Trail Running

Wednesday, April 30, 2014 · Mike Davis

Good morning! Fill up a cup with some good strong coffee and pull up a chair. So far the week has been a grand success for me and my running. Monday Kathy and I ran 5 plus miles on trails and last night ran a short distance with the 10K training group. The good news is that my calf felt fine during both runs and my goal of 4 runs this week looks promising. As I have mentioned; patients and intelligence are required when dealing with an injury. Attributes that are not always easy for runners to adhere too! As I mentioned, Kathy and I went for a trail run on the Isinglass River trails on Monday. Beyond the enjoyment of running a trail, we also got to avoid the strong winds that take the fun out of running on the road. A few years back I read a few articles that discussed the causes of more serious running injuries and one of the prevalent thoughts was the idea that repeated collisions on the same surface will eventually cause mechanical failure. Okay, those are my words and put in running language it would sound more like this: Running on the same surface over and over will eventually lead to overuse injuries. Sounds simple enough, we run miles upon miles on the pavement and eventually the shock of the pounding moves up the foot to the hip and we start to feel tightness around the hip socket that eventually turns to a harsher pain. Typically we try to fix it ourselves and when that doesn't work we finally have a professional look at it and we learn that we have an injury that was most likely not caused by one incident, but instead repeated incidences. Running is bad right! Thankfully running isn't bad or this would be my last running blog and I would be closing up my business. Instead we will continue to work with runners of every level and guide them to running smart and healthy. The idea that we pound the pavement over and over is obviously not good so at NFLR we are going to get back to something I actually use to include in our runners training plans but for some reason got away from. From here on out we will include at least one change of surface run each week on our runners training plans. Trails are lots of fun and are a great variation from the typical road running, but also offer some relief from the muscular redundancy. Using those same muscles repeatedly even with the best running gait will eventually catch up with us, so moving to another surface that changes our muscular usage only makes sense. Trails are the perfect alternative as we most certainly change our muscle focus from impact to multiple variations thus lessoning the redundant pounding and motion. To encourage those in the local area we are going to start scheduling group trail runs around the Portsmouth, Dover and Rochester area. Beginning next Thursday we will be meeting at a determined location and run some of the local trails. So set aside May 10th and come join us for a trail run that can be whatever distance you choose. We will put out more details early in the week, but set the night aside for some great fun and safe running. Leave a comment if you are interested. Time to go work out! Have a great day and thanks for having coffee with me! Mike