refreshingly honest

runner's world. great magazine. i thoroughly enjoy their insight and articles and recommendations on everything from shoes to training plans to post-run meals. this week they released a very honest perspective on something that you don't hear about very often: disordered eating in runners. to boot, from a MALE perspective. kudos, runner's world, for putting yourselves out there on an uncomfortable topic. check the article out here.

got me thinking. teaching kids about nutrition is a sensitive topic. something i've been careful about since the very beginning. our curriculum teaches kids about making good choices, not going on a diet. it teaches kids to feel good about themselves and to learn about fueling their bodies, not try to look like the people they see on tv. i am thankful for articles like this that remind us that BALANCE is the key in empowering our kids. allowing them to come as they are and encouraging them to feel better about themselves, running & eating well being one way to do that.

common question

an answer that i find myself saying often is: "yes, that's a great idea to meet the needs in your particular community." one of the pillars in the establishment of ready, set, run was to create a program that ALL kids could participate in: at every agency in every community in every state in every country. and our coordinator list is expansive: big town usa, little town usa, japan, portugal, korea, germany, private agency, public agency, and a lot in between. each one unique, each one fantastic.

another pillar was to make it as user-friendly as possible for the hard-working youth sport coordinators that we work with. one of the greatest bits of feedback we get back from our sites is that it was a positive experience from top to bottom- coordinators were efficient, coaches were empowered, kids had a blast, and parents were thrilled with the outcome.

so, while our curriculum lends itself to be absolutely turn-key (read: easy to use) there is an adaptability component based on your needs. i.e., one of our stand-out sites in georgia adapted the program to include 2 special needs participants. or another awesome site in new york city is looking to work with a different time frame that will meet the needs of his busy clientele.

my favorite challenge is figuring out how to make it work for a coordinator. i assure you, there IS a way to get kids in your community setting goals & running!

keeping focus

sometimes in my role as director of ready, set, run i lose focus of what started this whole thing. changing kids lives through running. teaching them that they can set & achieve goals. making them feel special & loved in a welcoming atmosphere. creating an environment where all are heard, considered, and challenged. empowering kids to think big, think positively, think outside of their social norm.

sometimes i focus on logistics and growth and orders and edits and i forget the really important stuff. our desire is for kids to come AS THEY ARE. kids who are good runners, kids who have never run before, kids who don't think they are capable of running, kids who have been turned off or away from other sports, you name it. we want them to come as they are, and be changed for the better. not necessarily a better runner, but more confident. more willing to take on challenges. more likely to try new things. more open to others and their impact on the world.

today, i am refocusing. i am coming back to our mission and i am coming back to integrating this mission into everything i do. running truly changed my life. it changes my life every single day. THIS is what started it all. THIS is what i imagine happening for kids.

proof!

February 8, 2012, 12:01 AM

Does Foot Form Explain Running Injuries?

By GRETCHEN REYNOLDS

Thomas Barwick/Getty ImagesDoes how you run affect how often you get injured?

The members of Harvard University’s men’s and women’s distance running squads are young, fast, fit, skinny, bright, disciplined and, without exception, dutiful. Every day during the cross-country and track seasons, they enter their mileage and pace into an online training Web site overseen by the team’s coaches and trainers.

They also, like most serious runners, get hurt with distressing frequency, often missing practice due to aching muscles or over-stressed bones. Each of those injuries, no matter how niggling, also gets duly reported and entered into the computer.

Meaning that these student athletes, in their high-achieving way, fashioned an excellent database through which to examine running-related injuries, as evidenced by a study published online last month in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise.

The study, for which researchers combed through four years’ worth of data about the Harvard runners, has produced the surprisingly controversial finding that how a person runs may affect whether he or she winds up hurt.

Running injuries are a topic of considerable interest to scientists in many disciplines, from biomechanics to evolutionary biology, as well as, of course, to runners. By most estimates, more than half of all runners, whether male or female, collegiate or long past, become injured every year. But Adam I. Daoud, a graduate student in the Skeletal Biology Laboratory at Harvard and the lab’s director, Daniel Lieberman, an evolutionary biologist who co-wrote an influential 2004 paper suggesting that distance running guided the evolution of early man — with better runners earning more food and sex than plodders and passing along their genes — wondered if something simpler might be at work. They wondered whether how your foot hits the ground affects your injury risk.But no one knows why so many runners get hurt, although a number of theories have been advanced, including the possibility that hard asphalt roads, lousy Western diets, too many miles, too few miles or high-tech running shoes cause or contribute to the problem.

