I was treating a man the other day who is training for the London Marathon 2011. He’s obviously someone who takes care of his fitness, and someone who you would expect would run a fairly quick time. However, when i asked him what sort of time he was looking for he mentioned that somewhere between 4.15 and 4.30 would be do-able.
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!
