Below is how I treat my sore foot after a long run.
Here’s my sore foot rolling a frozen bottle of water. It works great for treating plantar fas
[updated entry] Long runs for me are 10Ks or longer, but I start feeling sore once I do 10 miles or more. To treat my sore foot, I use ice in a water bottle which I’ve kept frozen in my fridge. To use it, I simply put the bottle on the floor and roll my sore foot on it for 15 minutes. It works very well.
I just finished running my long run for the week. The run spanned over 13.5 miles, and my legs and feet are tired—no, sore to be more exact. As I type this, I am rolling my feet over a narrow cylindrical bottle of frozen water to help reduce soreness under my feet; and it feels good.
Anyway, when doing long runs (anything in the 10 plus miles range) , you need to take into account the following:
That is it. Hopefully this is useful for anyone wishing to conquer a half-marathon or full marathon someday.
As most people know, the human body is mostly made up of water. It just makes sense that we must keep it hydrated. As such, there is a known general rule that one must drink so many cups of water—depending on your size—every day. The average person loses up to 10 cups of water a day (up to 6 cups through urine and up to 4 through breathing, sweating, and bowel movement). So just to keep up with that, the average adult has to drink 8 cups of water a day. This is known as the 8×8 rule (8 ounces of water 8 times in a day).
When you run, your body needs more water primarily because it has to sweat and breath a lot of it out to keep the body temperature cool. When it doesn’t get enough, several things can happen. I’ll list some of the most common ones below, most of which I’ve peronally experienced:
1. Thirst
2. Dizziness
3. Dark urine (blood in urine)
4. Thirst
5. Lower level of alertness
6. Chills
There are different levels of dehydration. You might hit mild dehydration (2% fluid loss) once in a while, but hitting severe or extreme dehydration isn’t where you want to be, as you can put your life in danger.
Besides failure to hydrate can severely impact your running performance. So drinking is a must, unless you simply want to pass out or don’t care how you’ll perform.
The distances I run range anywhere from three or more miles. I use a hydration belt pack that can hold 2 bottles of water or Gatorade. Each bottle holds 8 to 10 ounces. One bottle suffices for runs below six miles. I use two bottles for anything beyond six miles.
Before running, I take several big gulps of gatorade or water. Then when I run, I take good sips of water at about the one to two mile intervals. This seems to work out for me (weight: 155 lbs., height: 5’7”).
After a run, regardless of the type of run, I do several stretching exercises designed to help minimize soreness. At least that’s the idea behind it and it seems to help.
On a side note, keep hydrated before, during, and after a run. Drink water or something like gatorade to keep your body hydrated.
In my next post, I’ll explain to you my own experience with hydration and its importance to running and daily life.
When you get to your late 20s, warming up becomes very important. For running, I’ve found that doing a little bit of light stretching helps a lot, although in several running magazines, they have noted that stretching before running have no correlation to how better or how worse you perform on a run.
The bottom line is, do what works for you.
When I started getting into running in preparation for the Chicago Marathon over 2 years ago, I made sure to do the following things before the start of any of my runs, be it short, long, intervals, or tempo runs:
After I finished all the above, then I started my running exercise.
The set of cool down exercises I do at the end of a run is totally different and serves a different purpose. I will enumerate them on my next posting.
CIM stands for the California International Marathon. It is held on the first Sunday of December. This year, I’m training for it, and I’ve already signed up; so there is no turning back.
I’ll be logging my training on this blog to highlight key experience that may help other beginners get through their own challenge of conquering a marathon.
Note that I’m already almost one month into my training plan. It has not been perfect, meaning I’ve missed some days of cross training already, but fortunately, I still have about three months to go.
Lately though, I’ve had some rough and sluggish feeling in the morning. I don’t feel very fast, and my feet are starting to get sore.
In the next post, I’ll tell you what I do before and after a short training run. When you are as old as me, these things really matter a lot.
I am not a doctor, nor do I play one on TV.
