Today's big discovery is about downhill running in barefoot shoes. I mentioned after my last run that I was struggling to run downhill. And today I ended with a steep descent back to our house, during which I noticed a few things.
My general understanding of running downhill is that you have two options:
- You can let gravity take you, thus accelerating far beyond your normal flat speed. You'll actually continue to accelerate for a while as you progress downhill, until you level out at a fairly fast pace. By doing this, and keeping your body perpendicular to the ground, you maintain your form and run most efficiently.
- You can brake, all the way. You do this by jamming your heels into the ground with each stride, deliberately losing momentum, countering the effects of gravity. It feels good for a while when you've just run up hill, but is actually quite hard work to maintain.
But with these barefoot shoes, there is a problem. Braking on your heels is not really an option, for obvious reasons. There is not cushioning whatsoever. You'd quickly damage your heels by jamming them into the ground with every stride. But option 1 is also somewhat problematic. Certainly, you can lean forward, give in to gravity, and hurtle downhill. But how do you stop? There's only really one way to brake on a hill - to dig your heels into the ground. Which you can't do in barefoot shoes. You see the problem.
The result? For me at least, it is to try to brake with the front of my feet. Jamming my forefoot into my shoe with every stride, resulting in blisters by the bottom of the hill. This clearly isn't the best way and I need to figure something out.
The answer? I don't really know. My mother-in-law suggested run-off lanes like they have for lorries on descents. I suppose I could use neighbours' driveways to similar effect. That's probably the answer
Meanwhile, we had a big treat today. A few months ago I secured tickets for the Anniversary Games at the Olympic Stadium. We didn't manage to get stadium tickets for the Games themselves (beach volleyball instead, which was really quite disappointing) so I was very pleased to get in there in the hour or so that it took for the event to sell out.I also kept it as a suprise for Rhiannon. I was determined she wouldn't guess what we were going to until the last possible moment. So I listened to the same CD three times in the car on the way down (we don't have many in the car) rather than the usual 5Live, because I knew they would be talking about it all day. Once we were on the tube towards Stratford, I was sure she'd twig, given that we were sitting opposite some event volunteers in their bright orange t-shirts, and every person seemed to be reading a copy of the Metro of the Evening Standard with Mo Farah splashed across the front. But somehow, beautifully, she remained oblivious. It was only when we stepped off the tube to a big sign saying "Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park" that she started to suspect we might be going to athletics.
And what a night. We pretended this was our Olympics. We whooped and hollered when Usain Bolt was paraded round the stadium on top of a giant B-movie rocket car. We cheered ourselves hoarse when the British ladies won the 4x100m, even though we couldn't really tell who was winning from our side of the stadium. We hid behind the people in front when the cameraman pointed straight at us during the 'if the camera chooses you, do something silly and you could win 250,000 Nectar Points game'*. And we beamed with pride as Perri Shakes Drayton** smashed her PB. Oh, and we also became big fans of women's pole vault. It's surprising how often they actually go under the bar.
* With hindsight, we should have ignored our inhibitions and embraced that rather lucrative opportunity.
** I read in an article today that she calls herself 'the PSD' at times. That's quite cool. I sometimes call myself JP, but never considered adding the definite article to it.
Sassy!
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