Post numero Uno: The Runner's Knee
12.53pm CST; Saturday July 18, 2009
Chicago, IL

Six weeks into training, I'm finally unveiling (if you can call it even that) my website, and this training blog.
You'll have to excuse it all for right now... the code is ultra-sloppy, and the navigation links at the top of the page won't work for awhile (untile I have time to set up the rest of the site), but at least we've gotten this blog up, no? This is also my first-ever website, and first-ever attempt at code. So we'll see how it goes. (Many thanks to thrice.net for letting mesnipe their CSS source code. It helped, even if mine doesn't at all resemble theirs in the least.)

It's actually really interesting, how my body is adapting to its newer, higher stress environment. The most noticeable is probably how much I've learned to pay attention to my gait.

After doing some research I discovered that my normally bouncy step was a sign of having poor posture. And running training for and running a marathon with poos posture is a recipe for disaster. I won't go into all the details here, but essentially I shortened my step and tried running with more of an emphasis on hitting the ground first with my midfoot instead of my heel (more on this later).

Also. Hours of running give me time to listen to my step. As is the case for most people, each of my feet has a different stride from the other.
My left foot hits the ground fairly evenly (so my instep and outsteps hit the ground simultaneously). This is called "neutral pronation". But whenever I run, I hear the sound of two steps whenever I put my right foot down. I never understoods this until recently.
It seems that my outstep hits the ground far before my instep, which creates two pavement-slapping sounds. (The concept of the outstep hitting first is called "supination").

It's fine to have this kind of step. It's just the way I run. But I hadn't understood it until now.

Every third week in my training I have a "stepback" week, where I run slower and for fewer miles than the rest of the weeks. This was one such week. I'm pulling a John Kerry and flip-flopping my long run from Saturday to Sunday this week, and doing some weight training this afternoon.

Let's just hope I don't pull a George Double U and run the seven miles tomorrow too fast. 12 miles next Saturday (woohoo).

Now for life. In Chicago this weekend... I had a meeting with an architect on Friday (Leigh Breslau, at SOM), so I'm happy to be spending the weekend. Went out to dinner last night with Cece's roommate and saw "Up". Really sweet movie. Smuggled Snapple and Green and Black's (dark chocolate) past security.

Ironic, given the role of chocolate in the movie.