It was a fun filled morning, talking about my pet subjects of running injuries, and how to prevent running injuries (i know, i need to get out more!)….. the morning culminated in me taking 10-15 people on a training run in Green Park. It was quite exciting running past where the finish line of the Virgin London Marathon 2012 will be, as we ran along the Mall…

They still have places left, so if you’re interested in running London this year, but havent chosen a charity and didnt get a ballot place, then do have a chat with them…. theyre a great bunch of people, very friendly and supportive to their runners…..

www.anthonynolan.org.uk

what a lovely race it was…. flat, beautiful city, perfect warm temperature (although many did complain it was too hot, I guess I’m solar powered!) and fairly well organised… I say fairly well, as I had only two gripes:

Gripe #1 not enough toilets! I know this is the case in so many marathons, but the lack of provision was noticeable… if it weren’t for a friendly clump of trees near the start I would have been caught out badly on the course….

Gripe #2 a 20 minute wait at the finish to collect our medals, and all of us were suffering!

on a POSITIVE note (and getting to the point!), my finish time was 3:50 which was respectable considering I only did one long run of 20 miles, and even that was with a break of half an hour after ten miles due to the fact I fell over on vauxhall bridge! With proper training I only normally do 15 minutes faster, so why did I do ok despite lack of training?

By sticking to a schedule there are three possible outcomes…..

either…. the schedule is perfect for you, you train beautifully and run a great race…

or…. the schedule is too intense for you and you get injured 6-8 weeks before the race…

or….. the schedule is too long and you peak too early (normally 4-5 weeks before the race) and so even despite a taper you end up on the start line too tired…..

the fact that 6 weeks before the marathon i normally feel in perfect form for running the race makes me think that my normal marathon training schedule must be too long for me, making me peak too early and be on suboptimal form on the day….

so the moral of the story is….. the trick to a good strong marathon is not to go hell bent on a massively punishing schedule but to time your training so you peak on marathon day, not a moment sooner….

This is never more true than in runners. A slight asymmetry in function will create a difference in stride length on one side compared with the other. Over many thousand strides this could cause some damage to the body, or at least create a strain pattern that results in injury.

This is why i think that we should all have a day in the week when every single thing we do is the mirror image of normal. Let me give an example…. if you sit on the right hand side of the sofa at night watching TV, sit on the other side of the sofa for one night in exactly a mirror image position. If you pick up a kettle with your right hand normally, pick it up with your left. and so on and so forth.

By doing this you will be gradually helping to unwind your asymmetrical pattern, and equalise your stride lengths, reducing the likelihood of injury. Just one day a week is enough to make a difference. Itll be hard to begin with, but will become easier with time.

Now, you would expect someone like him to run faster, no? Well, he would probably run it a lot faster if he wasnt going to be running the whole course BACKWARDS! Yes, he will be the second person in London Marathon history to run backwards all along the course, and he’ll probably be the fastest.

His name is Karl Twomey, and you can follow him on www.backwards4cancer.com, and if you’re feeling like it, you can donate through the site too! What an amazing achievement. Most of us mere mortals struggle to get over the line using the ‘old style’ conventional forward running (oh, so last season!).

So i got to thinking what the potential benefits and drawbacks of backwards running are, and so i did a little bit of research into it, which i have outlined here……..

Backward running is also known as Retro Running. Delve only a little and you enter this whole subculture of runners who only ever run backwards! It is a worldwide sport, and here are a couple of websites that are dedicated to the ‘sport’.

http://reverserunning.com/default.aspx - uk site

http://www.retrorunning.org/ – German site

http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~btbates/backward/backward1.htm – PhD study on retrorunning

It stands to reason that running forwards is only a part of what the body can achieve, and in many sports, such as football, rugby, hockey, we run in all directions. So in a way running only forward, without using our bodies for any other movement could be seen as detrimental to our system by the inevitable imbalances that will occur in our muscles and joints from moving purely unidirectionally.

So one of the benefits of retrorunning is the completely opposite stresses that go through the body tissues, that helps to balance out the strain and stresses of forward only motion. That applies as much to the muscles and the ligaments of the body as it does to the joints.

Drawbacks seem to be mainly the risk of falling and not knowing how to land. And for beginners, i guess the problem of picking up running injuries from the lack of proper form initially.

I would say try it out. It’s a lot of fun to do as a part of your normal training, perhaps 5 minutes out of each run would be good for the muscles and joints. It cant hurt (well i guess it can if you trip over a tree root!).

If anyone is already a retrorunner, or if you have been inspired to give it a go, do let me know how you get on!

It works in a similar way to the foam roller, (another indispensable tool in the runners toolkit) by rolling over the muscles with a certain amount of pressure, to warm them up, improve circulation, assist drainage of lactic acid and other ‘waste products’, and to iron out those nasty painful knots that build up in a lot of the muscles used for running.

Unlike the foam roller, however, the rolling pin can be used without having to dive onto the floor, which can be difficult if you feel the need to massage a muscle while you’re at work! It is also much more portable, although i have never tried to get one through customs at the airport on my way to a marathon!

The rolling pin i recommend is one which has a centre which rolls independently of the handles, so that it is easier to roll over the skin.

