Running Better

I never thought that I would ever like running.  I rarely chose to walk as a little kid, but when I started running in my XC-ski team’s dry-land training program in my 6^th grade year, it definitely wasn’t my idea of a good time. In my very first practice, I remember how we ran around a mile loop and then sprinted a few times up a 100 meter hill on the trails behind the local high school. By the end of the workout, I felt totally beat-up. I ended up being sore for days because I didn’t even know enough to stretch afterwards and my body was unused to this new way of exercise. That was four years ago. Today, I consider myself a strong, fast and agile person due to the nearly year-round ski training program that I ended up deciding to stick-with--a program that mostly involves running. The sport has also played into my education. Due to the fact that I’m homeschooled, I’m lucky enough to be able to choose my own projects to work on. This fall, I decided that it would be really cool to expand my knowledge of the various aspects of running.

My plan was to delve into research on running for a couple of weeks. This included studying the muscular systems used in running and the effects of running on the entire body as well as books written by famous elite runners, coaches, nutritionalists and biomechanists. After a week of research, I planned to run a full mile at 80% speed every school day for one week. During this second week I would run as I normally do, sleep as I normally do and eat as I normally do in order to give myself a base for comparing my later results. For the second two weeks of my project, I planned to run with changes to my program based on the research that I’d done. This included increasing the number of hours of sleep that I got, making changes to the food that I ate, and improving my running technique. It was definitely the most interesting and intensive school project that I’d ever attempted and I figured that I was up for the challenge.  

 Focusing on learning to run better for 4 weeks meant that I had to learn to adapt to the various researched guidelines that I had created for myself. The main issue turned out to be my new eating plan. Because of the various sources on running information that I pursued, I ended up eating a lot of “rabbit food” (a change from my usual diet that tended to be slightly more carnivorous) and trying various other foods and techniques that I might not have tried otherwise. This included eating keifer (similar to yogurt) every day, using strawberries to make things sweeter instead of sugar, and filming my running stride so that I could watch my footsteps frame-by-frame. Over the course of the project, I learned many things that benefit me as a runner today and that I will probably carry with me for the rest of my life.

-Maggie

Running during the project