Knee pain from running down hill, can it be stopped?
If your knees hurt from running, you are definitely NOT alone! Four million Canadian runners who suffer from knee pain every year.
Last month, a team of researchers at the University of Calgary (from the lab where I had my 3D gait analysis done), published a study in the Journal of Athletic Training showing how runners with knee pain can benefit from an intensive hip-strengthening program.
The hip muscles are some of the largest muscles in the body(and therefore technically the strongest too, by design anyhow). They have roles in keep the pelvic level and the knee aligned underneath us. But, I have seen time and time again, runners who have very weak hip muscles. They may not currently be in pain but if they increase their intensity or increase the loads (ie. by running downhill when the body is not used to lots of downhill running), breakdowns can occur.
Is it possible to prevent an ankle sprain?
Trail running is quite popular here in Squamish, due to the fact that we have beautiful spaces to explore right in our backyards. But running on such uneven ground puts us at risk for spraining our ankles, a very common “traumatic” running injury. While there are no guarantees you won’t sprain your ankle, there are a few things to know that could reduce your risk, whether you are a “recurrent sprainer” or someone lucky enough to have never sprained before.
Caffeine for Runners: good or bad?
Great news! Seems that caffeine (and here I am thinking of coffee, in particular) is OK and probably “performance enhancing” for endurance sports people. Good news for us coffee drinkers. But if you aren’t a coffee drinker, should you start???
Here are the pluses to being a coffee-drinking runner:
1. Caffeine isn’t as much of a diuretic as was previously touted, unless taken in high doses, so the fear of dehydration from caffeine is less of a major issue.
2. Caffeine heightens alertness and increases performance, helping athletes runner harder and longer. It makes effort seem easier (by about 6%) with improvements in performance of about 12%, more in longer duration type exercise than shorter (8-20 minutes). It is thought that it increases the concentration of hormone-like substances in the brain called beta endorphins which give us a senes of well-being and reduce our sensation of pain…COOL!
Eating on the Run Part 2
Now for a few specifics about when to eat and how much.
Sports drinks provide easy access carbs for runners
While we vary in how much we weigh and the intensity of our long runs, if you are running less than 75 minutes, you may have enough stored muscle glycogen (aka easily accessible FUEL). At longer than 75 minutes, the sugar in your blood and liver glycogen become fuel. TO have sugar available in the blood stream requires consumption of relatively easy to access carbs (which breakdown to sugar). Simple carbs are easier to take in and turn into “blood sugar” so they seem to be the preferred carb while running.
You could choose to drink your carbs in the form of sports drinks or you could choose bars, gels, goos or gummy type candies. After about 60 minutes of a long run, you should start to consume about 100 calories and after that, 100 calories again every 40-45 minutes.
Knowing these rough guidelines, now comes time to read labels and experiment. For example, I like the Cliff Bloks. There are 30 calories a piece. I’ve found that taking one Blok every 15 minutes starting at the one hour mark gives me the extra boost I need. I find eating any more than that challenging so I could top this up on two hour runs with taking in a bit of sports drink to wash down the Bloks.
Since our long runs will be greater than 75 minutes now, and moving into the 2 hour zone, now is the perfect time to start practicing your feeding strategy!
Find out if runners should “caffeinate” or not
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