The Running School

Interesting day for me yesterday. I went to see Michael at the Running School in Chiswick to have a look at my running style and get some pointers. I didn't go in with any preconceptions on what he was going to do - I've been disappointed by previous gait analyses, physios and proponents of run clinics, but the simple straight forward approach he applies can't be argued with. They tape you running fresh and fatigued to check what you are doing at both ends of your run and then you watch the video back and critique it. Now I finally changed over 100% to forefoot running about 16 months ago, but had been switching gradually for about 8 months before that... and while I did a lot of technique work over that period, most of it seems to have gone out of the window. Certainly a few of the major errors with my stride - landing too far in front of my centre of gravity for example - were things even I could notice (it was bad!) but its funny how you just slip back into bad habits and manage to fool yourself that its all going ok. Along with some biomechanical issues that I was already well aware of and a few issues that I need to address, there's plenty of things to improve... awesome. In many ways like the video analysis from Swim For Tri, simply seeing yourself running is enlightening enough. Then to have someone with an expert eye to highlight exactly what's out of whack makes the process invaluable. Looking forward to correcting all my mistakes! Highly recommend these guys. If you're lucky I might even upload some of the footage over the months to show improvements.

And yesterday evening was the first of 3 Timex Ironman Clinics held for the Serpies. The next 2 are on Tues 13th and Tues 20th April in Westminster, on Training and Heart Rate for Ironman and Ironman Nutrition.