After a day with close call on panic attacks on the commuter train, I couldn't wait to get back home and treat myself to a run. Of course, by the time I had wolfed down some food, it was dark outside, and the rain that hadn't let up all day just kept on pouring down.
So naturally, I dug out a pair of old linen trousers, a t-shirt and my sandals, strapped on the backpack (well, I haven't got anything better to keep keys and water bottle in) and set out.
I set a timer for ten minutes, deciding that I ought to turn back after about this time. I want to go a bit easy this early on, since even though I never seem to run out of breath (it's incredible, really, but I just don't), I want to ease my body into this gently. After only about five minutes, my right lower leg started feeling stiff, and it didn't ease even after a few ten-metre walks in between running, but I am attributing this to being unused to running, and also, most of it being on asphalt. I'm out of luck there, especially when it comes to being after dark. I daren't go wherever I wish where I currently live, even though it's a reasonably quiet area (or so I suppose) and I am well able to defend myself - I do not wish to take unecessary risks.
After ten minutes, apart from the leg, I felt as if I could go on forever. But I kept my own wild instincts in check, and I think all in all I was running for about 25 minutes. I was a little worried about my right knee, as it started feeling suspiciously stiff, but it feels all right now, after some stretching.
Getting back, I had plenty of energy to spare and wasn't too hot, thanks to the rain, so I did a few crunches and other easy exercises, before a shower.
I ate much the same as yesterday - bowl of yoghurt, bowl of salad with lots of nifty stuff in it - and also a bowl of pasta with a sauce to it, made of tomato sauce, chickpeas, red lenses and possibly something more. I'm going to have some hardbread, I think, with cheese on it, for an after-training snack.
Friday, 31 August 2012
Thursday, 30 August 2012
Late August run
Like I said in the first post, the book "Born to Run" certainly did wake me up. But it's not gospel, and to each their own - remember that! For me, it was easy to change my running style, and something I was able to do in about a week, but that was mainly because I didn't really have one! And the muscles I had developed from my iaido martial arts practice coincided very neatly with being much of what I needed to run "barefoot", or, on the balls of my feet rather than the heels. So before you go and run barefoot on asphalt for many kilometres, read the book, think about it a little, and use your old sneakers instead. They'll be formed after your feet well enough. If you want to go with Vibram Five-Fingers, go ahead, but be prepared they require a different set of muscles than ordinary running.
With that said...
Today, around dinnertime, I realised I needed groceries. I'm a bit of a recluse, and I was supposed to meet a friend today, but the thought of going there by public transport for two hours one way, in rush hour, paralysed me, so I had to give that up. Instead, I dug out old but serviceable shorts and a t-shirt, and strapped on sandals and a backpack, and set out.
The way there is mostly asphalt, but I took a detour through a small area of trees with a nature trail up and down a hill. It is clear my fitness is not on top, but I didn't stop and walk. It's probably merely a kilometre or two to the store. After shopping, I took a detour back, with a nice slow uphill climb for the last part. Again, it was no more than a few kilometres, so when I arrived back home I put the yoghurt in the fridge and set out into the woods behind the house. They are, let me tell you, not well-trod. It is a great pity, but I shan't be able to run there very much, which strands me with a fairly drab set of asphalt road for beginning and end to every run.
Regardless, when I got back from my jaunt in the forest (it was fun dodging nettles and fallen trees) I felt I had energy to spare, and was high as a kite on the joy of running.
I have also done three sets of crunches, 12 times each of straight and double-side, three sets of varying back-lifts (twenty or so repetitions every time), shoulder excercises with a red rubber band (three sets of every excercise, one-sided and double-sided after eachother), iai goshi ups and downs (standing in iai goshi and going up and down, with the front knee in static position above the heel), some cuts with my iaito (about a hundred I'd say, slow and faster), core excercises (standing with straight body on toes and bent arms, I have no idea what the name is in English) and so on.
I had set the timer at twenty minutes, to encourage myself that it really wasn't a lot of time to waste, just twenty minutes, hardly anything really! I may have gone on for five or ten minutes more, because it felt good. I did a little stretching, but far too little.
Eating today has been:
a bowl of yoghurt with various nuts, puffed unsweetened rice, half an apple, dried cranberries, crushed linseeds and pumpkin seeds
dark rye (?) bread with cream cheese and sausage
tea <3 (black, one cup in the morning, and then herbal teas - I know what caffeine late in the day does to me...)
bowl of salad with one mushroom, one tomato, Gouda cheese, mozzarella cheese, cashew nuts
Painkillers used:
none, yay!
