Running Downhill

You can find all types of advice about how to run downhill and I say listen to it all. Listen to it all, and then listen to your body. We are all quite unique and our bodies are built to handle physical challenges in different ways. If we take all of the rational reasons and other people's experiences and feed them to our intuition, our bodies will tell us what's best for us and why. In regard to running downhill on road surfaces, here's what I've found works for me: 1) Lean forward slightly. Looking down about 4 or 5 feet in front of me helps me with this. I used to lean back and resist the hill, but this is too slow and why work your legs by breaking when you don't have to. 2) Take medium strides with little foot lift. The ground is declining, so too much foot lift will result in excess stress on your knees and ankles. 3) Let gravity do it's thing. Don't be afraid to go faster than normal. I'll see you further on up the road.

President's Challenge

If you find that sticking with your physical activity program is a motivational challenge like I do, here's a site that you may like: https://www.presidentschallenge.org/home_adults.aspx We're doing the Presidential Champions program together as a family and sometimes it's the only thing that motivates me to get outside and do something. I especially like the way it lets me log my activities and get points for almost every physical activity you can think of. I'll meet you further on up the road. Jim Hill

Running Again (without knee pain)

I'm a runner again. Not a big time runner; just about 15 miles a week over 3 days. I tried running when I was a lot heavier, but it didn't work for me because of my knees. I was running some 5k races and I was really bad. The first race I ran in I finished next to last... that's if you don't count the nurse. The guy running behind me was about 90 and he was running with his geriatric nurse. As I said, I had to stop running because of my knees. They started hurting so much that after the last race I literally had to crawl across the floor when I got home. The doctor said that it was bursitis. It's a repetitive motion injury where these little sacs of fluid called bursae get irritated. I attributed those injuries to my weight and I quit running until I could take off some weight. Well here I am, 4 years later and 50 pounds lighter and I'm running again. Things are going well. I'm training for a 15k run in Birmingham, AL called the ("Statue to Statue"). I still have to be careful with my knees and recently I learned that I need fish oil because of what it does for my joints. I went without it for a couple of weeks and boy did I miss it. All the popping and cracking and pain in my knees let me know that if I'm going to run, I'm going to have to take in the right nutrients. Here's a link to an article from HealthLine about some more benefits of fish oil: https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/13-benefits-of-fish-oil#section15. We'll see you further on up the road.