A Line

I had an awesome Calculus teacher back when I was in high school.  His name was Mr. Mhlanga.  He was what you call... the best teacher in the world.  His teaching methods were spectacular and his words were like water to thirsty men.  One of the things he said is that the shortest distance from one point to another is a straight line.  This seems like an obvious statement, but he said that right after he sprained his angle on a wilderness trip that we had when we were juniors.  If you're in pain, you go the shortest distance possible and you'll get there quicker and with less energy.  With a sprained ankle, that feels a lot better.

Now as for me, when I ran today, I felt as if my knee would be in pain again, and so I focused on running smoothly so as to not have that pain in my leg nag me.  In order to do that, I needed to make sure that my legs from hitting hard on the ground.  Today, I focused on my running technique as I ran and made sure that I would run a way that I would be able to go smoothly.  As I focused on the smoothness of my running, I discovered that I ran barely skimming the ground because I would be focusing my energy to go forward rather than up and down.  The wasted energy would go everywhere and hinder my speed as well as my knee, and I wouldn't be helping my body at all.

Altogether, I ran 7 miles in 1:01:40, an average of 8:48 min/mile.  It was nice, and my knee didn't hurt at all because I worked on my form.  Working on my form is going to cause me to get slower at first, but in the end, this change will definitely benefit me and I'll be able to run fast.  After all that running, I ate a little bit and then proceeded with my gym workout, doing 17 pull ups, 45 push ups, and cycled for an hour (21.6 miles on the old stationary bikes) and then 40 minutes on the stationary bikes without the distance measuring thing. After that, I did 230 calf raises per calf and then 100 double calf raises to make sure that my calves had some kind of training... and then went to the sauna for 15 minutes.

Another good day, another good run.  I was able to focus on running like a line so that I would be conserving not only energy but from impact that would hurt me.