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Tuesday 22 June 2010

A Boiled Bear

I hate to think what someone might have googled to land on this post... It was a tough session tonight with a blazing sun and mile efforts to get through. A tough 16 miles on Sunday followed by a seeing to from Team GB physio Alison Rose at Carnegie on Monday left me feeling a bit bruised and less perky than usual. The calf wringing was eye-poppingly painful and coach Scobie just sat there and grinned as I bit my knuckles!

Apparently I have a rather large difference in leg length and am lucky to not be frequently injured! The analysis of my form suggests this is what saves my bacon; I'm 'very efficient' but I need to build up height in my left shoe to give my right leg a bit of a break. Funny to have not discovered this until now...

So, somewhat overheated and niggly I managed 10 in total tonight with a few mile efforts thrown in. A good session if a bit slow but Saturday at the track will more than make up for that. I am SO getting into this speed work and never want the summer to end. Ho hum.

5 comments:

Julie said...

Hi Sarah,
It is so nice to hear that you are enjoying your speed track workouts! Good job on your longer runs too! I also have one leg that is a bit longer than the other. I found out years ago when I was at the Dr's office. I have not done anything about it because it wasn't enough to bother me. I would like to know if you decide to add something in your shoe and if it makes a big difference with your performance.

Take care RB:)

Mark H said...

Hi Sarah.
My lld (leg length discrepancy , to the uninitiated ! ) is 3 cm.
Wonder if you can beat that ?
I only found this out 3 years ago.

Julie , I got some orthotics to remedy this , but it didn't make me any faster :-(

kate said...

i always thought you looked a bit lopsided in photos ;) it's amazing that you've not noticed this before. how much faster can you go with equal pins?!

Antony Bradford said...

I do wonder if any runners have legs of equal length. For some reason we were never made to have equal sides, eyes and arms are classic examples of this. The stronger side(which may have just adapted to be stronger because we use it more) seems to take over. When we run, the stronger leg does more of the work and gets even stronger. This must make for tighter muscles in this leg and therefore a discrepancy in leg length. My own knee problem partly relates to this and I had to have some orthotics made to correct it. This only made a difference when combined with selective strengthening exercises and stretching. One thing I did learn from this, is that running long distances is not as balanced and natural as we think. Evolution(if you believe this theory), must have only thought we needed to run relatively short distances, presumably, either to catch or escape from prey at a short distance and didn't adapt us to run the longer distances. Based on this theory, I would have thought most distance runners need to have to program of corrective stretching and strength work to avoid producing further imbalance and injury.

Regards.

Runningbear said...

Thanks Julie, will post on progress with my long leg :}

Thanks MH, I feel better knowing there's a bigger running 'freak' than me :D. Mine is only just over a centimetre so a bit of a problem but not as big as yours! Have ordered an insert so will see how that goes..

Hi Kate, have probably been running in big circles all this time... no wonder track running seems so natural

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