People always say, "Running is a one-legged activity", so I say, “explain to me then why the sport is so heavily dominated by two-legged people? Or why running shoes are so often sold in pairs. It's not like you can just pick one”.
It doesn’t make sense.
But, in this instance, I have to admit that I was wrong. Beside the wealth, nay! The shear embarrassment of riches that suggest this is indeed a two-legged activity, I have objectively concluded that, in fact, the left leg clearly contributes nothing. It’s like the back-half of a tandem bike when the front-half isn’t watching, or the humans in a bobsleigh team.
These findings come from an extensive study performed on a diverse range of runners (me) (I didn’t have time to ask anyone else). I understand that this will shake the sport to the very core, but tough truths must be told.
The revelation came from single-leg squatting, or more precisely, from the inability to do the ‘up’ bit of the squat on my left leg. I found there is no strength in there whatsoever, which is hugely imbalanced with the right and raised the question, what has it been doing all this time?
I’ve had several imbalance issues in the past that I blame on two things:
1) My legs are slightly different lengths. Not to a walk-round-in-circles or orthopaedic shoe degree, but enough to have been pointed out to me by physios. I try and explain that it’s because they were salvaged from two different cadavers.
2) Where I live is in a sh…bad state (nearly another pound in the HU swear-box there linda9389 ). The pavements are heavily cambered, and the roads are utterly convex, meaning that running on an even surface is contained to a central spine, as narrow as a ridgeway.
My left hamstring had sneakily coiled-up and locked itself in some kind of rigor-mortis foetal position, like a dead rat. It didn’t even have the common courtesy to let me know it had died either, I had to find out mid-squat, tumbling to the ground shouting, “Up! I said upppp!”
No wonder I’m struggling if one half of me is beating the ground like a war drum and the other is lightly tickling it with a pink feather duster in an endless, cyclic: GrUnT! Neeeeeeheehee. GrUnT! Neeeeeeheehee. GrUnT! Neeeeeeheehee…
I’ve realised that when I bend down, I unconsciously let my left leg bend at the knee to take any stress off the hamstring. When I correct this: instant banjo.
Think me bent double, best side right up in the air. Think twanging banjo. You wouldn’t be human if you didn’t mentally conjure: Deliverance.
I masterminded a pub-brawl like assault on it with targeted stretching, foam rolling, impact guns, and an array of verbal threats. I’ve got to say it’s responded quite well. You need to take a hard line with these things; all the other muscles were watching.
I’ve had a pretty good week all-in-all. I got my first full week of structured training since September in the bag. It was a big jump from my bimbling over the last few weeks and I certainly felt it, but all in the right places.
I completely overdid my Friday strength session though. My first mistake was saying “nope” when my alarm went off at 5am and frisbying my phone out of the bedroom door. I’ve made this mistake before, thinking meh, I can get it done in the evening, but that strips out all recovery time before Saturday morning’s run.
Plus I got bit over-zealous loading up the dumbbells. Another reminder that I’m not there at the moment. I need to scale it right back as my upper body is still full of the DOMS now, on Monday afternoon. As a result, I felt massively fatigued over the weekend, but I’m glad I got it all done.
My focus last week was to keep the easy pace easy, for which I give myself a 6/10. I definitely need to keep plodding away with that, but unfortunately It requires maturity and mental discipline, which aren’t my strongest suits. Give me chaos and winging it any day! I’m very impressed with John_W on this topic. The, er, run management and consistency I mean, not the chaos and winging it. That’s mine.
Saturday mornings are the hardest runs for me in terms of pacing. During the week I’m out and back before the kids are out of bed, but Saturdays I give myself an extra hour-or-so sleep which ends up as being an extra three hours-or-so before I can even get near the front door.
These kids! They wake up and straightaway expect parental nurture. I’m starting to wonder why they bothered inventing TV at all.
When I finally get out, I’m invariably full of sugary breakfast cereal and caffeine; I’m fully awake, rather than semi-comatose as on weekdays, I’m crackling with energy and I’m telling myself to go slow. Pah! Throw into that mix legs that are tighter than tourniquets, as well as more dog walkers than what could feasibly exist on a single planet, plus morning-paper-goer-getters, plus modern day traffic crammed onto archaic village roads that are themselves being dug up like someone’s said “Pssssst! There’s long lost treasure buried somewhere round here. Could be anywhere in a five-mile radius, go nuts!” all of which doesn’t bode well for a nice, controlled light effort.
Then some car tsunami’d me right up to the shoulders with a deep gutter-puddle.
I can’t fully explain what happened without setting up a payment plan with the HealthUnlocked swear-box, but I shouted words I didn’t even think I knew, and I'm a pretty fluent swearer. I felt momentarily guilty when the little old lady up the road made eye contact with me, but she confirmed that he was a complete and utter w____.
Anyway, this week looks like this:
Monday
Rest. (Well needed!)
Tuesday
Intervals: 1mi warm-up, then 3x 1mi / 300m, 1mi cooldown.
Recovery on exercise bike plus mobility-focussed strength session
Wednesday
5mi (8km) at easy pace
Thursday
5mi consisting of 1mi warm-up, 3mi marathon pace, 1mi cooldown
Recovery on exercise bike
Friday
(Morning!) Strength session
Recovery on exercise bike
Saturday
5km easy run
Sunday
10mi to feel
The week after, I’ll probably scale it back for a bit more recovery, but we’ll feel it all out.
Happy running everyone! Very sad to hear about Kelvin Kiptum. We should all run sub-2 marathons this weekend in his honour.
That’ll do 😊☔️
