I met with my tri coach, Jon Farber, again today so he could harass me on the treadmill…his words 🙂
I told him I had great difficulty getting my right foot down anywhere but in front of me. He suggested I modify the Pose drill into a sort of limp, where I place my left foot intentionally too far in front, and that will make it easier to get my right foot down, behind. That would train my right leg to learn the proper feel for foot placement. He was right: it was like limping and it did help me feel the right foot placement.
After our session, I put on an Aerosmith CD, and did the limping drill for a few minutes. Then I did a tempo workout on the treadmill that looked like this:
5:00 at 7.6 mph, target heart rate of 160
0:35 at 9 mph, Pose Drill
2:30 at 5 mph, recovery
Repeat 5 times
During the first two tempo efforts, I focused on my usual stuff: how can I make this feel easier, controlling that funky flick in my right hand, baby steps (shorter stride), high cadence, lift-lift-lift, and good posture.
On the third tempo effort, I remembered something Jon said, “…that FALLING FORWARD feeling (I personally think a lot of how to get that feeling boils down to NOT firing your quads as the foot comes down and the leg is weighted)”. So, this time I thought about relaxing my quads and falling forward…using just a slight lean. It was feeling right – finally!
Just when everything was feeling right, “Walk This Way” started playing. Inside my mind, I changed the lyrics to “Run this Way”. It was a perfect moment, and well – it even brought tears to my eyes. The rest of that tempo set, and the next, I was simply running, not doing the drill, and I found myself bumping into the front of the treadmill!
This post falls under “The Good…”
PS: It must be karma – this is my 500th blog post! I didn’t realize it until I pasted the link in an email to my coach.
More Karma: As I typed the above sentence, the song “Walk this Way” came on the radio! That has to mean something!
The planets have aligned. Congratulations on the breakthrough.
Bob