Recap from Training run #2

We had a great group of 75 last night at my annual "Dormant 2 Dominant: 7 weeks to your first 5k!" training runs last night at World's Fair Site.

As usual, we have a wide range of skill and experience levels and an even wider range of physical fitness levels.  Everyone did a great job.  Everyone is progressing very well.

Last night I gave "The shoe speech" and covered the good, the bad, the ugly, and the downright evil.


Things to remember this week:

• Breathe in your mouth and out your mouth - NO Nose breathing (self induced asthma=bad)
• Focus on landing Flat footed 
• SHORTEN your stride - shorten it until you feel completely ridiculous, then shorten it a little more.
• Land Directly underneath your center of gravity-if at any point you can look down and see the knot on your shoelaces, your foot is too far out in front of you
• LIFT with your big squat muscles (hamstrings, quads, butt) instead of Pushing with your calf muscles (think marching in place)
• Keep your body in line/good posture - head straight, chest up, shoulders straight-head, shoulders, waist, knees, feet all line up
• BEND YOUR KNEES - again, bend them until you feel completely ridiculous, then bend them a little more, then you're almost there.  And KEEP your knees bent - don't straighten them out at any point in your stride
• Fast cadence.  Cadence, not speed.  Think about running on hot lava, your feet Have to get off the ground quickly.  The instant you have daylight between the ground and your heel, Lift/pull your leg into your next stride.  

For cadence - the sweetspot rule-of-thumb is 180 Beats per minute (so 90 foot taps per foot per minute)  So test yourself:  run a stop watch for 30 seconds and count the foot taps of one of your feet.  At the end of the 30 seconds that one foot should have tapped the ground 45 times.