With that said...
Today, around dinnertime, I realised I needed groceries. I'm a bit of a recluse, and I was supposed to meet a friend today, but the thought of going there by public transport for two hours one way, in rush hour, paralysed me, so I had to give that up. Instead, I dug out old but serviceable shorts and a t-shirt, and strapped on sandals and a backpack, and set out.
The way there is mostly asphalt, but I took a detour through a small area of trees with a nature trail up and down a hill. It is clear my fitness is not on top, but I didn't stop and walk. It's probably merely a kilometre or two to the store. After shopping, I took a detour back, with a nice slow uphill climb for the last part. Again, it was no more than a few kilometres, so when I arrived back home I put the yoghurt in the fridge and set out into the woods behind the house. They are, let me tell you, not well-trod. It is a great pity, but I shan't be able to run there very much, which strands me with a fairly drab set of asphalt road for beginning and end to every run.
Regardless, when I got back from my jaunt in the forest (it was fun dodging nettles and fallen trees) I felt I had energy to spare, and was high as a kite on the joy of running.
I have also done three sets of crunches, 12 times each of straight and double-side, three sets of varying back-lifts (twenty or so repetitions every time), shoulder excercises with a red rubber band (three sets of every excercise, one-sided and double-sided after eachother), iai goshi ups and downs (standing in iai goshi and going up and down, with the front knee in static position above the heel), some cuts with my iaito (about a hundred I'd say, slow and faster), core excercises (standing with straight body on toes and bent arms, I have no idea what the name is in English) and so on.
I had set the timer at twenty minutes, to encourage myself that it really wasn't a lot of time to waste, just twenty minutes, hardly anything really! I may have gone on for five or ten minutes more, because it felt good. I did a little stretching, but far too little.
Eating today has been:
a bowl of yoghurt with various nuts, puffed unsweetened rice, half an apple, dried cranberries, crushed linseeds and pumpkin seeds
dark rye (?) bread with cream cheese and sausage
tea <3 (black, one cup in the morning, and then herbal teas - I know what caffeine late in the day does to me...)
bowl of salad with one mushroom, one tomato, Gouda cheese, mozzarella cheese, cashew nuts
Painkillers used:
none, yay!
First post
Snappy title, eh!
This is a blog that popped into my head during a jaunt in a rather snaggy forest with few clear paths, after I had ran to get some groceries, taken a detour to get home for the sheer joy of running and then didn't even stop to put the yoghurt in the fridge before deciding that what the hell, that forest behind the house, how bad could it be?
It turns out I am out of luck with easily traversable forests nearby, but that's merely a minor setback.
You see, what is at the moment of writing seventeen years ago, I started having constant pain in my knees. Bad pain, at that, rendering every step and indeed every moment even sitting down, a torture. I was told it was merely growing pains, but didn't really buy into it. X-rays and catscans were done, people looked at it and poked at it, but no clear diagnosis could be given. Many years after the catscan, a reumathologist told me I had "joint pains", which I still consider a waste of many SEK, since I had been telling them that all along.
In any case...
Living with pain became second nature. I resigned to using only the softest, most padded sneakers, never walking or standing for more than two hours in a row, and being utterly unable to run, at all. Pay attention to that statement. I was in my teens when I gave up on running - skiing was fine, that didn't hurt, but running? Some investigations showed that I had no cartilage around and under the kneecaps. Imagine that - it's bone grinding against bone for me, no padding at all.
Around ten years after it all started, I began practicing iaido, which is a martial art from Japan. It trains the mind as well as the body, and at that, the entire body. Cutting is merely an afterthought if you look at what the rest of the body has to do! Explosive strength and static strength are both developed as a side-effect from learning to handle a katana, whether a sharp one (shinken) or not (mogito or iaito). I couldn't do the sitting kata (forms), until about two years after I had started, and that was after buying incredibly expensive knee pads - but oh what a good thing that was! Suddenly, I started building muscles around the knees. The excercises I had been given previously were probably good, but my will to do them always petered out eventually, but here, oh, here it came as a side effect of something fun! I had to start slow, but my strength grew, and some years later I realised - wait, there was no pain in my knees! I could go for almost a whole day without pain! I still had to be careful, though, and running still seemed to be out of the question.