The pin works best for the hamstrings, quadriceps, calves and the ITB (iliotibial band), muscles which, when tight, contribute a lot to running injuries such as runners knee pain, hip pain, achilles pain in runners, and foot pain in runners.

So the best way to use the rolling pin is to roll up and down the muscle with as much pressure as you feel comfortable with, focussing on the isolated parts of the muscle that are particularly tight (the knots). These respond really well to some good pressure with the rolling pin. Roll each muscle for about a minute.

I’d love to hear about your experiences with the rolling pin, so please do post comments.

Happy rolling!

Gavin

Certain running injuries, the ones that are as a result of a problem with foot mechanics, often require the use of insoles, or orthotics as they are commonly called by podiatrists (foot doctors). This however can be an expensive endeavour, particularly if at the end of the day they dont seem to help you recover (which can occasionally happen, believe me).

In my clinic, we use ‘customisable’ orthotics, which are essentially off the shelf products that we can to a certain degree customise to the requirements of the patient. They are quite cheap.

Sometimes, however, we only want to support the foot temporarily, or we want to just find out whether foot mechanics are indeed the cause of the problem, for this I use sports taping on the foot. I like sports taping for the foot since the way we do it actually supports the foot in a cradling way, much like a hammock supports the body.

Let’s get back to the runner with the cuboid dysfunction. He came to me with knee pain and a general feeling that one of his legs was, quote, ‘older’ than the other.

All his mechanics were fine, apart from having a cuboid dysfunction. I treated him with manipulation to get the cuboid back into its rightful position, then taping to support the cuboid, and to prevent excessive pronation.

He is currently running pain free. We will keep taping his foot for a couple of weeks, and then gradually reduce the amount that we use it. After that, and this is the important bit, he shouldnt need any more support than his normal running shoes.

If the problem kept on returning then he would probably be a candidate for orthotics, but if it is a one-off running injury, then i think the use of long term orthotics would be wasted on him.

I think orthotics are very useful in the right circumstances, but they are a more permanent and expensive fixture, and often we only need a cheap, temporary measure.

happy running!

Anyway, we got onto the subject of improving marathon times. I seem to be gradually chipping my way along to my golden 3.30 dream in small increments, and yet according to race calculators and my 10k time of 42 minutes, i should be achieving a 3.13 marathon time! I know my running form is fine, and biomechanically i am sound, i’m not a heavy guy, i eat nutritious food (most of the time!), and i train according to the plans, but i’m only shaving a minute or two off my Personal Best each time i run a marathon.

Simon asked me a very pertinent question, which seems to have unlocked the door to my time issues – ‘do you start off quickly and then slow down?’. My answer was no, i basically just start at the pace that i finish at.

I fantasise that i will get to 20 miles and then step up a gear to finish with a record time. But instead I stick rigidly to the target pace during the race, being too scared to up the ante at 20-22 miles.

It’s purely fear and apprehension.

So because i dont trust my fitness, and probably because i have run a couple of races where i have completely burned out, i no longer have the faith that i can achieve what i deep down know that i really can achieve.

So without going down the road of endless psychotherapy, i know that somehow i need to break the pattern of fear that has set itself into my psyche.

any ideas?……..

Beautifully organised, except perhaps for the bag drop which was a bit slow, and almost cost me a place at the start. It starts and ends in the Amsterdam Olympic stadium, a beautiful spot in the south west of the city.

The sun was out, the air was cool and still. The race began to the music of Chariots of Fire. Cheesy, but timeless, and there was hardly a dry eye in the house! Sometimes cheesy is appropriate!

The course was flat. The route was through parks, along rivers and canals, and around a windmill (or was it two?). Very pretty. Music was everywhere, but completely unobtrusive.

I managed through in a comfortable 3.48, which is a personal best by a minute, and consideringmy previous PB was in Florence the first 3 miles of which was downhill, I think i did pretty well, although i’ll never get a medal for anything other than participating!

I’ve got a place in London in 2011, but thinking of deferring a year, since it will be 2012 the year after! and also because i have a place in the edinburgh marathon in may, and i’m not running two marathons so close to each other!

All in all, I would give the Amsterdam marathon the following points:

Course 9/10

Atmosphere 8/10

Organisation 7/10

Would love to hear your experiences!

A camber is ‘a convexity in a road surface’, i.e. the centre of the road is higher than the sides. Lots of runners always run on one particular side of the road. This means that one leg will be hitting the road higher than the other. Over time this could lead to imbalances in the muscles of the foot, leg and pelvis, even leading to one leg being functionally shorter than the other. This can be the source of a whole host of running injuries, including ITB syndrome, plantar fasciitis, runners knee, hip and back pain.

So, as a rule of thumb it is best to vary the camber you are running on. This also relates to running on pavements (sidewalks), as they often slope (in the opposite direction to the road camber in many cases, so that water flows into the gutter).

sweet running!

Normally, in clinic, when examining a patient, I use the base of a tuning fork on the bone I suspect is fractured (it will be painful if  a fracture is present!), but you can also set your mobile phone to vibrate and rest it on the suspected bone to check yourself. If the vibration is painful to you, then you may have a stress fracture and should stop running, and seek advice!