Boy did the motivation disappear fast! It was raining again on Monday and I was very sleepy in the morning plus I had some work pressure. I blew off the morning run option so fast it wasn’t even funny… I took workout clothes to work to make up for my laziness but was overcome by work schedule pressures again and did not exercise. This morning was almost the same… In bed, my thoughts danced around excuses and the little devil almost won again! However, I dragged myself out of bed and even with heavy pressure made myself go out and run… I shortened up the distance and walked the last 1/4 of the run but I did it… And, my calves didn’t start to hurt until about half way through the run. That is good, but they did talk to me eventually and I listened. I did however run on the balls of my feet almost entirely. Occasionally, I would use a gentle “heal striking” stride to rest the calves but went back to the balls… I feel like I can use my heals with a very gentle landing and roll the foot for low impact but I am being advised not to do this… 🙂 The lungs felt much stronger and I was not breathing really hard until after the halfway point. I still need to stay in the “consistency training” range and not make things too hard.
My Monday morning weigh in was around 254 lbs…
Nobody told me that… I just figured “heel striking” meant putting your heal down first and what I discovered is that you can run at a pretty good pace without touching your heels to the ground at all. So, I guess what you are saying is that you have to feel your technique of “placing” the heel down versus striking the heel. Is that it?
OK who told you touching your heel to the ground was wrong? This is absolutely NOT true. You can certainly bring your heel down to the ground, as long as you aren’t using your heel to strike the ground. This forces your tibialis muscles via the ankle/heel joint, to take up your body weight. This can led to shin splints. This is what the calf was meant to do, NOT the tibialis. The impact of heel strike will send shock up your leg, through the knee and on up to the hip. This is bad bad bad. The fact that your calves are sore and hurting is a very good sign. It means they are working HARD.