Fast-forward even more, to when I had been doing koryu (old-style iaido) for quite a while, and realised I was fit as a... well, I was practicing at elite level. It was a thrill to be able to run when I was late for buses and the like, even if it was only a short distance. Sure, my shoulder had by this time been bothering me for a while (no, it never ends - there's always something new!), but oh, the knees! I could walk and stand and work!
And I started to sometimes join in the warm-up running during practice. Now, in iaido, we wear keikogi consisting of hakama, obi and what is known in the West as "gi" - that is, jacket. Our feet are bare. Therefore, we teach our beginners to run not heel-to-toe, but to land on the front of their footpads and spring from there. It is a glorious sound, when the thudding gradually stops! And though it did at times still hurt, and I had to be careful, well, at least I could join in. The rest of my posture was fairly straight, a little bent forward, since I was used to running heel first...
And then, a mere week or two before I write this post, I read the wonderful little book "Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen" by Christopher McDougall. Now, I am an academic, at heart and mind and by training, so I seldom read things and accept them unquestionably. But I am also an archaeologist (in Sweden, we make a distinction from the title of anthropologist). And chapter 28 really struck a nerve. Never before have I seen such a plausible explanation as to the evolution of the Homo Erectus becoming Homo Sapiens and Sapiens getting the upper hand over Homo Neanderthal.
So... I thought to myself, why shouldn't I try? A lot of what the book presents makes sense, apart from being an entertaining read.
Ergo:
I had the chance to walk around barefoot a lot this summer. It's an absolute joy, and I love doing it. Jogging on the grass, I found that putting down my foot like I had in iaido practice, like the book described, was far more comfortable.
I strapped on my relatively new, but rather simple, sandals, with a little padding, and set out. Just on random, to see if I could, and I took a backpack since I figured why not take a little walk to the grocery store? I knew I could always take the bus part of the way back.
...and it worked. I focused on making it smooth, and quite soon, the body adjusted itself. Straight back, head high, hands above waist level. My run settled into a gliding fashion rather than up and down-movements, and soon I was grinning widely. I couldn't help it. It was euphoric. So I ran to one store, and then, just for the hell of it, to another, to pick up some other things. And then I ran back, and when I returned, I had run about five kilometres, with a few pauses for walking at a fast pace for altogether about a few hundred metres.
I had run five kilometres. Could it be true? With sandals, hardly no padding, and certainly no insertions. I had floated over the ground, grinning like a madman or just someone insanely happy, and I came back and felt full of life and energy, so I did some other excercises too.
Suddenly, I want to run everywhere. My thick boots doesn't feel comfortable anymore, and I dread the winter.
I went from being hardly able to walk, to being able to run, barefoot or with only thin-soled sandals.
As mr McDougall says, "Instead of hammering down on my heels, the way I’d been taught all my life, I learned to run lightly and gently on the balls of my feet."
My energy for training and practice has been reinvigoriated, so I will record it all here. After half a year of reclusiveness and only occasional practice and training, I feel energised and wanting to treat myself to another run, another few dozens of crunches or back excercises. Come join me - if I can, with all my mental health problems, with a body that is unwilling, then, take inspiration and energy from me, and try you too! Now, I may see everything as being of benefit for my iaido, but you can train even without such an incentive. Just because I need one...
With fleet feet and pointy ears I will run into the future, lightly, happily, like the Tarahumara if you will, and I will do it gladly.
This is a blog that popped into my head during a jaunt in a rather snaggy forest with few clear paths, after I had ran to get some groceries, taken a detour to get home for the sheer joy of running and then didn't even stop to put the yoghurt in the fridge before deciding that what the hell, that forest behind the house, how bad could it be?
It turns out I am out of luck with easily traversable forests nearby, but that's merely a minor setback.
You see, what is at the moment of writing seventeen years ago, I started having constant pain in my knees. Bad pain, at that, rendering every step and indeed every moment even sitting down, a torture. I was told it was merely growing pains, but didn't really buy into it. X-rays and catscans were done, people looked at it and poked at it, but no clear diagnosis could be given. Many years after the catscan, a reumathologist told me I had "joint pains", which I still consider a waste of many SEK, since I had been telling them that all along.
In any case...
Living with pain became second nature. I resigned to using only the softest, most padded sneakers, never walking or standing for more than two hours in a row, and being utterly unable to run, at all. Pay attention to that statement. I was in my teens when I gave up on running - skiing was fine, that didn't hurt, but running? Some investigations showed that I had no cartilage around and under the kneecaps. Imagine that - it's bone grinding against bone for me, no padding at all.
