Julie Whirls and Tweets

Whew, it's been a whirlwind these past two weeks. For those of you who may have missed the emails and tweets, I got a job!!! It seems to be a perfect match for me, and I'm very excited to get started. However -- holy moly there's a ton to do. I start July 6th and between then and now I have to find a place to live, move, and... and... um...huh. I guess that's it. Find a home and move in two weeks. No biggie.

As promised on Twitter, I owe a story on my experience with the treadmill. I don't like treadmills in general because they are so boring. It's no fun to exert all that effort and not actually go anywhere. This particular treadmill (in the hotel gym) was facing a mirrored wall, so I had the bonus of seeing my own puffing face the entire time. This really was a bonus in this instance because I needed a chance to check my form. The VFFs are great at preventing heel-striking, but a great stride is far more nuanced than just not landing on your heels. I've been reading and reading and trying to apply what I read. Surprise, surprise, it's hard to look at your feet and maintain a good form at the same time :)

What I learned is this: it actually takes more effort to run slow than to run fast -- or at a minimum, no more effort to run much faster. Gasp! You think I'm crazy, right? Turns out, the more efficiently you run, the easier it is. Although I hate to see all those numbers on the treadmill display (re: my post on why I run with a HRM) it gave me a chance to fiddle with the pace and watch the results in my form and heart rate. I was able to bump up the speed by more than one minute per mile with zero effect on my heart rate -- and maintain that speed with no conscious extra effort.

The following video may not be the best example, but it's fun to watch anyway and features Barefoot Ted, who is one of the main "characters" in Born to Run by Christopher McDougall. Reading Barefoot Ted's blog was one of the things that convinced me to try VFFs. Anyway, notice how little he actually moves his feet. McDougall talks a bit in the book about this economy of movement. (He's wearing hauraches, which he learned to make from the Tarahumara).



As far as shoes go, the VFFs felt fine but were extremely loud (THUMP_THUMP_THUMP_THUMP_THUMPTHUMPTHUMPTHUMPTHUMP)
-- so now we know that cushioning in shoes is good for noise reduction... ah ha! That's why they're called sneakers!

Other bad mojo from the treadmill is that it left me limping with extremely sore hips for several days. Ouch. I'm writing this now from the same hotel (after a return trip home, then back here, then around and around and around and around in search of a new home). I plan to run on the treadmill again only because I have no choice :(