June 2012 – extricate.org

Minimalist Running: I’m Flying!

Things are going really well in my continued adventures with minimalist / natural running. To begin with, the Inov8 F-Lite 230 shoes are amazing. Absurdly comfortable and light. Well worth the money and I keep eyeing up other shoes in their range!

The transition has gone excellently. I am now comfortably performing my usual outdoor 5k training runs. To begin with, my goal was “Get round the route with no injury; it isn’t about speed”. I realised at the end that I physically had a lot left in the tank, and had set an average time! Not bad for an effective ‘sighting lap’. It was also very obvious that any knee pain was absent. Knee soreness had become a feature of my running in ‘traditional’ running shoes, and was part of my decision to transition.

As my confidence has grown, I’ve started to increase the speed. This has taken a bit of adjustment, as before I would increase my speed by drastically increasing my stride length. Now, I am increasing my cadence instead, keeping my feet below my hips. It has felt a little strange, particularly when my GPS reports that I am hitting quick speeds but it feels like I am just gliding along!

To help with pacing, I performed the Cooper Test on a treadmill. This particular test forms part of my referee promotion in the coming season. I set it for a steady 13.5 km/h, which would equate to a 2700m distance. That’s typically what I was hitting in my old running shoes. I comfortably hit that in the new shoes, including upping the speed at the end to bring it home! Most notable to me was that afterwards, again, I had loads of energy left and no soreness. Wow!

Today I decided to run a 5k but for a good time. I had a strong pace throughout, and the end result was that I beat my PB (set last year) by 25 seconds! And, you guessed it, I had energy left at the end to up the speed for a continued duration. In the old shoes, and with my old style, my legs would have been too sore to do that.

I am really, really happy with how this is working out so far. I have increased my performance and reduced my injury level. Lots more fun to be had here! I am sure that the CrossFit and weight loss have aided this whole process, and long may it continue.

Operation De-Lard: 7.3 kilograms and counting…

In my End of Season Review, something that I needed to sort out was the weight that I had put on during the season. It had perhaps been creeping up slowly over a couple of years, but most noticeable over recent times. The end result was that I had gained over 10 kilograms.

This was not good for various reasons:

I was starting to feel sluggish in terms of agility when refereeing.
I was picking up ‘niggly’ injuries, such as to my knees, due to increased loading.
I FELT FAT!

It was time to sort this out.

Now, I’d got down to a good weight for me (78 kilograms) before. Judo and weight training combined with around 2000 calories per day. I tracked that with DailyBurn Tracker which was good at the time, and keeping a record helped to keep me honest. This time around, I went with MyFitnessPal which is an EXCELLENT site with a wonderful community spirit. Its mobile apps are impressive as well, and all for zero cost!

To begin with, I tried 1500 calories per day but this was too low. After a few days, I was feeling lethargic and hungry all the time, so I sensibly upped it to 2000 calories. This is a good level for me. If I want to eat more, I simply ‘earn’ the calories through exercise! My Garmin Forerunner 410 GPS / HR watch is brilliant for tracking those bonus calories. This is much better than the horrible ‘save calories to cheat later’ approach that some eating plans advise.

That’s the nutrition side of things. How about the exercise?

I’m continuing the running: A combination of distance and speed training. I’ve also taken up CrossFit circuit training in order to build a stronger and more balanced body. Running is great but it only helps me from the waist down! I’m really enjoying this mixture of activities at the moment. On the running front, I’m also working on transitioning to minimalist / natural running as heel-striking is a horrible way to treat your knees!

So far, I have lost 7.3 kilograms in just over a month. I’m incredibly happy with this progress as it has been pretty quick but in a controlled and healthy way. I feel like I have my body back again, although there is plenty of work still to do.

To me, none of this feels like a diet, more like how I should be treating my body with respect!

Natural Running: Too Much Too Soon?

I recently took my first steps in natural running. About 5k on a treadmill, to be precise, in order to get a feel for the mid-foot/toe motion as opposed to my usual (very) heavy heel-strike technique. It felt great and so much lighter.

However, the very nature of this style is that the calf muscles and Achilles tendons are having to do more work. They are partly protected in a traditional running shoe as the shoe is taking over! Despite only doing 5k at a gentle pace, I suffered from some bad calf soreness over the weekend which ruled out any further running. Thankfully, it is pretty much back to normal today.

By contrast, my Achilles is just fine and I’m not surprised by this: When I first started football refereeing, I had major problems in that area, even though running was not new to me. Why? Changes of direction and speed. It’s one thing to go out for a jog where your tempo rarely changes. When refereeing, your speed and direction is constantly changing, and my Achilles did not know what hit them! It took a while to settle down, although I did not help particularly by refusing to rest properly. The end result: Strong Achilles.

I need to be more careful with the transition. Today, I intend to do a simple 5k on the treadmill (The weather outside is awful!), but most of it will be in my usual running shoes, with a bit of natural running in the my new Inov8 shoes at the end. A safe mixture. After all, I didn’t get any pain during the previous run: The DOMS came afterwards!

My calf muscles are getting more of a load in other ways too: I’m working on learning jump-rope for conditioning (via CrossFit) and being light on your toes for that necessitates calf-loading!

Natural Running: My First Steps

It’s fair to say that I do a reasonable amount of running. This breaks down into a mixture of football refereeing, so-called ‘normal’ running and sprint / interval training.