But from my own personal experience and common sense (a rare thing now-a-days), when a body ages, muscles that used to stretch easily and with no effort become less pliable. The beating muscles have taken over the years become scars, and scars, as you know, are harder to stretch.
When you run, your muscles incur micro injuries; however, they heal if you give them time to rest and recover. The recovery make your body stronger. BUT if you continue to run every day, those micro injuries don’t have time to recover and heal, and over time get worse. So, instead of getting better, you get worse!
There could be other reasons why parts of your body hurt when you run, but barring any existing injuries or other problems, the main reason is age.
Again, I am no doctor. I’m speaking from experience and common sense.
Why do you think it hurts when you run? Let me and our community know.
Crossing the finish line at the 100th Bay to Breakers!
On May 15 I ran the 100th running of the Bay to Breakers. I have never run this foot race, and the only run that I have run close to this foot race is the Bridge to Bridge run–also a 12K run.
On this run, I decided to break in my new Saucony Progrid Mirage. This shoe is categorized as minimalist as reviewed by Running Times Magazine. It seems to feel tight, but I didn’t really notice it much during the run. Because it has less in terms of heel compared to the traditional cushioned running shoe, I really felt my forefoot landing more often than before. I also noticed that I was able to coast on the downhill portions of this run. Because it felt light, I didn’t really feel like I was getting tired. The run felt fast; as a matter of fact, having been stuck in the C corral made it difficult to cover ground fast early in the run.
Nevertheless, the temperature was just right, and it was a fun experience. Here are the results of my run:
Results of my 2011 Bay to Breakers Run
Finishing Stockton Half Marathon in record time--1:56:56
Stockton premiered its first half marathon on 14 Nov 2010. The run featured a 5K fun walk/run for all and a 13.1-mile half marathon run for the die hards. By this time, I consider myself a running die hard. I ran the half marathon.
The day was perfect for running–around the high 40s. It started and finished by the Stockton Hilton. The course was nice, as it had some slight uphills and downhills. It also took us to the better part of Stockton–Brookside.
In the race were 638 finishers–373 females and 265 males. The average finish time was 2:18:15. This tells you that this run had some of the most die-hard runners, as that time is pretty good time. I finished 186th overall with an official time of 1:56:56.
The date, 10-10-10…the event….the 2010 Chicago Marathon. After about 10 months of preparing for this run, I finally made it. I completed the run with a time of 4:57:14. My goal for this run was to simply cross the finish line with a descent time. This time isn’t bad considering the temperature. That day had a relatively warm or hot temperature for a long run. The temperature range for that day was between 60 degrees and 82 degrees.
I ran this race with my sister-in-law. We stuck together for the first half. As a result her half marathon time and mine were exactly the same: 2:25:31…not bad.
As part of a charitable effort, I ran for a cause–St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Some of my friends supported me there. My wife contacted others and was also able to get pledges. I estimate that the total pledges comes out to be around $1000. I will be happy if this effort will make a difference in the life of one child.
There is one thing very different from this run–many people running are running for a cause. I don’t see this on 12K or lesser runs, and I’ve done many such runs. I think a marathon is different and that it takes a special dedication and determination to complete such a challenge. Drawing from my own experience, the dedication and determination were definitely there. Since December of 2009, I have been training for this run, waking up at 4:30am and running at around 5:00 am. Not too many people can do this. Sometime during the training, I suffered through multiple injuries: plantar fasciitis, knee soreness, and maybe even IT. I rested and recovered. As a matter of fact, I was still recovering from a knee sprain/soreness/inflammation when I ran this marathon. The good thing was that my knee didn’t even bother me during the run!
Observing the crowd, I saw many people from different walks of life, some people stood out in that they obviously had some form of injury or disability as can be seen in the way they run, yet they are there doing the marathon. That is very inspiring. I have never seen this kind of determination in any race I’ve been to.
Running a marathon has been an experience. Knowing that not many people can complete such a challenge makes one feel somewhat special. Now that it is over, it seems that I have caught the marathon bug. Which one should I do next? Someone suggested the NYC marathon. Hmmm…maybe.