Training plan

That hydration tip worked really well - last night's run was my fastest so far. However, I don't think I left it long enough after drinking as I could feel water sloshing about while I was running - quite uncomfortable.

I have been giving some thought recently to my training plan. Up to now, I have just been concentrating on running and on increasing my mileage, but more experienced runners have told me that it helps with to have a goal in mind and a plan on how to get there.

There are lots of standard training plans in books and on the web, but I find them all rather complicated and I fear this would make them hard to stick to. I decided therefore to create my own very simple plan, and here it is:

Phase 1 - run every other day, increasing mileage by 0.25 miles every three runs, until I can run 3 mi (5 km). This should be about three weeks from now.

Phase 2 - run every other day, on a pattern of Short Run/ Rest/ Medium Run/ Rest/ (repeat). The short run will stay at 3 mi, and the long run will progressively increase by 0.25 miles each run until I reach 6 mi (10 km). This should take until the middle of September.

There is a local 10K race coming up at the end of September - the Mortimer 10K. I haven't registered yet as I decided to wait until I can run 3 miles before doing so.

Phase 3 - investigating using minimalist shoes and a barefoot running style. For this I will stick with the same schedule as for Phase 2, and gradually increase the distance run in the minimal shoes until I am doing all my runs in them, or until I decide that they are not going to work for me. This should take until the end of 2011.

Phase 4 - switch to a more traditional weekly schedule: Mon - rest/ Tue - short run/ Wed - medium run/ Thu - short run/ Fri - rest/ Sat - medium run/ Sun - long run.

The long run will be twice the length of the medium run, which in turn will be twice the length of the short run. Gradually build up the long run until it is around 10-12 miles (25-30 mi per week). Should take until March.

At this point I hope to do the Reading half-marathon. Again, I haven't booked this yet, as I wanted to get to the point where I can run 10K first.

Phase 5 - gradually increase my weekly mileage as far as I can, adding a mile onto the long run each week, half a mile onto the medium runs, and a quarter mile onto the short runs. Overtraining will mean dropping back a week, and injuries will mean taking a break and dropping back a number of weeks equal to the break.

I prefer the idea of building up my base like this, rather than doing one of the standard training programmes, as I don't want races to be the main focus of my training, which is more about getting in shape than achieving fast times.

We have a local trail marathon/half-marathon in May - the Neolithic. I will try to do whichever one of these seems most appropriate, based on my weekly mileage at the time.

Effect of dehydration

I noticed on my last three runs that my pace has not been improving, but has slowed in fact by almost 2% over the past week, over the same distance. This is a bit disappointing, as until this week my pace has generally been improving on every run. At first I wondered if I could be overtraining. Even though my total weekly mileage is currently pretty minimal, it has been growing by about 12-13% per week, which is quite a quick rate of increase, and above the 10% that most coaches recommend. I am reluctant to change my training plan though, as I do have a 10K race to prepare for, and I need to get up to running 10K fairly comfortably before the end of September.

Another possibility I thought of was that I might be slightly dehydrated. According to this article, a reduction of only 1% in the body's water content below the optimum level may lead to a slowing in running pace of around 2%, due to factors like decreasing muscle endurance, decreased cardiac output and decreased skin cooling. If so, this alone could explain the recent drop in performance.

The article goes on to explain that the average daily amount of water consumed by someone of my weight is around 3 litres. I reckon my own consumption is quite a bit below this, even if I include other fluids like tea and coffee. So from today I am going to try to always drink this amount every day.

Apparently, I should drink additional water before and during exercise, at a rate of about 100ml for every 10 minutes of exercise. So for my typical 20 minutes or so of running, I should drink around 200ml of water. It hardly seems worth carrying a bottle with me for such a short run, so I think I will try the 'water loading' approach, which is to load up on about 500ml of water approximately 30 minutes before running, so that it has left the stomach and begun to enter the bloodstream before the run starts. I will try this tonight and see if my pace starts to improve again.

Once my runs get longer than about 50 minutes, I will start carrying a water bottle as well, so as to be able to continue the 100ml per 10 minutes rule once the water load has been used up.

Tibialis Posterior

No pain in my heel today, I am happy to report, but a slight ache elsewhere in my leg prompted me to do some web research. I had an aching muscle in the same place in each of my lower legs, and I wondered what the cause could be. Try as I might, I couldn't figure out exactly what muscle it was that was aching. It didn't seem to fit with any of the descriptions I found. There are a surprising number of muscles in the lower leg, by the way.

Eventually I tracked it down - it was a muscle called the Tibialis Posterior. This muscle is located for the most part in the middle of the lower leg, between the tibia bone and the big muscles at the back of the calf (not shown). From there, a tendon extends down and behind the Medial Malleolus, the bony lump on the inside of the ankle, and under the foot, where it joins onto one of the bones under the sole.

This muscle has three main functions. Firstly it is responsible for 'inversion' of the foot. Sit in a chair with your legs straight out in front of you and the soles of your feet pointing away from you. Now bend your right ankle so that the sole of the right foot is pointing inwards towards your left foot. The Tibialis Posterior muscle is what you just used to do that movement.

Secondly, it helps with plantarflexion, that is to say the pointing of the toes. Sit in the same position as before and point your toes away from you. The main muscle doing this movement is the big one at the back of the calf - the Gastrocnemius, but the Tibialis Posterior is assisting.

Thirdly, and most importantly from a running point of view, the Tibialis Posterior is responsible, with its antagonist, the Tibialis Anterior, for stabilising the foot. These muscles keep the foot stable and flat when running. Each time the foot is planted on the ground, your weight tries to evert the foot (the opposite of inverting it) and flatten the arch, and the Tibialis Posterior tenses and pulls back, supporting the arch and bringing the foot back into line. If you have flat feet, it is often this muscle that is underdeveloped. So the fact that mine is aching a little is a good thing - it just means it is doing the job it is supposed to be doing, and which it probably hasn't been doing for a while.

Heel pain

I woke up yesterday with quite a bit of pain in the back of my left heel. I checked out the symptoms on the web and as I suspected, it seemed as though one of the scourges of long-distance runners, achilles tendonitis might have struck.

I got up and gingerly did a few calf lifts, then stretched my calves. A few minutes later the pain had subsided, and by the end of the day it had vanished altogether. Today when I woke up there was just a hint of discomfort, but nothing too painful, and again it vanished entirely after a few calf lifts and stretches. However, I am worried this might be the start of something chronic and I am not sure what to do about it.

For one thing, I don't know quite what has brought it on. I haven't increased the length of my daily run very much, but the total for the week has increased quite a lot recently, so maybe it is overtraining. Perahaps my attempts to avoid running on my heel have pushed me too far the other way. Running too much on your forefoot is said to put strain on your calves and achilles tendons. Maybe it is just that my tendon has been weakened by years of shoe-wearing, as the barefoot runners would have us believe. Possibly it had nothing to do with running at all. I did play tennis for about two hours on Sunday before my run, so maybe the overall strain was just too much. Or maybe it is a combination of all of these factors.

Looking back though, I have a slight suspicion that I did not warm up quite as conscientiously before my Sunday run as I normally do, although I did do all my usual stretches afterwards. I didn't warm up much before the tennis match either, for that matter.

So for the moment, I will work on the assumption that this is the cause. Tonight when I run, I will make sure I do the full warm-up, including a couple of sets of calf lifts, and see if I have any pain tomorrow morning. If so, I will take two rest days instead of my usual one, and see if that helps.

Barefoot running

It seems almost impossible to look at a running website these days without seeing something about barefoot or minimalist running. There are a lot of strongly-held opinions on both sides of the debate, in fact often it doesn't seem to be a debate at all, but rather an exercise in mudslinging. See this example, and this one, for some of the arguments on both sides.

In a nutshell, the proponents of barefoot running (and here I also include the use of minimal non-cushioned shoes) say some or all of the following:

1. As a species, we evolved to run barefoot, and we have natural cushioning structures in our feet and lower legs that make cushioned running shoes unnecessary.

2. Cushioned shoes encourage us to run with poor form, because they protect us from our mistakes. Eventually, using them leads to inefficient running, weakened feet and chronic injuries like plantar fasciitis and achilles tendonitis.

3. Shoe manufacturers are well aware of this, but they only make money if we continually update our shoes for the latest hi-tech models, so they deliberately mislead us with tales of overpronation and so forth.

4. Podiatrists are almost as bad - they want to sell us their services, custom orthotics etc. so they support and add credibility to the shoe manufacturers' story.

As evidence for their point of view, proponents of barefoot running point to the many runners who have completed and even won long races in minimal footwear, and to the even greater number of runners who say their chronic injuries cleared up after they started running barefoot. These arguments are raised in the excellent Born to Run, by Christopher McDougall, by the way.

Opponents of barefoot running say that much of the talk about its supposed benefits is wholly unscientific, consisting of new-age claptrap, biased opinion and unsupported assertions rather than actual evidence. Also, they point out that those who buy minimal shoes are being just as misled by manufacturers' marketing ploys as anyone else.

For myself, I have to admit I am quite sympathetic to the barefoot idea, but I admit this is more because I want it to be true than because of any actual hard evidence. I can see how the cushioned shoes I use are indeed very forgiving of bad running form, and since improving my form has led to my running better than I have ever been capable of in the past, this does seem to suggest one possible reason why I should dispense with my Asics and buy something with less protection.

However, I can't quite bring myself to run completely barefoot at this point, or to buy some huaraches or other minimal shoes, as it is taking all my effort to build up my overall fitness at the moment, without having to build up my leg and foot muscles as well.

Also, the cost of the minimalist shoes just seems too high for what you get. If we are being asked to believe that shoe manufacturers like Nike, Asics etc. are conning us by pretending that all the hi-tech features in their latest £90 shoes are necessary when in fact they aren't, then how do the likes of Merrell and Vibram justify charging the same amount for shoes that have less material in them and required less development?

So for the moment I am sticking with my Asics, secure in the knowledge that if the barefoot brigade are right, then as the midsole cushioning starts to break down, the shoes will actually be better for me rather than worse.

Once I have my first race (Mortimer 10K) out of the way, I will have some time to think more about minimal shoes. If I can get hold of a reasonably cheap pair, then maybe I will give them a go and see if I can detect any advantages.

Running form

Looking back over previous times I have tried unsuccesfully to run on a regular basis, I have become convinced that part of my problem lies in my running form. It would be great if what had been holding me back all these years was simply a lack of knowledge of running technique. If so, and if I sorted this out right at the start, it would help me to make better progress and have fewer aches and pains (and fewer injuries). Then I could get down to the real work of increasing distance and pace.

There is quite a lot of information out there on the web about how to run properly. In particular there are quite a few 'branded' systems around, Chi Running, Pose Method, Good Form Running, Evolution Running, and so on. So I looked into these various systems on the web, and came to a couple of conclusions:

1. These competing systems are more similar than they are different (good news, as this implies there is broad agreement on what constitutes a good way to run, and that the differences are more on how to achieve this than anything else).

2. These systems are all rather expensive for what you get (bad news, as I hate paying for anything, especially when I don't feel I am getting value for money).

Similarities of all these systems:

1. Keep your posture tall and your head up when you run
2. Land on your mid/forefoot, not on your heel
3. Bend your knees slightly so your foot lands under your centre of mass
4. Lean forward slightly from the ankles so you are not fighting gravity
5. Use a higher cadence (steps per minute) and a shorter stride to make the most of stored energy.

 So I put these principles into practice when I started running again, and I must admit they did seem to make a difference. I can state categorically that I have never run with less muscle and joint pain before. Whether my recent improvements in pace will continue remains to be seen, but so far it looks good.

In the end I went and bought the Chi Running book by Danny Dreyer. It was on special offer at Amazon ... what can I say?

Some of my fears were realised. At least two-thirds of the book is just not worth having. New age mumbo-jumbo and self-publicity. Nonetheless, the parts of the book that deal with technique are interesting, it is just that you can get much of this information from the web for nothing.

The other day I got hold of Ken Mierke's Evolution Running DVD (for free - I wasn't going to pay the £50 it costs on Amazon UK). Chris McDougall recommends this system and used it himself to great effect. This is much more useful ... no fluff, just solid step-by-step explanations, firstly on what most runners do that is wrong, and then on how to correct it. It is now safely on my iPod where I can watch it any time I need reminding, and as I didn't pay for it, I can hardly complain about value for money ...

Why running?

So after my last visit to the doctor, and determined not to go onto Amlodipine if I could possibly help it, I started looking around for some form of exercise that I thought I might stick to. I mentioned before that I am not too keen on team games, so running seemed a possibility.

After a bit of web research, I began to think that there were a couple of reasons why I had never enjoyed running in the past. Firstly, my joints and muscles always seemed to suffer far more than they ought to for the amount of work I was doing. Secondly, no matter how often I ran or how slowly I tried to build up the miles, I never seemed to improve. Both these facts had always sapped my morale and led eventually to me losing interest.

Looking at others' experiences on the web, it seemed the reason for this might be that I had forgotten, or possibly never learned how to run properly, I had always assumed that running was something we all know how to do, and that if I was suffering I must be down to some physical limitations on my part. I started going on a few short runs - initially walking when I felt tired, and adding a little bit to the distance every few days.

I came across the book 'Born to Run' (by Chris McDougall) at this point. I read it cover-to-cover in two days, and I can honestly say it was truly inspiring stuff. By the end of it I was fully signed up to the idea that we are all of us natural runners (thanks to evolution) and that if this doesn't appear to be the case, it is because years of wearing shoes and travelling in cars has made us forget how to do it. I urge anyone who is thinking of taking up running to buy this book and read it. Chris's blog is worth a look too.

So it has now been about seven weeks, and I am running every other day, adding 1/4 of a mile after every three runs. See the Dailymile panel on the top right for the current totals. I only started recording the runs after I reached 1 mile - it just seemed too embarassing before that.