World Run II / Reports

The map shows the position of which the pictures for the day are taken (if any). The start and finish markers are placed at the first and last valid registered position. This is not nessesary the actual start and finish position, if GSM or GPS signals was not available.

Goto: 2011-12-02 2011-12-04 Colombia

2011-12-03:

29
Distance today: 41.0 km (Accumulated: 30910.0 km)
Elapsed time: 03:20:12
Country: Colombia

Start 09:07am., 24c, light rain & no wind, at km-stone "2/5007" on hwy. 50 to Bogota. Finish 13:32pm., 35c, very humid, cloudy & no wind, at white city-sign "Honda" on hwy. 50 to Bogota.

Last mountains !

Today's main challenge was the last part of the steep descend from the 3.7km alt. pass two days ago. It certainly was fealt in the legs that this is the second day with almost only downhill throughout the run - the front legmuscles taking a solid beating. I am definately happy that it should be more or less flat from here on; not only in direction North through Colombia but also the rest of the run towards the finish which is around 9000km away now.

Today's after-run pictures offer a few glimpses of the daily streetlife in Honda. If you compare w. yesterdays pictures from the mountainvillage Fresno I think you'll se a fairly big difference.. The difference between the charming sleepy small settlements in the Andes Mountains and medium-size cities with their life in-the-fast-lane, people busy and always salsa, rumba or other latin music streaming out from a house, shop, restaurant or dancehall :-) Or as today, just below my hotelroom ;-))

Christmas calender, day 3:

There are many physical exercises wich can assist in preventing injuries, overuse or un-balnce in the body during longdistance training (and some of them will come later on in the calendar). But to me the most essential exercise is a basic mobility & strength training of the feet and ancles.

Its nothing fancy or time,consuming; just 3-5minutes each day, for example while watching tv, reading the newspaper or at work. The main part is to train the strength and coordination of the feet: To 'make a fist' with the foot & toes, hold the tension of the muscles for about 5seconds, then relax the foot, then bend the toes upwards, the muscle tension also to be held 5seconds; then relax and over again. To be repeated no more than 4-6 times. You can also do the pencil-exercise instead: picking up a pencil from the floor w. the feet, holding it for a few seconds, letting it drop, picking it up again etc.

The other part of the exercise focuses on coordination and movement of the ancle joint: move the foot firmly but not using too much force, in a square - rotating the foot to the right, then down, then left, then up; draving' a quadrant. To be repeated 4-6 times too.

The idea beind these simple exercises are that the feet are the first part of the body wich get in contact w. the ground when doing a running-step. If you give your body the strength, coordination and flexibility to control the landing then you enable your body to become much more efficient in controlling how the force of the impact of each running step is distributed up through the body.
On the other hand, if you have weak footmuscles and low coordination/control (as I guess most have if they doesnt train it consiously) then its easy to for example slide inwards or outwards in the landing and thus letting a harmfull movement follow up through the body - possibly straining the achilles tendons, the knees or the back/spine.

Its perhaps to over-theorise' a simple thing, but I suspect that the most important single reasons to why I have had only two injuries (both a knee injury lasting 4-5 days) in 28y. of competetive running or 1 ½ times around the world in wr1 & wr2 is due to listening to the body's signals each day of training and the little foot-exercise. I stumbled upon it by coincidense the same year I took up longdistance running when I was 13y. old and since then the only times when there has been more than light injury symptoms has been when I've become 'lazy', or curious, and have stopped doing the feet-training for a few weeks.. Then problems begin fairly quickly if I'm in heavy training in relation to championships or out on the road in the world runs.