What do your arms have to do with running?
Here’s a fun experiment. Stand tall, place your hands on the outside of your thighs so your arms can’t move, and run.
How did that feel? A little wobbly and unbalanced, perhaps?
3 posture focuses to help your running feel easier
Runners choose to work with me for a host of different reasons. Maybe they struggle with injury. Maybe they find running a slog and want to enjoy it more. But one reason that comes up again and again is that they want better posture when they run. Perhaps they’ve been told by their physio that it’s something they need to work on. Or they may just have a sense that it’s not as good as they’d like. So the question is: how important is posture when you run? And if it matters, how can you improve it?
When things don’t go to plan
It was all going so well…. Until it wasn’t.
I’d bagged my first ever good-for-age place in April’s London Marathon. Training was going as smoothly as tempered chocolate. My body seemed able to handle everything I threw at it: capoeira classes, kettlebell workouts, and a higher weekly mileage than I’d ever managed.
I was feeling strong. What could possibly go wrong?
6 ways to have a more enjoyable marathon
Finding speed at 55
6 ways to re-discover your running mojo
It can happen to any of us. You fall out of love with running. You find yourself just going through the motions. It all feels a bit ‘meh.’
Perhaps you’ve been dealing with an injury. Or you’ve had to start over again after a break. Whatever the reason, running’s become a chore.
Or maybe you never felt the love in the first place. You’re struggling to even get out the door.
Should you tighten your core while running?
5 unexpected ways to make running feel easier
The hardest part about doing a marathon is always the training. Carving out the time for the long run; spending hours out on your feet, maybe on your own; keeping motivated through the cold, dark winter or hot, sticky summer. At heart, I’m a lazy runner, and always looking for ways to work less hard. Here are five ways that I’ve found to make my training feel just that little bit easier.
In praise of pronation
Our feet are amazing. Every time we take a step, they have to do a dance between absorbing the shock of our body weight hitting the ground as we land, and providing a firm, stable base from which we can push off into the next step. So, somewhere in our evolutionary history, we came up with an incredibly clever design. And it involves two things that have become somewhat dirty words in running circles: pronation and supination.
Why I run
In 2020, I passed a small personal milestone: a decade running ‘Chi’. Next year, I’ll be 30 years a runner.
Why do I run? It’s a good question to ask yourself. Knowing your ‘why?’ can help get you out the door when the mojo’s flagging.
I began running because of a big, hairy goal: to complete the London Marathon. I’d dabbled in jogging before, but it never stuck. A vision of crossing the finish line at 26.2 miles got me through those tough early weeks, when it all just felt so hard.