i2runner

Aray ko! (Ouch!)

Last night when Beth and I were in Makati, we stepped in the wrong bus that we thought would take us to Market-Market to attend Takbo.ph’s Carbo-Loading party at “The Old Spaghetti House” restaurant. So we left the bus immediately when this girl behind me who was also leaving the bus landed her foot on the floor unbalanced, and because she was wearing high heels, she was forced to bend her knees to absorb her body weight, but her left knee bumped into my upper right calf real hard that I had to shout, “ARAY KO!” (OUCH!!!). Her bony thin knees really hurt and bruised the internal muscles of my upper right calf that I could then hardly walk. I felt all 6months of hard work going down the drain. She apologized sincerely (of course I believed her), and because she was so pretty, I forgave her.

When Beth and I finally arrived at the Carbo-Loading party, the pain disappeared because of the joy of seeing my runner-friends, and I forgot the whole incident. But when I arrived home, the pain returned that so I iced it for at least 20minutes. The pain never disappeared and I couldn’t sleep thinking all my marathon plans could be postponed, and maybe I’ll just join the QC marathon in October.

This morning I wasn’t planning anymore to run, maybe just sleep longer, but then I thought it would be a good idea to try to run for 2miles, and test my calf. If I can’t run for 2miles, how could I expect to run the marathon?

In the past, I thought calf muscles plays a major function in running, until I saw the CHI-running video just recently. There was one scene where Danny recommends trying to run on the sand and try to minimize the footprint. He said the forefoot and the heel’s depth in the footprint should not be as deep as in the midfoot. In other words, there should be no pronation, and I concluded this would obsolete the calf muscle. Probably the reason why top Kenyan runners have rail-thin calves while their thighs are bulky. I thought this was a great idea, but could be hard in practice. He was like the karate-kid teacher teaching us to wax-in, wax-out cleaning a wall prior to fighting. So I thought this technique was my last chance if I wanted to run fast without hurting my bruised calf and bruised ego.

So I did run 2miles this morning, and using that Chi-Running technique, even with a badly bruised right calf, I managed to run without flipping my feet or use my toes to “lift off”. Instead, I raised my ankles higher, in order for my legs to create a smaller rotational inertia, thus speeding up my leg turn-over. The darn technique actually worked! After 1mile, the pain really disappeared, probably due to the endorphin hormones. The slow easy 2mile jog turned out to be a marathon-paced run, even though the effort was easy indeed. In the end, I think my injured calf forced me to correct my Chi-running technique.

Here’s my log for today.
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/7914235