Watching the New Year Runners
At the beginning of every year there’s a sudden abundance of runners on the road. I assume it’s from people taking up running as part of their New Year resolutions. In the morning, during lunch, and late in the afternoon are always popular times for running, but it’s particularly noticeable around here as we’re only a block away from the Bryant Street bike boulevard, which is partially blocked to prevent automobile traffic and is thus a popular neighborhood running and bicycling route. It seems to be a group activity, there are many more groups of 3 or more out and about lately.
Unfortunately, few of the New Year runners will make it past January. I think a lot of them are simply trying too hard, thus making every workout unpleasant, or start to develop injuries which force them to bail out. Usually by February or March, it’s back down to the same people who were there the year before.
At this time of year I frequently observe people with amazingly bad running form — huge vertical bobbing, heavy overstriding, the “Rocky Balboa” side-to-side weave, and knees flailing around like eggbeaters. I also see these at marathons, but figure by that time people know what works for them. On beginning runners, it’s more painful to watch, since they probably haven’t reached that point yet, and are often a mass of moving injuries in progress.
I haven’t stopped anybody out on the road yet, but in case you’re a beginning runner or just suspect you may have running form problems, are headed toward an injury, or that you might be working harder than you need to, I suggest you check out Danny Dreyer’s ChiRunning book, which has some excellent guidelines and advice on running form, whether or not you’re interested in the Chi aspects of his approach.
When I first started running a few years ago, one of the first things that I did was to spend some time looking at my current running form for ways to improve my mechanical efficiency. If nothing else, it seemed intuitive that spending a lot of energy moving up and down, side to side, or slamming my feet into the ground wasn’t going to help much. Danny’s book came out some time after I’d worked out my own system, but I find that most of his advice is consistent with what I would tell people, and his explanations are better. I have also avoided any major injuries (so far).
Here’s an article by Danny on running, posture, and avoiding injuries. I’ve also taken a couple of Danny’s workshops with the MIT Community Running Club, and have always come away with some opportunities for improvements.
December 31st, 2006 at 2:51 pm
[…] In the past few days I’ve seen a few new faces at the gym and more people out running around the neighborhood. By next week the New Year’s effect should be in full swing and we’ll be seeing lots of resolution runners on the road. This is a good thing, although every year I see one or two on the road that have spectacularly bad running mechanics. Perhaps they’d be better off on an elliptical or stairclimber at the gym. Tags: new year, running […]