Some of this is pretty intensive. In football refereeing, the movements involved include: Walking, jogging, sprinting, running backwards, stepping sideways and combining them all together. This means that the body is under a lot of acceleration and deceleration load. Over recent times, I’ve experienced some knee pain which has been linked to these loads, with normal running not causing a problem. What’s going on?

Firstly, I did put on about 10 kilograms over the course of last season. This would not help at all! Thankfully, I am working on that, with over a stone of weight now lost as part of a strong healthy eating and exercise change of regime. I’m combining that with circuit training, in the form of CrossFit in order to build an overall stronger and more flexible body. My flexibility in particular is REALLY bad and this is always a big risk factor for sporting injury.

Secondly, how’s my equipment? As mentioned above, I’m okay with normal running, and have some excellent Saucony ‘Stability’ running shoes which have served me really well. No blisters and no pain. This is over a variety of ground from tarmac to grassland. I’ve experimented with various football boots to try and replicate this on the field, and my primary pair at the moment are the Asics Lethal Tigreor 3 ST boots. They have a raised heel which is said to help prevent load, injury and so on.

Am I missing a trick?

For CrossFit it is important to have neutral shoes when working with weights. I got a pair of Inov8 F-Lite 230 shoes, which look, well, exactly like this:

I LOVE THESE SHOES. They are incredibly lightweight, comfortable and breathable. Within moments, I was realising just how clunky and heavy my running shoes were.

Now, these notably don’t have a raised heel. This promotes ‘natural’ running. There’s a lot of material around of this, but ultimately it removes the heavy heel-strike action which is common with running shoes. Here’s a good video to detail it a bit more:

Now, I’m happy to go with neutral shoes rather than barefoot! I started out with a gentle 5k run on a treadmill. I deliberately started by heel-striking for comparison. As usual, there was a constant “THUD! THUD! THUD!” on the treadmill. I then shifted into a natural style, with my weight forward and landing on the ball of my foot. Instantly, the impact was MUCH reduced and, well, it felt more natural. I gently increased the speed throughout the workout, being sure to increase my cadence rather than thrusting my legs further out in front of me.

My calf muscles are still recovering (Nothing serious, just the expected levels of soreness). I am using muscles that I have not used when running before, due to the running shoes compensating. I am looking forward to developing this slowly over time: A controlled transition period is key or serious injury could occur.

How will this translate to football refereeing? Well, classic football boots are relatively neutral. Take the Adidas Copa Mundial, for example:

The heel is not particularly raised. These aren’t as flexible as my Inov8 trainers (not surprising: the boots need to hold the cleats in place) but I feel that the natural running principles are still sound. Weight forward, no heel striking, keep those feet landing under the body! Was just trying to raise my heel in different shoes and boots a crutch to avoid fixing my incorrect form?

It’s always exciting when taking the first step on a new journey, so it will be interested to see how this one goes!

My End of Season Review

My football refereeing season of 2011/2012 is at an end. Now is the time for self-analysis in order to see how well I did, especially in comparison with my goals, and decide where I would like to go in terms of moving forwards.

THE GOOD

I GOT MY PROMOTION: I succeeded in going from level 7 to level 5 (a ‘double jump’ promotion) in one season. This required a great deal of commitment and I’m pleased that there was no drama along the way.
CUP FINALS: I was very pleased to be selected for a total of five cup finals. This was nearly six but unfortunately I was away on holiday for the last one. It is always a honour to be considered for a cup final and they were a great way of rounding off the season.
I DIDN’T GET INJURED: Well, kinda. I will touch on this more in the next section. Essentially, I got through the season without any major problems, which was important considering how many games I needed to get in for the promotion.
I ENJOYED IT! Isn’t this the most important thing? I enjoyed my games, the challenges that they presented, and the various people that I met during the season: Players, officials and fellow referees. Some early advice I received was “Enjoy your refereeing” and how true that is!

THE NOT SO GOOD

MY WEIGHT: Despite being so active, I managed to to put on about 10 kilograms during the season. This was down to eating very badly. It started to have an impact on my joints plus how generally nimble I felt when refereeing (twisting and turning, changes of direction and so on). Not only that, I’m not happy with how I was looking towards the end of the season!
INJURY: Linked to my weight. My knees started to play up a bit towards the end of the season due to the repeated impact of the stop/start running. Essentially, a case of Runner’s Knee. Nothing serious as rest abates it but those extra 10 kilograms were hardly helping! Oh, and having an ‘out of balance’ body, but I will come to that later.
LEVEL 4: I’m now going for promotion again, to level 4. I’ve had my first assessment and while it is a commendable result for my first assessment at my new level, it is not as high a mark as I would like.

GOING FORWARD…

WEIGHT LOSS: This is already going very well, and I’ve lost over 5 kilograms so far. I’m sticking to a 2000 kcal diet, with exercise allowing extra calories! MyFitnessPal is an excellent site for tracking this.
FITNESS: The off-season allows me to be more stuctured in my routine. I’ve been working on a combination of normal running, interval and speed training. This has included working towards my fitness test which needs to be done in August/September (I am well on track for this). I’ve also started CrossFit in order to keep my body in good balance, to aid in flexibility and injury prevention. I’m really enjoying this.
I’M LOOKING FORWARD TO 2012/2013: I’m really looking forward to the new season. I feel like I’m going to be great physical shape when it comes around, and I have a level 4 to earn!

Bring it on 🙂