Friday, September 29, 2006

Ran further than I thought I would.
Ran 1.5 miles as planned (brief pause to retie a shoe lace) and then paused to help someone with a different treadmill and then went back to do a .5 mile cool down, but was walking for only a few seconds before I got bored and bumped it back up to 4.0 mph and ran the rest of the half mile. That's really encouraging.

The treadmill also let me watch myself walk and see how my right foot drags. I can hold on to the handholds and look down (I slow it down to a fast walk) I keep going back and forth between whether it's my right hamstring or tibialis anterior that needs strengthening. My right hamstring is clearly weak but improving. The tibialis anterior however seems to be what actually creates the dragging (or a combination) as if the tibialis is not holding my foot up it's going to drag no matter how high the hamstring pulls it up. What's strange is that while I definitely can feel the weak hamstring the tibialis seems easier for me to control. Well that's a good thing anyway no matter how mysterious.

I also went back to an old cycling thing i used to do a lot is drink slightly watered down orange juice. I like Gatorade but this is much more satisfying. I even put it in one of those fancy Gatorade "sports" bottles which made drinking from it while running much easier that pouring liquid all over myself from a Nalgene bottle.

So next week I'd like to run 1.75 miles continuously take a brief break and then run/walk for another .5-.75 mile or so.

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