 Butter my bread, butter my bread. All right, we had a package arrived today. Glad I read it though, because it says, attention, true love from Arizona. Kathleen, thank you. I will deliver this to true love personally. Thank you for all the comments on the studio ideas for what we should do in here for decorating, for making it just a little more crisp and pop, okay? I've got ideas, but I'm reading all your comments from yesterday's blog. Everyone, we are, oh yeah, and shout out to Poland for the pullover. I traded this down in Argentina, love the red, it's awesome. So there you go, little Poland on the back. In fact, connecting to today's topic about running form analysis for marathon racing specifically. For me, the Krakow Marathon is kind of on my radar. So I don't know about 2020, but hopefully in the future I'd love to run race, the Krakow Marathon in Poland. All right, craziness everyone. We are stronger together. I'm about to post this on the Facebook group after I get done recording here. I have been running for 20 years and I've never, ever heard of this website before. Remember yesterday I went out into the mountains and was seeking out some new training grounds at around 8,000 feet of elevation on dirt roads. And somebody commented, wouldn't you wanna be training more so on pavement over dirt, getting ready for a road marathon? Yes and no, I do agree that I need to do a little bit of work on pavement, but I have to be careful that I don't get injured by doing high volume and high intensity on pavement. So that's why I'm seeking out dirt roads. And sure enough, somebody yesterday, yeah, yesterday's vlog posted gravelmap.com. Gravelmap.com, I cannot believe I've never heard of this website before. It looks to be pretty accurate. Now, I've only been looking at it for about a half hour, but it basically shows you different locations around the United States. And I haven't looked outside the US yet, but locations where you can go seek out dirt roads or gravel roads as the name of the website alludes to. How amazing is that? And in fact, I actually already found a few more ideas in the area that I was in yesterday. So I'm blown away, gravelmap.com. We are stronger together because that resource, if we weren't here talking about these topics, I would have never learned about gravelmap.com. So shout out to whoever posted that. I really, really appreciate it. Okay, moving on to running form and running analysis. Here we go. In my opinion, how to get going into this? This is a huge topic. I think that you should never change your form completely. You have been running the way you've been running since you were a child. And I would be fascinated to hear research or to read research as to how we develop our running form, our mechanics in our running based off of what we did as a kid, whether we played soccer or whether we rode a bike or whether we lived on a hill. Oh my goodness. Like if you grew up on a steep hill in San Francisco, does that impact a kid's running form which impacts an adult's running form later in life? I think it would be a fascinating study. I've never really read too much on that. But I don't think we should ever really completely transform our running form. But I do think we can tweak a few things to make our running form, our running mechanics more efficient. Now, here's an example of a clip of a gentleman winning the Boulder Boulder Citizens Race 2019. And yes, his running form is unique. But guess what? It works for him. He won the biggest road race in Colorado. One of the biggest citizens, not elite, but citizens road race in Colorado. And I think it's the second largest road race in the United States behind the Peach Tree 10K. So shout out to him for figuring out, okay, it might look a little unique to us, but his running form is working for him obviously if he can go out and win that race. Now what comprises our running form or mechanics? All right, and this is not like a really detailed list. This is over, this is generalized, but I just wanna hit on a few points. So starting with our feet, our foot strike. How is our foot striking the ground? Okay, next, our knee drive. How is our knee moving through the gate cycle? And what does the back kick look like? So how far back does our foot go? How high does it come? What is the angle of our knee when it's fully extended, okay? And then our hips. Where are our hips positioned in relation to our trunk? So here's the trunk, you know, I guess it would be from here down to right to our hips. So where is the positioning of our hips underneath our center of mass basically? And then our shoulders, okay? Our shoulders slouched is one lower than the other. Okay, and then arm carriage. All right, our arm swing is another way to say it. So arm swing, how do we swing our arms? What does that look like? So I'll come back to all this in a second. And then our head, yes. It's, I know our head is, well, it's carrying our brain, which is hopefully making good decisions in a race, but like our head is, which I think I've heard, don't quote me, it does our head weigh about 10 to 12 pounds. It's actually quite a bit, if like, anyway. So our head is important, like is it off to the side? Is it looking down too much? Is it looking up too much? So our head is critical in, because it's in it's connected obviously to our eyes. And so anyway, that is what I'm talking about with respect to the different body parts that impact what our running mechanics looks like. Now as far as my running form goes, you know how I like to say it, eyes up, pump arms, quick feet. I love that. It just helps me so, so much in the middle of a race. But a couple of areas of concern for me, and I hope this helps all of you figure out, okay, huh, what am I doing in my running mechanics? And you may have never filmed your running ever and that's fine, but maybe now, with a phone, it's pretty easy to film your, you know, set your phone up on a post or somewhere that's pretty level with you. You could even put it into slow motion and then run toward your phone, run side, get different angles and then just kind of check it out and maybe cross-compare it to what I'm about to share for things that I struggle with, all right? So, and I wish I had time to analyze everyone's running form but maybe someday down the road. Okay, so basically, I guess I'll start with my head. When I'm tired, I will, I do notice my head leans to the left, okay? I've noticed that for years and years actually and I've