Soooo my physiotherapist started me running again last Wednesday. He told me not to let my heels smack the ground, that I should be running on the pads of my foot rather. I guess biomechanically humans aren't meant to have their heels strike the ground! So it's all calf muscle instead of pushing off with the heel- it increases your cadence and speeds you up, because there is no time spent stopping your momentum. When your heel hits the ground when you are running not only is it bad because it absorbs all the shock and it reverberates up your leg, but it actually slows you down because you are braking yourself. While running without using your heels, you absorb the shock in the muscle rather than in the bones and you go faster. And less injuries. Sounds like a dream come true right? Ha. The first time I tried it (run one minute, walk one minute) X 3 I couldn't walk for three days I was so sore. So now I am increasing my time by one minute everyday and yesterday was the first time I could try it again. I'm looking forward to trying it again tomorrow though! It's really hard again. But I did it once before, and I can do it again... And the physiotherapist says this is the best and only way to prevent injuries for runners and that it's the ONLY way I'll be able to run the rest of my life if I don't want problems. So I plug on...
Swimming today was good. I skipped last Monday and paid for it on Wednesday because we learned those fancy turns that swimmers do when they hit the wall and want to turn around super fast in races. So I had to learn it on Wednesday a day behind everyone else. That sucked. I almost drowned each time. I am the girl who grew up holding her nose when she dived off the boards and when she jumped in the pool. It STINGS to get water up there. Yeech. But I learned the gist of it and be damned if I'm not going to try it every time... I apparently am some sort of masochist.
Today we had a stand in coach for Lincoln and he gave us a lot of pointers on stroke technique. So I didn't get the full 1600 000 000 000 000 metres in that Lincoln likes to push us to do each week but I learned a lot of new things. In fact he wouldn't let us finish the lap fast, so we HAD to work on our technique and we got to use the flippers! Those things are as addictive as crack. We learned to keep our hands in line with our forearms and bring them at a right angle down under our elbows and out to the side. We learned to drag our forearms back straight and slow and pull to the back quickly. We learned to imagine our arms and hips were attached by a string and to rotate the body to slice through the water at an angle rather than straight on. We learned to keep out elbows out of the water as high as we could with only dragging our middle finger in the water. That way we expand our chests as much as we can to get as maximum air in when we breathe. And last but not least we learned to enter our arms back into the water by fingers first, then knuckles, then wrist, then elbow, then shoulder... and concentrate on each separate body part entering the water individually, but in order. He said this would help us stop thrashing down the 50m like farm machinery. I'm assuming he was talking about me... So he told us to concentrate on only one aspect of it and the rest should fall into place just as easily. So I worked my brains out on keeping my elbow as high in the air as I could muster, which made a completely different swim... And as I was concentrating on it one of the men in the slower lane leaned over and said... wow you look like a real swimmer! I didn't think he was talking to me so I looked around, but I was the only one at the end of the pool with him. So I said "Pardon?" and he said "Yeah, you look like a real swimmer out there, like you know what you are doing- looks fantastic"... You would not believe how happy that made me. I was on cloud 9 the rest of the 10min of class and am sooo glad I went this week. Every time I go, I'm soooo super glad I went. It's ridiculous. My ankle is a bit sore and swollen today, but I think that has more to do with the running than the flippers... I hope anyway... Lincoln is going to have to pry them off my feet soon I think. But all in all, it wasn't the best cardio workout today, but the stroke technique was worth it's weight in Fort McMurray real estate and I learned a whole bunch today!
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