Ha! I was able to Finish the 21K of Adidas King of the Road

I was able to finish the Adidas king of the Road Last October 23, 2011. My first 21K!

I feel fulfilling.

I finish at 2Hrs 51Mins. yes the time was awfully slow. I was good Halfway, but my shoes were about to give me blisters that i had to slow down halfway, put a medical gauze on my socks that on the part that its about to give in but it was too late. The outer skin is already sticking out that running already hurts. From my experience in my first 10K. (that was my previous run before the 21K. hehe) I had to slow down and it would seem my muscle memory told me to do not run as fast as i normally would because it remembered how painful it was. SO i had to really slow down. I remember that a lot had passed by me. Even an old man that being interviewed by another runner got past me. The old man was 77yrs old. Ouch. How old an unconditioned am I compared to this old guy.

SO there i am, super slow – taking my pace – be better off walking – able to finish the run. At the Finish line, i was so happy i run 5meters to the run. I am already thinking of how Good i would like in wearing the 21K Finisher’s shirt. I am already planning of wearing it when i go to the office. Then there i was retrieving my G-O-O-D-I-E-S! Thank you for the organizers. I enjoy very well organized run!~ ^_^ High Five to everyone and a handshake to me. Then i started looking for my shirt. To my demise, it was already out of stock. Damn. It made me look for the 21k Finisher even harder and practice better.

I will not go up a longer distance until i get myself a 21K Finisher Shirt

19 days till Adidas King of the Road

Now is the time to get serious.

After a 15minute morning run. Has to massage all day during a DeskJob.

22 Days Till Adidas King of the Road

Needs to be in the office as early as 3am. So i have to wake up earlier. Tss. So sleepy in the office.

No runs for today or before going to bed. Need sleep and buffer for tomorrow.

See you asphalt and Cement Roads Tomorrow morning.

Btw, I saw this Nuvali Trail Run on Laguna. 10Km Trail Run with an obstacle Course. I want to try it. SHould i wait for a friend to come with me. Not exactly join with me but just be there for me? I dont know any other people within my place or online. Nah, i will be heading there myself and meet new friends.

Dive directly into the fire and burn!

 

Till my next run

24 Days till the Adidas King of the Road

Been a while. No run up to now. No practice Run.

Helluvah days. BEen raining. I will get back on practice. CAnnot Run outside so i will train indoors. Stationary running.

3 days until 21 days till this becomes a habit. I really hope. Damn. Weak words. This will be my habit. Keep my fire burning. I may have been taught by adults to be reactive. May have been trained in tradition. Have been a rebel. Been fighting a lost cause. I will need to apply my training and principle to my life. Too many principles but have not lived any. Today. Carpe Diem.

Do not give time and effort to useless unsensibles

32 days till Adidas King of the Road Philippines

Wow! so it is now 32 days till the Run.

I had a good Morning run this morning. Now i am massaging my legs while working. Deskjobs. So not me. Haha. I will work on with i can work on and improve it and make it better. Short Term achievable goals.  I can do this.  I massage after every sentence. Hahaha! I find myself amusing. Has to be able to  massage myself for the 4th fundamental of running which is the muscle elasticity. My Leg muscles are, what you would call rigid. I had trained it to be that way before. Now i am training it to do the opposite. With Aikido, it was mentioned that efficiency in movement and circular motion for effectivity in attack and defense. In order to be highly effective MMA, i have to brace the other side which is giving my muscles sufficient strain for muscle growth for strength. This i lack. Speed, no problems but endurance i lack. So i therefore conclude, i have speed to perform. No strength to give power to my movements and endurance to perform for a long time. I need these 3 essentials. So for now, i go for endurance and strength. Speed with go later as i have it by nature. i go for what i lack and nourish everything. By the way, i love running. I make this as my endurance and strength training for my legs. a part of my MMA training.

Going back to Running. Naming my prize. My short term achievable goal is finishing the 21K. My goal is 1Hr30Min. My time for the 10K on my last run was 1Hr 16Min. Not bad. Not to mention that was my first time running a 10k. That means i can do better with proper training and focus and reminder that every run is fun. i had a good run this morning and good massage today. i am quarter within my Deskjob shift, while blogging, while massaging and reading other blogs, typing in my online diary while massaging on every stop of trail of thoughts, i would say that the run help me get focused on my deskjob. Made me hope bigger. Aim Higher and get my fire burning. Ok, done with the running training. Now on the recovery. i have read somewhere or thought of myself that one can run everyday if he can recover faster. one way of recovery for runners are massage and pain relievers. pain relievers are too expensive. im cutting back on expense anyway, so i go the other way, massage. I can do self massage. There are a lot of information about self massage.  i will link all those sites that may or will directly help me so i can go back to them. Hey, this is my online diary. for my reference as well. First, i need to know what to massage. i need to massage what is painful. My leg muscles from running. So i search leg muscles. http://www.flashmavi.com/weight_training_skeletal_muscle_system_legs.shtml the site points to which part of my muscles are pointing. it names it as Vastus Lateris. so that is the name of the painful muscle. So my next keywords are “self massage Vastus lateris” and i find most relevant is this. http://saveyourself.ca/articles/perfect-spots/spot-08-quadriceps.php. Ha! from my going to the gym experience and research on which muscle group to focus on, i learned about quads. I never thought i learned more about muscle groups. So this website names the muscle separately from just Quads. My focus is on Vastus lateris

