Running Form Importance - LumoRun Lead up

Do you know Jeo Friel ? One of the smartest endurance coaches out there ever ? Why is that ? Cause he never stopped educating himself and he never stopped training and competing. He understands age related decline, he understands health and fitness and preaches well designed training plans and high quality periodisation for races. Actually very similar to Maffetone. Get the necessary base, to deserve HIIT training. Some athletes have overall high-end strength, health, resistance and high training age, so 2 weeks of base training might be enough. However 99% of all people lacking long behind so a real base can be built only during a 3 to 6months period, otherwise power leaks would occur, health and injuries would show up, overtraining would be an issue and so. 

I got it, I understand it, because what we can see from most average endurance athletes, is wrong. Also in 140 caracters, an answer cannot be complete ! This generalised tweet answer inspired this small article and in the mean time, I introduce LumoRun on a small scale before we delve into the nitty gritty of form-feedback in a future in-depth article.

Responding to the first tweet is multi-folded, I still gave this "Enjoyment Factor" subtitle to the the paragraph as it takes up a big percantege of the answer. So why do you train 20 to 40hours a week in general, regardless it was crossfit, swim-bike-run, mountain and trail running, hiking and speed-walking ? Becasue you enjoy it, you freckin' love it, this is your lifestyle, your passion, your way of getting the bad stuff out from your system.

When it becomes an obligation, you feel like you cannot stay in shape without killing yourself on the bike near a 45hour work week and so, that is when all goes wrong. So while you want to complete/compete in an Ironman tri and this goal is front of your eyes all the time and it makes you motivated, happy and healthy, the process of those long training hours is just so enjoyable.

I also recommend, that when suffering becomes so intolerable in your brain, that you really want to go home and just stop, go home and just stop. If you continued, you might do some neuro-connective damage and you'll start having more and more unpleasant rides and runs going down on the slippery slope of overtraining. It is not necessary a physical challange, but a mindset.

I often do self talk when on the bike: why are you here ? what is this good for  ? Do you even want to do this  ? I always respond like this:

It is your choice, it is epic to be here and despite the 2 to 3 hours what left riding in these bad conditions, you can do it easily as your body is capable of handling anything your throw a it.

Get water, salt and sugar into the system with a bit of stretching. Motivation and so called motivational and physiological energy levels will rise immediately. I push down 3-4 bananas or a handful of almonds, pour 2 x 3dl diluted fruit juice into my bottles, do some light breathing, maybe even get in a 5minute nap, followed by a light espresso. You'll see just from this little fuel, you'll get a mental boost for hours.

We detoured a bit from my original thoughts, but my mind was leading my hands when typing.

This is the notion, every athlete and coach preaches. As an example, last year, I had a 12months long only MAF training period, with a lot of long distance outings and ultra races, including a 23h effort, and 50% of walking in weekly milage. Still, when having 2 weeks of end of season break, my 5 next races in 5 months were getting faster and faster and was podiuming in all races ranging from 15 to 35km, having a speed blast. While still I was not doing any speed work during this period. I am talking about trail and mixed surface running so average pace ranges did not dip under 3:35/km. We talk relatively fast - fast for me anyways. My MAF pace was dropping every single week, drastically. The most I ran, the faster I became. I started out 4:15/km on my 8km MAF test on the track with the first km on 3:50/km and the last 4:28/km. 3 weeks before my "A" race I ran 3:45/km on MAF on the road for 10miles. First km on 3:39 and finishing off with 3:51/km. This is the fitter I have ever been. I won the race afterwards of course. I probably was not able to complete a 20 x 400m on 1:10, nor I would have held up against someone speedy in a 1500m in race surge or a 200m finish line sprint. I was however confident in my fat burning ability, economy and high end endurance, so just set a high pace from the 1st km.

When you are economic, you need less fuel, less water and less salt. You loose less stuff and your blood sugar, therefor motivation if more stable.

Where I am going with this, that a progressively faster, very regular sub-max effort can also be key to faster speeds, even if you had longer training runs for shorter race efforts. The advantage of this, is that on these "180-age" MAF heart rates, form brakes down very negligibly if our body was strengthened by some mobility and resistance  training in addition to running.

So what I would say, that the more you can run with perfect running form, the better runner you can become, no matter what distance we talk about. 400m to 100miles. Under 400, of course you need running form to be competitive, but explosiveness, power and genetics play as important role and due to the shortness of the event, despite the enormous generated power, people can get away with bad form.

Either ways, at the end, we come back to the same sentence, regardless what mileage you run. The more you can run on a submax effort with a perfect form for the longest period, the better and faster runner you become especially endurance wise.

But how to monitor this ? One is heart rate and pace for performance, the other is biomechanical markers for form/health. There are many devices out there with a lot of gadget and useful tech integrated into them. Lumorun is a bit different. They are somewhat like Altra, Vivobarefoot and Inov 8 in the running shoe world. Educational and coaching articles, runners blogs and health news are integrated into the website. The instant or post workout software/app feedback also proposes for instance post and pre workout exercises and athletic schooling practices.  

So this is why when you tell people you were training on the track for 3hours, they just look at you as crazy. I mean, they think that you did 30minutes of jogging, a 2h15min run and 15minute cool down. No ! What you were doing is a bit of barefoot joggin' with skipping rope drills, educative athletic drills, dynamic stretching and muscular activation strength routines. Then you put on your Lumorun, do your 5x 400s, get the feedback. Use some drills and mobility exercises to loosen up your hips, activate your gluts and increase your cadence and you go for the second 5 x 400. You might have to adjust your pace/heart rate, cause that might be the problem with your running form, not necessarily your flexibility or mobility.

You don't have to wait for long till I get deep with it. It is coming soon, on the blog, but on youtube too.