Cardio health: slow down! run slow!

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40243238

I’ve been streak running (so running at least a mile per day with no exceptions, mostly 5ks during the week, 10–20k on weekends) for almost 8 years (2817 days). The single best tip I give to everyone is “slow down! run slow!”

Of course, almost no-one adheres to it unless they are already well practiced. It’s just deeply ingrained in peoples heads that “only if it’s hard or painful it must work”. Then people check out of running because it feels like crap, which it does if you always push too hard.

In my opinion, three of the most important rules are:

• slow down! does it feel “too slow”? Great, that’s the right speed for most runs
• - small steps! feels awkward at first, but is sooo much more efficient and soo much better for your joints
• - land on mid- or forefoot (that happens mostly automatically with small steps)

Some of my peers are deep into running. I don’t get it. Running is sometimes fun for me but most often painful.

Then I overheard one of them (the fittest) say to a budding runner that he [should] do mostly easy sessions. Okay what’s easy to him? He said that so slow that it can feel awkward and unnatural. What?

Then I searched around and found out about Zone 2 and how you should do most of your work in that zone when building aerobic fitness. And that it is characterized by being able to hold a conversation, although strained.

I searched around and found atheletes like amateur ultrarunners say the same thing.

Then it hit me. I’ve probably been jogging a lot in Zone 3. Or higher? Because the harder you go the more benefit, right? That seems to be the basic logic for everything.[1] Relatively short, painful sessions. Have I been conditioning myself to associate cardio with more pain than is necessary for the average session?

So maybe I should just go on the stationary bike today, do a “conversatitional” (talk to myself) pace and listen to my audiobook for an hour? And try to not let my groin fall asleep.

[1] With nuances like go-to-failure for hypertrophy in weightlifting and more back-off-a-little for strength training.

Heel strike — heel lands first

Midfoot strike — heel and ball land same time

Forefoot strike — ball of foot lands first

Two things:

1. You want to land on the mid-foot. Heel-striking puts a lot of pressure up you leg and joints as you are basically braking with every step. Forefoot strike puts a lot of pressure on your calf and achilles as you have to ‘bounce’ on every foot-strike to support your body weight. A mid-foot strike is the most efficient transition of energy into and back out of the ground for forward motion. Small steps help you to find a mid-foot strike, large steps (over-striding) will create a heel-strike.
2. 2. For lots of people taking up ‘running’ they (naturally) believe that they should run. But for many, running continuously will be beyond their zone-2 cardio. It’s much easier to start with a jog/walk and build up. In the UK we have a brilliant app called ‘couch-to-5k’ which is a progressive build from essentially no fitness (walking some distance) up to being able to continuously jog for 5k.