A Swimmer Goes for a Run
For many of us swimmers, RUN is a 4-letter word. Back in middle school, I joined the cross country team only to be left waaaaay behind, and kept getting lost on the unnamed backroads in my rural town. In response, I joined the local age-group swim team, thinking it would be harder to get left too far behind in a 25-yard pool. I found success there, and have only dabbled in running since then. In High School, a track star friend was bad-mouthing swimming, so I challenged him to swim a legal 100 butterfly. He agreed to, but challenged me to complete a legal 400M hurdle event. We both trained and succeeded, but dang that last hurdle looked like a 3 story building. (His last 5 yards of butterfly looked pretty painful, too).
As an adult, I’ve struggled with injuries every time I have tried to consistently run any kind of distance. It’s been a revolving door of calf strains and cramps, plantar fasciitis, and achilles heels. Still, I wanted to run. It’s such a fast way to get into shape, and you can do it almost anywhere. And there’s this cool event called the Casco Bay SwimRun near my home that my friend (and SwimVacation guide) John organizes. You tether yourself to a partner, run across an island, swim to the next one, repeat this over 5 or 6 islands, then run up a steep hill and drink beer and eat lobsters. It’s glorious. I completed it with my wife 5 years ago and badly wanted to do it again. She referred me to a physical therapist that she had been to. I call him Casey the Run Doctor. He works at Maine Feldenkrais and Physical Therapy in Brunswick, Maine.
During my first appointment with Casey, he asked where I was injured. I told him I was not injured, but I soon would be, as I was planning on running. He understood, and had me run a bit while he watched. Then he took a bunch of measurements around my toes, ankles, knees and hips. He prescribed some strengthening and some stretching, but also warned me what NOT to stretch. I needed to balance some things out. My big toes were inflexible, my ankles too flexible. My calves were kinda mushy and loose, and he advised me to NOT stretch those, contrary to everything I have ever read.
My gait was a mess: my stride was too long, and I was running flat-footed with my right foot. I was running with my ankles, and my feet, (small parts) not with my glutes, and hamstrings (bigger parts). Basically, I had been running wrong for about a half century. Casey taught me how to make an arch with my foot, but it took weeks of walking around the house barefoot and concentrating on every step before I could do it consistently. He gave me some foot-coordination drills, some targeted strengthening exercises, lots of jumping. I did everything he told me. I went for short runs. Calf cramps. More strengthening, more stretching. More calf cramps and strains. Keep going, Casey told me. I kept working. 40 heel raises/day, lunges, squats, jumps.
After about a month of work, I stopped getting calf cramps. I increased my weekly totals to 8 miles, with a 3-miler thrown in here and there. It’s Winter in Maine, so my toes often freeze. The roads are covered in grit and salt. Sometimes I run inside on what I used to call the “dreadmill”, but I’ve found it fun to listen to punk rock at varying beats/min to pace myself. When things get hard, I think about the beer and lobster at the end of the long trail.
It has been a really humbling experience. I’m slow. I still need to concentrate on my gait. Throughout this process of becoming a runner, I was often trying to relate the movements required to run efficiently to the movements required to swim efficiently. Concepts like using your big muscles, regulating your breathing, creating the proper structure, and engaging your core are relevant to both disciplines.
Perhaps most importantly, the whole process has made me rethink my approach to helping guests with their strokes on SwimVacation trips. I’ve been somewhat cavalier about instructing them to “just rotate more” or “get your hands in at 10 and 2”, and being confused why they didn’t get it right away. Now I can relate. When I look at my guests’ strokes on our Spring trips, I’m going to have a different point of view. I’m going to spend more time on the basics, do more listening than talking, and have more patience.
I can’t wait to swim with you.
Hopper
