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[Terry Tibbs]

Absolutely. I was out for an hour yesterday and didn't notice anything. Just a gentle 30 mins planned for today.

Thanks for thr info Charles. I was wondering if/when/how I should start making the transition. I'm not fully convinced yet, but I know people who are. They claim it's pretty tough on your legs to begin with but more beneficial, i.e less risk of injury, once you become accustomed.

My offroad shoes are fairly minimal, and I certainly feel the difference after using them. But, since I'm generally going up and down hills over rougher terrain, it's difficult to tell if it's the shoes or the terrain behind the extra aching the next day - especially as I don't often go offroad.

I also know one person who practices forefoot running but in 'normal' shoes. Again, he said it killed the first few times. He probably ran too far.

I must admit I'm reluctant to change from mid to fore. Basically, if it ain't broke...etc. But perhaps I'm missing out.

[charlesr]

Best not to worry about the exact foot placement too much. The faster you go, the more naturally you will want to land further forwards. If you do experiment with PLACING the forefoot down first, you should gently lower your heel down afterwards before LIFTING the leg off the ground again (using GLUTES). Ignoring the heel tap is bad - only sprinters can run their entire race on the balls of their feet. I saw someone doing the entire Portsmouth marathon on the balls of her feet That way the achilles never reaches full stretch so when you eventually lose form and do put the heel down, you achilles won't be prepared and injury follows. But even if you are midfoot, you should still concentrate on placing and lifting. This is only possible if you are landing under your hips. If you landing out in front of you, you will be PULLING with the hamstring and PUSHING with the quads too much.

If all of this makes no sense, take your shoes off and find somewhere suitable (grassy park, smooth road) and while running along see what you can do to stop your head bobbing up and down - look at stuff about 25? to either side of you, e.g. fencing and check out the parallax (stuff behind the fence) and reduce the amount they differ.

Here's a random video I found on youtube. He lands midfoot like you. https://www.youtube.com/watch?featur...RLT2PCHk#t=167
His head bobs by no more than an inch or so. Look at his feet when the camera angle turns to follow him - they just flash down to the ground and straight back up again. His body is STRAIGHT, leaning forwards from the ankle (not the waist), shoulders relaxed, arms pumping hard. I'd say he could relax his arms more - they are very bent at the elbow, but it's the least important thing!

Then watch him again: watch his knees - they NEVER go straight. Even at their most straight, they are still significantly bent, and his feet come up high behind him, so from quite bent to very bent.

Once you have developed the best method of moving your legs, you will find the foot placement that works best for you. By all means, experiment with forefoot (remember to heel tap afterwards - yes even in barefeet!), but to start with, warm up normally and then try 100m at jogging pace, no more. Preferably with shoes off. The next morning see how your calves feel. If more sore than normal, do not repeat until a morning where they feel OK. Try another 100m. Once it doesn't hurt the next day, try moving up to 200. Any longer than this and you might need to put your shoes back on unless you are being super soft - risk of bruising if your form is off. After a couple of weeks, you might make it up to 500m safely. When you get to 1km, do not go any further for a few weeks - in my experience, it takes a long time to progress beyond this sort of distance. An attempt at 2km could suddenly ruin your calves. If there is any calf pain during a run, stop immediately and walk - don't be a hero - as keep-fit-people, our pain threshold is high and it's easy to ignore the signs. So, 2 years down the line, and I can run a marathon forefoot style without pain in adios boost, but I'm still finding calf pain on fast runs in my fivefingers (and my new Xero shoes), so still a long way to go to reverse 30 years of poor running form. Today, I do nothing because they feel a bit tight. My final gift to you: http://www.examiner.com/article/inju...-runners-video Do these every day.

Hope that helps. Sorry if I rambled a bit.

