Run Day
time- 40 minutes
distance- at least 4 miles
Again, not running with my JogTracker yet. Its a guess. But it was a good, smooth run. Aided, I think, by my triathlon books. You see, dear reader, one of those books pointed something out to me about running which I've never thought of before. Running if a hamstring exercise. I know some of you are thinking, "What the hell? Really?" Others of you are thinking, "You didn't know that?" And perhaps a small few of you are thinking, "I wonder what's on Fox right now. I like pudding." But it's true! Running is a pulling exercise. The quads pull the leg straight, while the hammys pull it back. When running your leg goes, wait for it...BACK! OMG! Like, wow!
Thusly, I am spending mental time focusing on feeling that contraction. Concentrating on the very muscle group that is doing most of the, pardon the pun, leg work. And I think its helping. Just like thinking about the lats and tris in swimming and the quads on the bike, a mental focus on the muscles doing the work, I think, helps those muscles work better.
Abruptly switching topics, I am a gamer. Have been for little over a year and a half now. We own a PS3 and it is the awesome. I'm a huge God of War fan, have all three for the console and both the PSP games. But today I was pondering my gaming relationship to triathlon. You see, last summer I played Red Dead Redemption. Played it all the time. Game of the Year, easily. Loved it. After it ended was when I started getting interested in triathlon. Gaming during training dropped off, though it didn't go away. There have been games I've enjoyed, but nothing I've been super-uber-I-gotta-get-home excited about.
Until now.
Mass Effect 2 just came to PS3. I resisted as long as I could, nearly a whole week, but I gave in. It arrived yesterday. Rest day. Perfect. And it is pretty excellent. I think it could eat my life the same way RDR did. So now I have training every day, school, wife time, and ME2 to juggle. Its obvious the video game places last on the list of priorities, but for the first time since I started training a game is captivating my attention. So while the wife is doing homework after I've gotten back from a long ride or run the debate will no longer be nap or tv, with tv + nap winning out, but nap or ME2. And you can't game and nap.
The Hammy thing is why there is the running over ground vs running on a treadmill. On a treadmill it pulls your leg back for you, thus negating the need for hammy activation. Running over ground, you need to do that yourself. So you DO it, you wouldn't be able to run without doing it, but you for sure isolate it more when you concentrate on it. And BTW, ift should be ham and glute. That gets you that longer extension of your stride, just think about squeezing the buttcheek of the extending leg too.
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