The Shamrock Shuffle 8k started out absolutely perfectly. It’s was about 70 degrees outside which is in complete contrast to the last 2 races where it was in the upper 30’s maybe lower 40’s. After a down week, my legs felt great, recovered, and I thought ready to race. We started the race out with a decent wind at our back, and I breezed through the first mile smooth as can be in 4:50 which probably put me somewhere around 15th to maybe 20th place. My stride felt great and I thought I was well on my way to having a good race. We turned the corner shortly after the mile split, and that’s where things started to go wrong. As you’ve probably read in my past blogs, I am really having a problem with over-striding. I think I hit 5:00ish, maybe 5:02 (I don’t remember) for the 2nd mile. I split 15:39 for 5k (pretty much an identical split to the Meteor 10k) and was slowly fading back through the field. It was really hard to stay mentally in it when my stride felt as awful as it did, and I wasn’t racing up to my standards. On the positive side, I did fight, but with every surge and move that I tried to make, my legs just locked up. I remember seeing a 5:13 mile split on my watch, and really couldn’t fathom how I couldn’t run any faster since I can get down to that pace on training runs, but my stride just wasn’t in sync. The Shamrock Shuffle was a team race and I was a scoring runner so I really did push through to the finish. I ended up running a very disappointing 25:32, and I believe I was 32nd overall. Our team ended up in 4th place, and we were 22 seconds out of 2nd (the race was scored based upon net time). Needless to say, I didn’t feel great about the fact that I cost our team $1,000 and a second place finish, but at the same time, had I not run, we probably would have taken 5th place.
On the positive side, the forefoot on my left foot is sore which probably indicates that I am striking correctly with my left leg while my right heel is pretty sore which is indicative of over-striding with my right leg. It’s at least encouraging that I know precisely what I’m doing wrong. If I can retrain my right leg to run efficiently, I think I am aerobically fit and things will eventually fall into place. I guess that’s what training is for.
2 comments:
Yo Scottie have you given some strength training/drills a shot for clearing up some biomechanical inconsistencies? If you're experiencing some asymmetric discomfort, I would think strengthening the ancillary muscles would help quite a bit. I think the best exercise would be power cleans. Thoughts?
You're probably absolutely right. I currently am doing form drills, balance drills, and strength training. However, the strength training that I'm doing is only using my body weight. I'm somewhat limited as to what I can do because I don't have a gym membership and I also have to be a little careful not to overload my right knee because I fractured my knee cap on a fall a few weeks back. You do bring up a very good point and I probably should get ahold of some dumb bells to add some weight.
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