Most of us who run nowadays strike the ground first with our heels, a pattern promoted by today’s well-cushioned running shoes. There’s suggestive evidence, however, including from Dr. Lieberman’s work, that early, unshod hunter-gatherers landed first on the balls of their feet. So, in recent years, some runners have decided that forefoot striking must be more “natural” and less likely to cause injuries.

But there has been no science to support that idea.

To look into the issue, Mr. Daoud, who had been on the cross-country team as an undergraduate, and Dr. Lieberman not only gained access to the team’s training database, they also gathered the team members and videotaped them.

No one is always a forefoot striker or a heel striker. Your form depends on many factors, including your speed, the terrain, whether you’re tired and so on. But most of us have a predominant strike pattern, and so it was with the 52 Harvard runners. Thirty-six, or 69 percent of them, were heel strikers, while 16, or 31 percent, were forefoot strikers. The proportions were similar regardless of gender.

More interesting was the distribution of injuries. About two-thirds of the group wound up hurt seriously enough each year to miss two or more training days. But the heel strikers were much more prone to injury, with a twofold greater risk than the forefoot strikers.

This finding, the first to associate heel striking with injury, is likely to fuel the continuing and not-always civil debate about whether barefoot running is better. (It hurts to hit the ground with your heel if you’re not wearing shoes.) But both Dr. Lieberman and Mr. Daoud, now a medical student at Stanford University, are quick to point out that their study did not in any way address the merits of going barefoot.

All of the Harvard runners wore shoes, and most, as Dr. Lieberman says, “wore different shoes every day of the week.” Some ran in well-cushioned shoes and became injured, while others did not. Likewise for those who usually ran in minimal racing flats. Some got hurt; some did not. And forefoot striking, over all, was not a panacea. Many of the forefoot strikers were felled by injuries.

But in general, those runners who landed on their heels were considerably more likely to get hurt, often multiple times during a year.

Does this mean that those of us who habitually heel-strike, as I do, should change our form? “If you’re not getting hurt,” Dr. Lieberman says, “then absolutely not. If it’s not broke, don’t fix it.”

But, says Mr. Daoud, who was himself an oft-injured heel-striker during his cross-country racing days, “if you have experienced injury after injury and you’re a heel-striker, it might be worth considering a change.” (If you’re unsure of your strike pattern, have a friend videotape you from the side as you run, he suggests, then use slow motion to watch how your foot hits the ground.)

If you do decide to reshape your stride, proceed slowly, he cautions. Many people who abruptly switch to barefoot running or a forefoot running form get hurt in the process, he says. The body’s tissues adapt to the forces generated by long-term heel striking. Change your form, and the forces will affect different parts of the leg, leading to soreness and, potentially, injury.

Try landing on the ball of your foot “for five minutes at first at the end of a run,” Mr. Daoud suggests. Work up to longer periods of forefoot landings as your body adjusts and only if you do not notice significant, continuing soreness.

In his own case, Mr. Daoud now runs consistently with a forefoot landing style, but the transition was not seamless. “I broke a metatarsal while running my first marathon after transitioning a bit too quickly and expecting a bit too much from my body too soon,” he says. So fair warning to those considering making the transition to forefoot landings: “Give your body time!”

ONLINE!

we have added another dimension to our curriculum. to say it is an EXCITING day 'round these parts is a vast, vast understatement. there are now 2 options for how you implement the program within your community: enabling our sites, once again, to be EMPOWERED to make it work best for your kids, your agency, and your community.

here's the scoop:

in addition to our age/gender breakdown (boys 8-10, boys 11-13, girls 8-10, girls 11-13). we now have a general curriculum. both are fabulous. both accomplish what we are trying to achieve: engaging kids in character-building, running activities. making kids feel good about themselves and what they are able to achieve. affecting whole communities by starting with the Coordinator, reaching the coaches, kids, and entire families.

all that said. check out the new stuff. it's all available online. before you hold registration, after you hold registration, whenever your heart desires.