Running in the dark and hills and marathon training

As I prepare for the Akron Marathon I am determined not to be burned by the hills from mile 15-22, and my training has mirrored this. I am incorporating much more hill running, and today to simulate the race I ran a 6 mile tempo run and then hit the hills fatigued to get used to the pain. It worked wonderfully, and I will probably do it again. The most exciting part of the run came at the beginning. I was running down a significant hill near my house. It is such a hill, that the sidewalk has stairs to help people go up and down. I usually don't run down the stairs, but try to stay with the steep slope of the road. I wear a red flashing light when I run in the dark as to be seen by all the oncoming traffic.

I was headed down such hill in the wee hours of the morning and noticed that a car was coming up, and of course it had its headlights on because it was dark. I moved from the road to the stairs to avoid the possibility of a head on collision with the vehicle (a battle that I would surely lose) and continued on my merry way. As the car passed me (again, with its headlights on) the passenger leaned out his window and yelled "Booo!"

Seriously.

Who passes a runner running in the opposite direction of their vehicle at 5 am and offer commentary that is appropriate for a sneak attack. Personally, I would have felt better if he said something derogatory towards me or my family than this. I could understand if they were passing me from behind with their lights off and the engine off in stealth mode, but head on? Give me a break.

Kinesio-tape

While watching the Olympics over the past weeks, I have noticed a little bit of kinesio-tape on some of the athletes in the events.  To begin with, I do not use it, nor do I know too much about it.  Do I believe it "works?" Probably, almost everything does a little bit.  While in chiropractic college we had a little seminar/presentation about kinesio-tape.  This presentation was given to chiropractic students and chiropractors (a population that has a greater than average understanding of human physiology and biomechanics), and the presenter focused on the fact that professional teams and athletes use the tape.  In fact, she had a handout with pictures of prominent athletes who use the tape.  For me, I would rather know the science, theory, and thought behind a therapy than who uses it.  As long as the idea is logical and reasonable, I don't have any issues with the procedure and consider the validity of it.  That particular presentation just turned me off to the idea because it was presented to me as if I would be impressed by the individuals receiving it.

Pittsburgh Training

As we continue to prepare for the Great Race. I am amazed by the great places to train here in Pittsburgh. North Park, Riverview Park, and Schenley Park are all wonderful and I am sure the others are just as good. What's most exciting is the diversity in training that we are able to do right here in downtown Pittsburgh. We are able to walk right out of our office downtown and train on a variety of terrains and surfaces all within a 5 minute warm-up jog. Some of my favorites are running around PNC Park and Heinz Field, both of which are less than a 4 mile loop from the office. We also do speed work on the jail trail and the trail on the North Shore. The many bridges offer an effective substitute for small inclined hills. If we want a more substantial incline, that's easy...it's Pittsburgh.

10k training

Our customized training is usually performed in our training studio in downtown Pittsburgh. We have some clients though, that aren't only training for strength, but also want to run and use running as a mechanism to get healthy. We encourage this. We are working with a client who decided he wanted to run a 10k later this year. We have been working on getting in mileage so he can run a quality race. His last race was in 1982, that was also his first, so we started from scratch. He has progressed quite well, and is noticing changes in how he looks and feels. Also, he has received comments from others. We recently set up a mock race for him (5k), and he exceeded our expectations. With a little more training he will be ready for his big race.

House Calls

How many doctors are willing to come to your house? We designed our practice to make the doctors accessible, and in so doing we figured we should offer on site services. The way it works is simple.

We do recommend that the first visit is performed in the office, to make sure we get everything set up right. We can then take our 15 lb portable chiropractic table to your house and give the treatments there. Many people will have problems where they "can't even move" and it's quite a hassle to try to get to the office. In those situations its nice to be able to take our services to them. It's possible because we don't need that much equipment to treat people. There is an increased value in our care when we do this.

We also offer on site fitness training which has been popular and successful with some of the local apartments.

Office Expectations

I have given several tours of the office recently, and try to be the best guide I can. We chose to abandon the typical health care office look for what we consider a more modern feel. Most offices in our area are white walled, sterile, cold looking facilities. We wanted something better, so our walls have color, we try to keep the lights low with the maximum natural light so it feels inviting. Most people who visit us comment on how comfortable the space is.

I believe that people want to feel comfortable at the doctors office, and we are doing our best to change the intimidating and sometimes obnoxious atmosphere. On the other hand maybe the consistency of the white walls and bright paintings are comforting because of conventional expectations of what an office should be.

Ergonomically Designed

We just finished a series of presentations on ergonomics. We usually enjoy giving them, but honestly I was quite worried about this one. Ergonomics is generally tedious, or so I thought. In preparation, we looked at the relevant research and were prepared to discuss proper angles and heights of chairs only to find out that it really didn't matter. Not that ergonomics don't matter, and that you shouldn't try to sit properly and work in good postures, but that the exact angles really didn't show much of a benefit in the research. What really worked is just moving. Taking short breaks and short stretches. So that's what we taught. Amazingly, ergonomics went from memorizing angles to stretching and quick exercises. People were engaged, and surprisingly interested in what we were discussing. I guess ergonomics can be fun.