I read this post http://studentdesignblog.wordpress.com/2011/09/19/saying-hello-its-not-that-hard/ and i realized that

33 Days Adidas King of the Road Philippines

I feel so down. Down. Down. Down. i have no motivation today. i dont understand why. I shall try with the Naming my price. I prize i want to get is really high no one supports me. I shall try to support myself. Short achievable goals to help me reach my long long partly invisible and impossible now.

Till then

36 Days till Adidas King of the Road Philippines 2011

Hahaha! My calves are better with the 2 days rest.

I am glad that i did not try to run with the heel strike though i had this little man inside me saying i couldn’t run. I couldn’t finish the 21k. I am better off resting. I said, little man, you are my teacher and reminder of my past experience that you let me know what might happen.

Thank you little man for voicing out if there is prominent danger or reminding me of the consequences of what would happen for the choices that i would make.

Though there are times that I doubt your voice. You give me options in times of struggle and doubt.

37 Days till Adidas King of the Road Philippines

My Calves hurt so much from 3 days of forefoot strike running form that i was not able to run this morning

Thanks to this guy, RichPoley – (his profile name in youtube) his video on massaging calves gave me an insight on how to self massage my calf. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1hTLpnS6vA. i watched this last night. unfortunately, i was too sleepy from eating plateful of tuna flakes, rice, 2 hotdogs and omelette that i was not able to massage long enough for the pain to go away.

So here I am in the office doing a self massage on while working. I would need to get back to Heel Strike Running form as this puts the strain on the knees instead of the calf if i continue the forestrike. Yes, to all the beginners in running, Knee Pain is true. It is stress more than it can handle on the knee. Read more about it on http://www.aafp.org/afp/991101ap/2012.html.

Back to Heel Strike tomorrow Morning.

39 Days till Adidas King of the Road Philippines

“Seek and You will Find. Ask and the Answer will be Given. Knock and the Door will be Open to you.”
Matthew 7:7

Hahaha! Last Saturday, i went to Bonifacio High Street to get my Registration Code for the Adidas King of the Road on Runnr’s Store.

Them along the Way i came along this Free Seminar from the MultiSports Magazine. A free magazine about Triathlon. The guy working on it was asking me to join the free Seminar, i said, it sounds interesting but i cannot attend right now as I have errands. I was told that it is still early and it starts at 5.30pm, So i checked the clock, ok it is too early, i think i can do my errands and come back to it.

Olah! I got time to make it back and on time for the seminar! Hooray! From there i get to listen to Coach of Trimac Sports http://www.facebook.com/trimacsports

I got to learn the 4 fundamentals of Running.

1) Good Posture

- Good Posture means the proper form of running.

Body must be straight for a direct line of air supply for the lungs. Better support foor all parts of the body.

The Shoulders should be raised a little. Ha! i forgot to ask how to better weave the Elbow, from front to back, side to side or a combination, front to back and side to side but the body does not turn from side to side as the coaches might say that it may be bad for the back. I will get back to the coach about this.

The Hands should not be closed as it may tensed up during running. Not open enough as it would be flapping. Coach mentioned of having a running stick or like holding a stick then breaking the tip as so the thumb would be a little extended than the folder pointing finger and all the other fingers are folded and relaxed and not clasping tight.

The Hips are aligned with the body. Coach made an example as running like a woman with sexy butt tossing the hips side to side while running. This is to make both knees and legs aligned and balance as sharing the impact of hitting the road.

The Knees are pointing forward the same with the feet pointing to forward direction to where you are going. I think this may not be applicable to trail running as the trails are not flat.

