Running Eval

Today Chris and I had our running form evaluated by the Sports Medicine and Acceleration department of Physical Therapy. They work a lot with USU's teams. They tested our leg strength in various muscles and had us run barefoot and with shoes on while they filmed both from the back and the side. It was so crazy to run barefoot. They watched our running frame by frame and analyzed what we needed to do to improve and prevent injury. I need to work on strengthening my hips because they are too weak and flexible (go figure, child bearing does relax your hip muscles). My posture was good and my core strength was great to keep my upper body steady. I need to increase my cadence (steps per minute). I'm at about 162 with longer strides and they want you to be taking shorter, quicker strides so it's about 175-180. They had a metrinome at 180/min and made me run to that and try to get the feel of it. So on my run home today I tried it and it made me so tired. It felt like it took too much energy to take quicker, shorter steps. It slowed me down about a half a minute a mile compared to the same run last week. Hopefully I'll get the hang of it though. It was good to see how I could improve my running though. Also I did a long run of 8 miles on Saturday in Star Valley and did it in 71 minutes (8:54 min/mile)! I was just happy to be under 9 min miles for that distance. Happy training!