gotten better, but it's still not perfect. Shoulders, so, this is probably common with a lot of people, but we never want to slouch. We don't want to collapse in on ourselves because that can restrict our breathing through our, you know, our chest cavity when we're slouching, that's not good. So, especially, you know, I do it a lot in mountain running actually, but because you're going uphill, but I always try and just put those, I've shared this before, put the shoulder blades in their pockets, okay? So kind of drop them in, drop them in. There you go, drop, instead of this, so drop them in, all right? So that's for my shoulders. Now, I think I'm carrying my right arm too low, lower than my left. Very bizarre, very strange. I've noticed it a little bit more recently and I don't think it's happening just when I'm tired. So I need to work on that where I keep both arms up and I'll just also say relaxed hands is good. Okay, we don't want to tense up like this. Relaxed hands and then also with our running arms. Some people comment and say for their running form that they think that their arms are crossing over their body too much and they might be, we don't want to be doing this, okay? None of this, none of this. But at the same time, you don't want your arms to go straight. Now I think sprinters, like 100 meters, 200 meters, I think they go straight forward mostly. I don't think they do too much across the body. Distance runners is different. It's okay and you just go watch the elite marathon runner. Like it's okay to cross the body a little bit so that it's basically, I would say, even with your pectoral muscle basically. So boom, boom, boom, boom, not this. Okay, not this, not this. Just boom, boom, boom, boom. And carrying your arms just a little higher. Okay, so in mountain running, I dropped my arms a little bit. I don't know, I guess it's just the angle of the mountain and getting up the mountain. I have found that dropping the arms is good for mountain running. But in road racing, you want to keep them right here. Nice and efficient, nice and, not, I don't want to say tight to the body, but not like swinging too low, okay? Just right here, right here. Just nice and smooth, nice and smooth, okay? And then as far as my knee drive, again, okay, I guess I'll say my hips. My hips, again, when I get tired, I tend to get into a little bit of a sitting position where I let my glutes and hip flexors, they just are getting tired. And it happens to all of us. So I'm always reminding myself to run up tall. And I'm not a tall guy, but just being as tall as I can, and again, keeping that chest cavity open. So rather than letting my hips and glutes kind of collapse down, which I think can impact the quads, impact the knees, just trying to stay as tall as I can in my, and that's impacted by our core strength, a lot of different things, okay? So I've noticed that as well in my hips, especially when I am tired. As far as foot strike, I do pronate a little bit, and that's, you know, it's pretty typical. As long as it's not crazy or supination, I know some people struggle with supination, but I feel pretty good about my foot strike. I'm definitely a four foot to midfoot foot strike. You know, it's better not to be the huge heel striker, although a former world record holder in the marathon, he was from Kenya. It wasn't Turgat, oh man. I'm not gonna remember his name, but this is probably 10 years ago. He was a heel striker and he held the world record like a pretty significant heel striker. So it's not an exclusive rule, but usually you wanna be a four foot or midfoot for your foot strike. And yeah, oh and okay, also for foot strike, your foot should be striking basically just ahead of your hips. As far as, if there was a ruler, if there was a ruler going straight down from your hips to your feet through your gait cycle, your feet wanna be striking just ever so slightly in front of your hips, all right? Definitely not behind, directly beneath, not the worst, but just slightly ahead of where your hips are positioned. That has been found based on the research I've done to be the most efficient way to run. Now at the end of the day, in our running form and mechanics, what did Paul say in Amsterdam? Rhythm, rhythm, rhythm, rhythm, rhythm, rhythm, rhythm, rhythm. That's right, rhythm, rhythm, rhythm. That was my mantra, that was my reminding action, that was my action item, my action word for Amsterdam. And maybe I found a little too much rhythm in that first half marathon, but I tell you what, it was a rhythm, it was a rhythm. Now it was a little fast. I was in my flow state as another way to say rhythm and it felt good. So now I just need to find that rhythm again in Houston just at a slower pace. But at the end of the day again, don't go try to change and alter your running mechanics completely. I would not recommend that honestly, you might end up injured. I don't try to think of anyone's ever emailed me about that but just cause your body is used to running a certain way. However, there might be just a couple little things that you could tweak to make your running form more efficient so you're using less energy so you can run faster and chase down PRs even better. This is a huge topic. I will dive into this topic again in the not so distant future as I prepare for Houston and just really hone in and dial in on okay, what's gonna be most efficient for the roads of Houston? Question of the day, have you ever looked and analyzed at your running form? If so, did you change some things or is this a brand new topic that you just have never thought about and are you interested in learning more about running mechanics, how to be as efficient as possible? That's the question of the day. Thank you for watching. A simpler day as I rest here during this week, getting ready for the next training block leading into Houston. So it's nice to just be on a little break but we will be back to running before too long. All right, everyone, all right. We're gonna toss it back to a strength training routine on the right. This is what I do for strength training in the gym which, yes, impacts our running form and then on the left, if you wanna check out the New York City Marathon vlog where you see a lot of my marathon racing, running mechanics and that, you can check that out on the left. All right, everyone. Thanks for being here. Thanks for watching. As always, man, onward and upward. See beauty, work hard and love each other. See you tomorrow.