On a non-yoga related news.....
I finally went out for a run!
Friday I had decided to take the day off and rest from any yoga activity.
By lunch I was considering going for an afternoon run, by 6:00 PM I was out the door.
I had to drive to an area where I feel safe running by myself. The traffic was a little crazy but I managed to get there while there was still some light out.
I set my Garmin for a 45 minute run. No distance or pace in mind.
As I wrote a little about it here this year I am not into running with a distance, pace or PR mindset. This year I will run to get to know my body.
This post is about running but now I have to bring back yoga into the picture. For me yoga has helped me get in tune with my body. It constantly teaches me how to listen to my body and learn from my body's own wisdom, listening to that intuitive voice within me.
Since that has been very emotionally and physically healing for me I wanted to bring that approach into running. You can say this year will be about intuitive running for me. That is why I am not signing up for any races. I am spending this year focusing on learning how my body runs.
It's very liberating. I know being number-oriented can help you track your running progress and make it easier to make it a gradual process instead of going full out and burning yourself out.
I know that works for many (maybe most) people but for me, well, that's how I got myself injured.
I loooooove yoga but running is my meditation and I want to be able to continue doing it for as long as I can. In order to do that I have to take good care of my body and getting injured wont get me there. I want to give myself this time to figure out what works for me.
Back to Friday afternoon.
The goals for this run were to:
- Do an easy run
- Start to figure out what pace or paces feel more natural and comfortable to me
- Try to maintain a steady pace by focusing on my breath and feeling.
- Constantly check where each part of my body was and how they felt (specially my legs)
With these few things on my mind I stretched a little, started my Garmin and hit the road.
These are the things I picked up from my body while I was running:
I noticed that I don't engage my core. I had to remind myself to do it a few times, specially going up or down hill. They weren't particularly steep but El Salvador is not a flat place to run in so I do encounter a couple of them in every running route.
I also noticed that I put and carry some stress on my back. Maybe this has to do with not engaging the core?
Since I wanted to start out slow I tried to control my pace which made my stride feel uncomfortably short. I felt I had to put a lot of effort in what should have been a slow, gentle pace. I started to pick up my pace and my stride automatically became a little bit longer feeling a lot more natural to me. This means that I had to keep a somewhat fast pace (not superman fast) to keep what felt like a more natural stride for me.
When I was training I put a lot of effort in maintaining a slow pace, specially in longer runs. Since I don't care about distance right now a faster pace was not hard to keep up for a 45 minute run.
My pace was definitely not even. I know this is a tricky one because even people who have been running for a long time sometimes have a hard time managing a steady pace. Even if I hadn't worn my Garmin I still would have known my pace was all over the place but I didn't mind it too much as I am trying to figure out what pace my body feels more comfortable in.
My greatest discovery was my foot strike. This totally blew my mind.
During my run I kept feeling I was landing on the outer side of my right foot. I've always known I land on my mid foot and roll towards my toes. I didn't know that my left foot lands on the center and my right on the outside border. My right leg has been the most prone to injuries. I do wonder if this has something to do with it.
I came home and I immediately checked my old shoes. I still have the shoes I trained and ran the marathon in so I grabbed them and found this:
The outer side of the sole is completely gone from the right shoe.
Now, I am not claiming that what I've discovered is good or bad. I am keeping those two words out of my running vocabulary for a least this year. What I think is beyond cool is that I was able to FEEL it which is my main goal! I was able to figure out an aspect of my foot strike by listening to my body.
I am also not making any harsh decisions based solely on this run. This is a starting point for me and my research.
As a final note, I just want to say that as I tried to upload my last workout from my Garmin to my computer I -still don't know how- managed to erase it from Garmin so I will take it as a sign that life is encouraging me not to focus on numbers. Pat in the back from me to me.
