Sunday morning coffee and chat

Sunday, September 08, 2013 · Mike Davis

Good morning and thanks for joining me for coffee! Moving into the second week of September means it is "Reach the Beach" time! This Friday our team (No Finish Line Running) will set out for our 200 mile plus relay at 10:00. For me personally running isn't the hard part but the all nighter can be a challenge. To start with I am definitely not a night person so once we get past 11:00 I am beyond my comfort zone (my wife would say 9:30). The thought of 26 hours without sleep always keeps me less than excited but once we get going I am usually okay. This year will be different in that I will not be in the same van as my wife and I have different legs as well. We have lost a runner in our van so we may have to each do an additional leg if we don't find a runner. Should be a good time! Do you own a foam roller? If you can picture bundles of straw all lined up perfectly vertical and not crossing each other, you will have an image of your soft tissue that is wrapped around all your muscles and other extremities. Now go out and run 3 to 4 miles and that perfect alignment is now imperfect. Those aligned straws are now somewhat disorientated, crossed and disheveled, and that tightness, tenderness or some cases pain you feel is the result of those straws being bandied about. Now you have some level of scar tissue. One option is to rest for 8 to 10 days and the tissue (straw) may align itself back into its original state and you can run again. I have designed well over 500 running plans and I have yet to do one that has someone running every 10 days so I'm not sure that's an option for most runners. Another option would be to hire a deep tissue massage therapist to work out the tissue after every run but that could be a bit costly. Stretching is another option but while that's helpful in aligning the tissue it falls short of correcting all the scar tissue. Most runners use the stretching option with some level of success but unless they can cover all affected tissue (unlikely), some scaring gets progressively worse after each run. This brings us to the foam roller. This option is probably the closest to hiring a professional massage therapist in that the foam rollers is able to get deep into the tissue and work out the miss-aligned straw by rolling all those areas of your body affected by running. Foam rolling can be painful as heck but that only means that you are finding that scar tissue that needs manipulating so don't move away from the pain. Even if you don't feel any tightness, foam rolling will insure good tissue alignment is maintained and smoother running. That tightness often felt during your initial mile can be averted with regular foam rolling as well. A foam roller should sit right next to your toothbrush and be used just as often. Running free of tightness is what we all strive for and our best tool is the foam rollers. The best two investments a runner can make are good running shoes and a foam roller. Use both often and running will be more enjoyable and even easier. The week ahead at NFLR will bring some information on our running muscles and how they affect our running gait so be sure to check back on the website! Today is Sunday so that means that our bi-weekly NFLR Newsletter is on the street. If you haven't signed up to receive it, don't miss out on a great runners tool! Coming to our next newsletter we will be offering a coupon for a discount at Runners Alley so get signed up for the NFLR newsletter now! Finally we have NFLR running shirts that will hit the streets next week so watch for them! Have a great week and thanks for sharing your coffee time with me. Mike