Around ten years after it all started, I began practicing iaido, which is a martial art from Japan. It trains the mind as well as the body, and at that, the entire body. Cutting is merely an afterthought if you look at what the rest of the body has to do! Explosive strength and static strength are both developed as a side-effect from learning to handle a katana, whether a sharp one (shinken) or not (mogito or iaito). I couldn't do the sitting kata (forms), until about two years after I had started, and that was after buying incredibly expensive knee pads - but oh what a good thing that was! Suddenly, I started building muscles around the knees. The excercises I had been given previously were probably good, but my will to do them always petered out eventually, but here, oh, here it came as a side effect of something fun! I had to start slow, but my strength grew, and some years later I realised - wait, there was no pain in my knees! I could go for almost a whole day without pain! I still had to be careful, though, and running still seemed to be out of the question.
Fast-forward even more, to when I had been doing koryu (old-style iaido) for quite a while, and realised I was fit as a... well, I was practicing at elite level. It was a thrill to be able to run when I was late for buses and the like, even if it was only a short distance. Sure, my shoulder had by this time been bothering me for a while (no, it never ends - there's always something new!), but oh, the knees! I could walk and stand and work!
And I started to sometimes join in the warm-up running during practice. Now, in iaido, we wear keikogi consisting of hakama, obi and what is known in the West as "gi" - that is, jacket. Our feet are bare. Therefore, we teach our beginners to run not heel-to-toe, but to land on the front of their footpads and spring from there. It is a glorious sound, when the thudding gradually stops! And though it did at times still hurt, and I had to be careful, well, at least I could join in. The rest of my posture was fairly straight, a little bent forward, since I was used to running heel first...
And then, a mere week or two before I write this post, I read the wonderful little book "Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen" by Christopher McDougall. Now, I am an academic, at heart and mind and by training, so I seldom read things and accept them unquestionably. But I am also an archaeologist (in Sweden, we make a distinction from the title of anthropologist). And chapter 28 really struck a nerve. Never before have I seen such a plausible explanation as to the evolution of the Homo Erectus becoming Homo Sapiens and Sapiens getting the upper hand over Homo Neanderthal.
So... I thought to myself, why shouldn't I try? A lot of what the book presents makes sense, apart from being an entertaining read.
Ergo:
I had the chance to walk around barefoot a lot this summer. It's an absolute joy, and I love doing it. Jogging on the grass, I found that putting down my foot like I had in iaido practice, like the book described, was far more comfortable.
I strapped on my relatively new, but rather simple, sandals, with a little padding, and set out. Just on random, to see if I could, and I took a backpack since I figured why not take a little walk to the grocery store? I knew I could always take the bus part of the way back.
...and it worked. I focused on making it smooth, and quite soon, the body adjusted itself. Straight back, head high, hands above waist level. My run settled into a gliding fashion rather than up and down-movements, and soon I was grinning widely. I couldn't help it. It was euphoric. So I ran to one store, and then, just for the hell of it, to another, to pick up some other things. And then I ran back, and when I returned, I had run about five kilometres, with a few pauses for walking at a fast pace for altogether about a few hundred metres.
I had run five kilometres. Could it be true? With sandals, hardly no padding, and certainly no insertions. I had floated over the ground, grinning like a madman or just someone insanely happy, and I came back and felt full of life and energy, so I did some other excercises too.
Suddenly, I want to run everywhere. My thick boots doesn't feel comfortable anymore, and I dread the winter.
I went from being hardly able to walk, to being able to run, barefoot or with only thin-soled sandals.
As mr McDougall says, "Instead of hammering down on my heels, the way I’d been taught all my life, I learned to run lightly and gently on the balls of my feet."
My energy for training and practice has been reinvigoriated, so I will record it all here. After half a year of reclusiveness and only occasional practice and training, I feel energised and wanting to treat myself to another run, another few dozens of crunches or back excercises. Come join me - if I can, with all my mental health problems, with a body that is unwilling, then, take inspiration and energy from me, and try you too! Now, I may see everything as being of benefit for my iaido, but you can train even without such an incentive. Just because I need one...
With fleet feet and pointy ears I will run into the future, lightly, happily, like the Tarahumara if you will, and I will do it gladly.
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