Stride, Pace, Speed

Running for another 10K today I was vexed by my stride. I was running well, but my stride needed adjustment throughout the course of the run. Eric from The Balanced Athlete told me that to run as a way of life requires that I re-learn how to run. I'm slowly altering my pace to incorporate his tips:

• Increase your rate (faster steps)
• don't reach with your foot, place it underneath you
• Pull yourself - don't strike the front foot down hard
• Stand up straight - ears over shoulders
• Move elbows back

Eric showed me from the treadmill that following these steps decreases the impact to joints and keeps your neck and back from tightening from bad posture. I saw him run, I heard the treadmill hum a constant tone. My time on the treadmill punctuated each stride with a change in the machine's pitch quite notably. When I first attempted to put this lessen into practice I didn't do so well - I followed his directions and shot to 8mph with my heart rate flirting with the top side of VO2max.

The past few days I've been slowly attempting to include the techniques to my workouts. I haven't got it completely down yet, but when I notice I am either slowing or my heart rate is climbing I switch to this mode I pick up speed and my heart rate slows - but my legs get tired quickly as it's not a "natural" gait. I'm thinking that I should be able to move over to this new mode over time.

The 10K race is fast approaching, ( December 12th!) and although today's 10K run was not as fast as I would like, I do have some hope to putting in a better time, today's run was after a couple of hours of working in the yard. I'm hoping that with diet and a couple of days down-time before the race I'll do much better than a 1:08 10K run.