Foot Strike

Fred Klinge of RunFreddieRun.com had a great article about foot strike. His post is short and sweet with a lot of useful info! In the article, he referred to lower heel offset running shoes. This is also known as low drop shoes. I previously used running shoes with 12 mm drop and I had a high tendency to heel strike during my runs. After working hard on improving my running form plus switching to 4 mm drop shoes, I still have a light heel strike from time to time. However, I transfer my weight onto a flexed landing leg.

Fred mentioned that having a light heel strike is still ok as long as your landing leg has a little bit of flexion. In my past blog post about running techniques, I mentioned that I try to visualize myself running like Craig "Crowie" Alexander. Videos of Crowie on YouTube show he has a light heel strike, but he also has an excellent running form. In an article I recently read about midfoot and heel striking on RunningInSystems.com, they referred to a light heel strike as a “disguised” midfoot-strike" since its about the importance of having proper running form and not necessarily about midfoot or heel striking.

I'll end this post in the same matter Fred ended his article. "So….run tall, run quick & light, and land with a little bit flexion in your leg. No need to worry about a perfect midfoot strike."

Running Through My Head...

Recently, I was talking with two fellow triathletes separately about running techniques. Both are engineers like me so we tend to geek out on numbers and we tend to dwell on proper techniques. I had started writing this post a while ago but the two conversations helped me get this one done since I only needed to do some minor tweaks. After several of my morning runs, I would add notes of what was going through my head during the run. I do self-checks as I'm running on the items discussed below; that is, if I don't "zone out".

Side note: Anyone that runs with me knows how easily I tend to zone out! I usually don't hear or feel a thing since my mind is floating somewhere out in space - a runner's high I suppose. Perfect example: during a run on the neutral ground along St. Charles Avenue here in New Orleans, I was running head-on towards a street car that I did not even hear or see! Yes, I was playing chicken with the street car! The street car had to stop and wait for me to get out of the way. My run group had been yelling at me probably 4 or 5 times to get out of the way! As I moved out of the way, I waved to the driver who did NOT have a smile on his face! :) I tend to zone out a lot on the run and long bike rides so I'm always wearing my RoadID, "It's who I am"! For those of you not from New Orleans, the neutral ground is simply a median. 

The list below is how I understand things and I applied them to my running. The list is not in any order of importance because, to me, they are all important! Hopefully, all of the info is 100% correct. I'm not an expert by any means so just go do web searches or even go look up YouTube videos to get info from people far smarter than me!