The Feet would be using the pointing for of the direction you are going. Here’s what piqued my interest. The Heel Strike is not a good practice. I do this personally when sprinting. I can feel my feet scraping the road when doing this. This is done when you extend your feet to the ground hitting the Heel First (Heel Strike) then rotating the heel, using it as a pivot to pull myself forward. Then Midway, my feet would be flat, a quarter before the end, i would use my mid foot to propel my self forward then using the 2nd, 3rd and 4th toe mounds, using them to almost scraping the road again, to launch myself forward. For me, the Heel Strike is a good idea for that super launch instantaneous acceleration. As most forums say, it is like running like a puma. And just like a puma, it easily gets exhausted. it could be just me, as i am not training that intense. I have been doing fun run and cannot even do a straight 1Mile run without getting a rest. I learned of the Mid Foot Bounce Run a long time ago but did not find it applicable for me as i have small calves. Once i learned the reason behind this principle. I started to think that I have to try this. Yup i tried this, this morning actually. i did a 120-120 5 reps. (120sec Jog – 120sec Walk) 5 repetitions. I felt a good feeling in my calves. I think this is good for endurance races as it give little stress to the body and legs when dropping mid foot and bouncing forward. I cannot find any online name of this kind of running. Only descriptions on how to do it. For my personal preference. I would call this, DroMisfobo – Drop-Mid-Sole-Forward-Bounce. Hehehe. While writing this, i searched on it and found a research by Harvard Titled : Why do Different Foot Strikes Matter? http://www.barefootrunning.fas.harvard.edu/4BiomechanicsofFootStrike.html Kudos to the researchers and this mostly answers my questions.

I would be best to get a coach check the best running form for you. I would advise a Gait Analysis from coaches and Specialist. if you don’t have them within your reach. I recommend Getting yourself on a treadmill. Have a video of yourself running with side view and back view. Post it on youtube and on your blog. Observe how you run. Compare them to others and wait for constructive criticisms. At times, Trolls provide a good feedback. remember, take what is good and leave the bad comments. No runners are the same.

Heel-Striker can be used for sprinting. As for all the writings that they say that some Heel-Strikers makes them slow their movements as the heels would act as a stopper. I would say that if done properly, it would be like climbing with using your hands to propel yourself upward if there were no steps available for the feet to lunge upward. I use heel strike to lunge forward. Though the stress and strain of being a striker is can really be felt right away as it really does scrape the road. I would recommend doing this if your heels are really, really strong heels, hamstrings and knees.

2) High Cadence

I would say i am really clueless about cadence. In my research, i found this,  http://www.running-mom.com/running-cadence.html straight from a running mom. I appreciate it so much how mums can explain things a lot better than dads. Here it goes :

Just do the following:

Time yourself for 30 seconds by counting your left (or right) foot as it hits the ground as 0, then your next left footstep as 1, and so on. Multiply the final number (how many times 1 foot hits the ground in 30 sec) by 2 for your current stride rate. Then consciously think about having quicker, smaller, steps to get it up to 90. Time yourself every few minutes to see if you’re increasing the rate.

I have to tell you, it feels pretty funny at first. You’ll feel like you’re doing something wrong, but you’re not. It also takes time. It took me a good two months of focusing purely on cadence to feel more natural now at ~92-95 rpm.

And I’m seeing results. I had a PR 10k this past weekend, averaging a 7’08 min/mile and it’s my ‘off’ season! So, I’m looking forward to adding intervals and speed work in 2010 and seeing what happens.

I would guess I would need a clock and time myself while doing Cadence. i will do this Next Morning.
3) Strong Balanced Legs

Balance so the stress is balance on both legs, does not wobble or when the Dominant Leg is fatigued, the weaker leg tries to take over but of course, being the weaker leg and the Dominant leg getting fatigued, this would make the runner look like jumping sideways when running thus prone to injury. Coach showed some exercise on making stronger legs. For me, i have a stronger upper body, I think i would need to work on my lower body. Weight training on Lower Body to make my lower body stronger.

Elasticity

Will Update this when i get home

43 Days till Adidas King of the Road Philippines

I feel good after running in the Morning.

I was able to start my schedule. I did an easy run of 120-120 for 15mins. (120 walk – 120 easy jog). I added the arm swings. Arm swings while jogging helps jog faster also an additional exercise for the arms. I need to learn about parts of the muscle, muscle growth and kinetics.

Training in a scientific pattern. Progressive Training. Functional Muscles. Stronger, Faster, Better!

Keep enjoying what you are doing. Keep improving. Keep positive. Do not limit yourself. When you feel sad, feel sad. It is natural to feel sad. Sadness is a part of life. Get to it. Finish it. Then move on. Look for inspiration. Open your senses. This is what i did. Remind yourself what made you start doing what you did or what you were doing. This rekindles the fire.

I have found my inspiration. I have started my morning run again. I will keep on improving my runs and all other aspects of my life.

Keep running.