Description

An admitted shoe geek waxes philosophical about running, triathlon, and life in general.
Comments welcome!


Saturday, July 23, 2011

A step or two back to move forward

I've had my smart phone for a couple weeks now, and I've been having a lot of fun with some of the free games. One of the more simple, but addicting ones is Mr. Weiner, a game where you move different shaped objects around (latte cups, milk cartons, hamburgers, and corn on the cob) out of the way so that Mr Weiner (a hot dog) can move off the board. One of the things I've found is that most often, when Mr. Weiner isn't at the left-most column (he exits to the right), usually you have to get him there before he can move right.

He has to move backwards first in order to move forward.

I made a comment
a few weeks ago, when I first got back to running after the calf strain, that I was going to ditch the Tacoma Narrows Half Marathon because I didn't want to push myself too hard and re-injure myself. Well, one week ago tomorrow, I did JUST what I said I wouldn't do -- I went out to test myself over 7 miles, and paid for it. My calf didn't give me the stabbing pains as it does on initial injury, it just got progressively tighter and more painful, and no amount of stretching or massage would get it to relax.

And in the aquathon on Wednesday, I had a minor tweak, and was able to keep my form together enough to finish the 5K, but my calf locked up after the run, and it wasn't until well into Thursday that I could even walk somewhat normally.

So I'm having to take a step or two back with the running, time off (though I'm still biking and swimming), to let it heal. Maybe I'll do the aquathon in two weeks as my first run. And that may be the only running I do for a while. Because I do want to move forward. I haven't given up on the idea of the half marathon, I've just realized it isn't going to happen this year.

Likewise, in a more global sense, there's a need to take a step or two backwards in order to move forward.

Jason Robillard, in his
post from today, talked of keeping the message of natural, bareform running as simple as possible. Taking a step back from advanced ideas. And I dare say that the "analysis paralysis" that seems to be taking the expert field by storm, fueling the arguments for and against, are heading down a bad pathway. Footstrike, impact force transients, feel vs float... I just know that I'm more comfortable running as I do. And I am getting more and more amused all the time as the shoes I prefer to run in seem to resemble, more and more, those that were available when I first started running distances, back in the late 70's. I took my old Nikes to the belt sander today in a second stage of modification, making them more... simple.

One step forward and two steps back?

More like two steps back in order to enable a thousand forward.

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