chirunner

I went for a run tonight, the first one since Sunday. Went about three miles. Not a big deal ordinarily, but considering that I tried to run last night and I couldn't make it a block, I'd say this was pretty good.

Last night when I tried to run I had pain in my quads. Tonight I figured I wouldn't even try to run, because my quads felt tight all day.

But when I got home I stretched, and then I did my hamstring exercizes, and then I stretched again. And by the end of that, I had this inkling that maybe I could run. Maybe if I started out real slow, with real tiny steps.

So that's what I did. And for the first three minutes, it was quite achy. But then I tried really hard to do some of the techniques described in ChiRunning. And I'll be damned if it didn't work.

Basically what I did was lean forward, so much so that I would have fallen down if I weren't moving my legs. Then I tried to simply lift my feet by bending and unbending my knees. That's it.

It was hard to keep the form. I kept kind of falling in and out of it. But when I was in the rhythm, it felt like I wasn't even running at all, like I was just being pulled along. Or, it was more like the way running is in a dream, like when you're moving but it seems like you're not moving at all.

Throughout the run I felt little aches up and down my legs. But when they came up I tried to relax my leg muscles and let my lean pull me along. It worked.

When I got home I stretched again, iced the quads, and now I feel not the least bit of soreness.

And then on Saturday I'm going to get a private ChiRunning lesson from a certified instructor who lives here in KC.

Who knows, maybe this is the ticket...