I went for a trail run with the local running club last night. I say with, but I really mean whizzing past... Anyway, someone mentioned a mouthful of saharan sand, but I didn't notice at all Something I specifically wanted to practice was running downhill. I shortened my stride to the extreme and leaned forwards down the hill in the same way you would on the flat and tried to land minimum midfoot and as much as poss on forefoot with a heel tap and controlled my speed by shortening the stride instead of leaning upright / back. The last time I ran in my FiveFingers, I noticed me hitting my heel down on downhills (due to leaning back to control speed), but this time it was much better, with no heel strikes, a MUCH faster descent and feeling in full control (well, most of the time!!!). There aren't any hills near my house, so for the last couple of years, I've missing out on developing this skill.

[Terry Tibbs]

Woah, so much great info there. Thanks Charles! I think I'm going to remain midfoot for now (especially don't want to change anything 3 weeks prior to my next race). But I'm definitely going to experiment with controlling the amount of bob, and form in general. And I'll use those vids to guide me. I must admit, I had done a little experiment a few weeks back where I deliberately kept totally level. In a weird way it felt a bit easier, but I didn't try it for long, and wasn't thinking about other factors at all.

Like I mentioned before, I've managed to escape serious injury (so far), in a year and a bit of regular running. Hence my instinct to just keep doing whatever comes naturally. But I'm also willing to accept you can develpp bad habits that can feel natural if you do them long enough. A guy I work with was telling me today that the order of muscle firing is very important in running, and that sometimes relatively experienced runners can benefit from learning how to run from scratch.

I might just pay a professional for a few sessions watching me run and giving tips. Depends what they charge. :-)

[Terry Tibbs]

12 x 1min hill repeats this morning, walking back down to recover. Hard work!

[charlesr]

Hardcore!

I'm going trail running in the rain tomorrow. Should be fun

[Taka]

Had a shocker of a Parkrun this morning. Wanted to get some speed into my legs ahead of next weekend's London Marathon but it just wasn't happening - 25 seconds behind on target by halfway so I finished it off as a tempo run. I know fast 5ks aren't my priority right now but it still fills me with disappointment when I fail to hit the target. At least I was feeling reasonably fresh at the end of it.

[charlesr]

Get more sleep? In bed by 9 every day this week maybe?

[Taka]

Don't think it was necessarily a sleep thing. I generally get enough and always try to get an extra 30 - 60 minutes per night during race week. I just think I've lost the ability to hurt during the 5k; most of my training has been geared towards out and out endurance and it's a different type of intensity, a slow burn. Parkrun wasn't particularly well attended either at the sharper end so I spent a good couple of minutes running solo which no doubt helped with some of the pace rot.

[charlesr]

Trail run done. Super slidey! The tiny layer of wet mud on the layer of dry hard stuff made it quite treacherous - almost lost it a few times. Lucky to stay upright the whole way around.

[charlesr]

Hi 29k run this morning. Decent pace (4:52/k), but my heartrate was nicely low. Averaged 148bpm Utterly beautiful morning and some great views around the countryside, the Marina and the canal paths. Saw a swan and all her cygnets in a nest next to the canal - very cute!

1800 calories burned before breakfast! Huge curry last night

[Terry Tibbs]

Nice work. I'll be up early to run to work tomorrow. Just 12km.

[Taka]

Off to the London Marathon expo today to collect my number. Will try not to spend too much money on tat I don't need...

[charlesr]

lol. Post some pics on twitter.

[Terry Tibbs]

Good luck Taka!

[Taka]

Thanks Terry!

Had an absolute blast at the expo and probably spent an hour longer there than I had intended to. Met Chris Thompson (won Silverstone this year and 10,000m silver in 2010 world champs), Scott Overall (one of Team GB's 2012 Olympic marathon runners) and Martin Yelling (co-host of the Marathon Talk podcast). All really nice guys and each was really interested in my race plans for tomorrow.

Only purchase was a super aggressive foam roller with ridges. Got some funny looks from folks on the Tube whilst I was carrying it home...

Oh Charles, tried the Adios Boosts on and I may have been converted! Liked the feel and fit and they're a good ?40 cheaper than my Nike Flyknit Racers which start falling apart after 200 miles.