Texas, or FAANT). I feared the worst – two walking casts and 6-8 weeks of questions, lectures, and I-told-you-sos. However, the x-rays were negative. The doctor said to lay off running in the VFFs for a while, but running half my normal distance in my Adrenalines would be OK. I skipped back to my car (not really) and went straight to the trail. Two miles. No foot pain. Booyah.

I return to Dr. Crane in about four weeks to see how I’m doing. In the meantime, I’ll stick to the Adrenalines for running, try to strengthen my feet, and see what happens.

Is it frustrating to hear about all my injuries? Perhaps for some of you. I understand. You might wonder why I don’t just give up. The reason is simple: as some wise person once said, I would rather burn out than rust out. I would rather use my body up trying to keep it healthy than let it slowly atrophy and end up overweight, diabetic, and on the heart transplant list twenty years from now. Knees are easier to replace than hearts.

Family Promise 5k and Fun Run

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I have found my next race! Irving Bible Church is hosting the Family Promise 5k and Fun Run to help launch Family Promise, a faith-based organization that will help homeless families in Irving. The race is scheduled for Saturday morning, May 21 – 8am for the 5k and 9am for the 1-mile fun run. I signed up for the 5k and hope to run the whole thing in my Vibrams, but it’ll depend on how well my transition goes. Looking forward to a race always helps me stay focused and motivated. Plus this one is for a cause that I’m passionate about. Please spread the word! You can register here:

Registration for Family Promise 5k and Fun Run

What Are Those??

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Last year I blogged about the barefoot/minimalist running movement with great curiosity. Since then I read Chris McDougall’s outstanding book Born to Run, which further convinced me that minimalist running is worth a try. (Since my preferred running course is made of crushed limestone, barefoot doesn’t seem like a smart move for me) This week, I finally took the plunge.

The picture above shows my new toys, a pair of Vibram FiveFingers Bikilas. Think of them as stretchy gloves for my feet with a thin layer of rubber on the bottom for a bit of rock protection.

VFFs for runners work like Alli weight loss pills for people on a low-fat diet; they force you to do the right thing and punish you when you don’t. Most people run in cushy running shoes that allow them to land hard on their heels, which the human body just isn’t designed to do. Try that in the VFFs, and you’ll be in a world of heel pain. Instead, the VFFs naturally guide you into a midsole or forefoot strike, which is much better biomechanically. When I test-drove them on a treadmill at Luke’s Locker, it barely felt like my heel was hitting the ground.

Per Vibram’s advice, I’m easing into them to allow my body time to adjust. After all, my heel is suddenly about an inch closer to the ground, and my feet aren’t yet as strong as they should be. I ran a mile on Wednesday. I started off at a decent pace, just getting a feel for how they worked and trying to watch out for large rocks. They felt awesome – very light, comfortable, and just natural. At the halfway point, I realized how fast I was going and was surprised at how little effort it was taking. Toward the end I picked up the pace a bit. I finished in one of the fastest mile times I’ve ever run without really trying and with no pain. If this is a sign of things to come, I’ll be a very happy man.

Pics from Cowtown 10k

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Here are a couple of pictures of me from the Cowtown 10k back in February. A company called Brightroom takes tens of thousands of pictures of runners at races like this and somehow manage to put together albums for them. The actual prints are very expensive, but here are a couple of the low-res versions: