A Passion for Running

Welcome to the home of Mark aka The Running Blogfather – a 40 year-old dad, husband and marathon runner who’s beaten injury and is on the comeback trail!

40 minutes of light steppin’

passion for running category: running on Thursday, February 24 2005

Went out for 40 minutes today. This time, I focussed on running lightly on the balls of my feet. You see, I tend to be a heal-striker and that is not so good for the ol’ feet and shins.

I figure since I can’t do a lot of mileage right now, I am just going to focus on being light on my feet and improving my form. This, in preparation for my upcoming barefoot running adventure which I will start soon in the spring.

While I’m talking about barefoot running, I thought I’d mention I found a yahoo discussion group on the subject. It is a really buzzing group! I’m going to school on this folks!




6 Comments

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Comment by Jon in Michigan

Friday February 25, 2005 @

Good idea, Mark! I think the ChiRunning book was big on the same thing. I’ve tried to minimize the heal strike (shins, y’know?) and have about 50% success. When I get tired I can feel my form slipping and I end up hitting the heal again.

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Comment by Chris Brogan...

Friday February 25, 2005 @

I think that’s really cool, that you modified your running based on what you could do for the moment. I like barefoot running as a training method. I’m not sure I’d do it for a whole marathon, but who knows? It’s a little weird on the trails, because of rocks and roots. Do-able, though. I imagine.

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Comment by BD

Friday February 25, 2005 @

I think it’s a good idea to move from heel striking to running more ball-heel-ball. However, I think it is important to make changes to one’s stride slowly because you have to develop new muscles to accomodate the new stride. It’s really easy to get injured otherwise. For example, for 2 weeks I ran 1/3 new stride, 2/3 old stride. The third week I ran 2/3 new stride, 1/3 old stride. Finally, on the fourth week I tried some shorter runs with 100% new stride. After that I began to run longer with the new stride. Just my 2 cents of input.

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Comment by mark

Friday February 25, 2005 @

Thanks you guys and good point BD. I definitely want to build gradually. My strategy is to build up my barefoot miles in the same manner as new runners build up their running mileage. Run barefoot for a minute, then walk. Then, build up the repititions and gradually build up the time to 2 minutes, 3, 4 and so on.

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Comment by Pamalamadingdong

Friday February 25, 2005 @

too much to think about! GAH!!!!

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Comment by susan

Friday February 25, 2005 @

I’m curious about this. You’ll have to keep us posted!

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