SBR Utopia Season II - OPEN

That sucks Jason, I hope it still works out ok for you.

My plans to ride early to beat the rain have been foiled by.... the rain.  It's already coming down pretty good at my planned departure time and is supposed to get windy soon so it looks like it is going to be 3 hours on the trainer (*puke*).

Originally posted by TSimone Thanks A. Glad to be back. I told ya I would be, just didn't think it would be 6+ months later. Curious if anyone has a resource on shoes and how things like heel drop or other variables may correlate to injury or pain. I've got little experience with shoes (only used Brooks and Zoot) and want to read up. The long and the short of it is I have had chronic calf issues and a recent Achilles issue. I switched from Zoot to Brooks for my run yesterday and didn't experience the pain in my calf, but it may just have been a one off. And pace doesn't matter. It can flare up on the easiest of runs. Anyway, I do plan to go to my local running store but I also like to be in the know...

It can be kind of a tricky area with a few things in the shoes and the complexity of the body. Various shoe manufacturers have begun to list the amount of heel drop. Running Warehouse lists this (and other things) for all the shoes they carry. For me, generally less drop has put more stress onto the calf & achilles, but I was able to adapt with backing off on the amount of running and building back up, as is typical for most. The time for this can be a few days to a few months. I was more like a few months before being really well adapted, but I could see throughout this time that things were getting better.

Various shoes can have differing amounts of support built in as well. Such as "neutral" or "stability". I don't know if there are really well defined standards for these and other terms used. I do better with less support or stability, as that tends to get in the way of letting my legs figure out what they want to do naturally. For me, this hasn't really had anything to do with calf & achilles. More noticeable with knees though. ST ran a couple articles on this a few months ago. They might help towards understanding this better.

With the "pace doesn't matter", are you sure on that? I've been hurt just as much (if not a little more often) on easier runs than on harder ones. The reason being is that I had built up more training fatigue than I had realized and the easy running was a little harder than I thought. When stepping back to look at a bigger picture, all of the easy run injuries had some harder running just before it. Not necessarily just one run, but often several. And even more often were several moderate to moderately hard runs strung rather close together, creating more stress than I had realized.

Looking forward to another go-round with the group - if we have interest in new members we should get Ron to put us on the open group quick list.

Originally posted by brigby1

Originally posted by TSimone Thanks A. Glad to be back. I told ya I would be, just didn't think it would be 6+ months later. Curious if anyone has a resource on shoes and how things like heel drop or other variables may correlate to injury or pain. I've got little experience with shoes (only used Brooks and Zoot) and want to read up. The long and the short of it is I have had chronic calf issues and a recent Achilles issue. I switched from Zoot to Brooks for my run yesterday and didn't experience the pain in my calf, but it may just have been a one off. And pace doesn't matter. It can flare up on the easiest of runs. Anyway, I do plan to go to my local running store but I also like to be in the know...

It can be kind of a tricky area with a few things in the shoes and the complexity of the body. Various shoe manufacturers have begun to list the amount of heel drop. Running Warehouse lists this (and other things) for all the shoes they carry. For me, generally less drop has put more stress onto the calf & achilles, but I was able to adapt with backing off on the amount of running and building back up, as is typical for most. The time for this can be a few days to a few months. I was more like a few months before being really well adapted, but I could see throughout this time that things were getting better.

Various shoes can have differing amounts of support built in as well. Such as "neutral" or "stability". I don't know if there are really well defined standards for these and other terms used. I do better with less support or stability, as that tends to get in the way of letting my legs figure out what they want to do naturally. For me, this hasn't really had anything to do with calf & achilles. More noticeable with knees though. ST ran a couple articles on this a few months ago. They might help towards understanding this better.

With the "pace doesn't matter", are you sure on that? I've been hurt just as much (if not a little more often) on easier runs than on harder ones. The reason being is that I had built up more training fatigue than I had realized and the easy running was a little harder than I thought. When stepping back to look at a bigger picture, all of the easy run injuries had some harder running just before it. Not necessarily just one run, but often several. And even more often were several moderate to moderately hard runs strung rather close together, creating more stress than I had realized.

Ben, this is my experience as well. I have found that I too do much better with a neutral shoe that allows my foot/ankles to do what ever they want to do, and I have a very, very goofy left foot strike. In my own running I have found that varying the type of shoe/drop/cushioning really makes a difference depending on the type of running I am doing. When on trails I use a very lightweight, minimal drop, minimal structured shoe, and the same for speed work. For LSD runs (and walking) I use a shoe that has more drop and more heel protection. For endurance and tempo runs I use a shoe that has much less drop and more mid/forefoot protection. For me I found the whole heelstrike/forefoot strike arguments to be a bit of a red herring - my natural gait seems to move through the entire range depending on the speed at which I run. For instance I find Newtons to be just about the worst shoe on the planet to do LSD runs in - they just beat the hell out of me. But for faster runs of any distance though they really shine (again, for me) it all has to do with how my foot strike changes at different paces. I like doing LSD runs and walking in Nike Frees, and my current general "all-purpose" shoe is the Brooks Pure Connect. For my soft surface running I love the innov8 x-talons - I actually hate sharing that with folks because for me the x-talons are almost like a secret weapon.

Edited by TankBoy 2013-06-08 9:07 AM

Congratulations upon the event!  

You deserve to slake that thirst in whatever grand style you so choose.  A very big day, and you should be quite proud.

Residency?  What area?  Sports medicine (have to keep this at least tangentially SBR related)?

On Thursday I woke up with a little tickle in my throat but didn't think anything about it and went to masters and had a really good session. Then had some all-day work travel/meetings and by they'd of the day I was crashing hard. Yesterday i was supposed to be on an airplane to chicago but instead spent the day with a severe sore throat, congestion, and a low-grade fever, so switched my flight to this morning. I was really looking forward to this trip to get several days of cool-weather, flat pace-based running in, so I hope I can shake this little bug by the end of the day. Ugh, I hate summertime colds.

[/whining]

And on a completely different topic, it is awesome to once again get email notifications from the group!

Ha, awesome.  Congratulations on a job well done

I'm back.

I was on vacation all May (Europe), but now I'm gearing up for the Lake Stevens 70.3 in July, and Tahoe in September.

I just started a new job closer to home so I have a little more free time and money to train now.  Di2 is tempting me

Congrats, that's fantastic!  

Tom, I've got nothing on the shoes for you.  I have my one kind of shoes that I train and race in and I'm sticking to the "if it ain't broke" mantra.

Rusty, I hope you can shake the cold.  I have to say, for a guy that is supposedly not working, you sure seem to work a lot.  

I still haven't convinced myself to get on the trainer but it is going to have to happen soon....