Uncover your inner athlete!

Every morning in Africa a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be eaten.. Each morning in Africa a lion awakes - it knows it must run faster than the slowest gazelle or it will starve.


No matter if you are the lion or the gazelle, when the sun comes up you had better be running!



Saturday, March 26, 2011

Long socks and long distance

Anyone who knows me knows that although I am no world champion, I am keen to try any and all methods to improve performance and assist with my own running and also to help improve my knowledge for coaching purposes.

I have for some time now been hearing from friends (especially those who are approaching middle age) about the benefits of running in full compression tights or in compression socks. They have endorsed some of the studies that I have been reading about the compression having a benefit of delaying or reducing the build up of lactate in the legs and hence allowing that turn point to occur later and later in long runs.

One friend in his 50s ran a sub 9 hour Comrades last year in tights and reckoned that without those compression tights he would not have been walking normally the day afterwards. My recent experiments with long socks are that although they look slightly stupid and dorky, they do help me with my long runs and I shall be wearing during this year’s Comrades marathon to give them a proper tryout. As for the long tights, I have only done a few shorter runs in them and although I believe that they work, I find them to be slightly constrictive over my knees when I run.

I would be keen to hear of any experiences that you may have with these sorts of compression garments.

Running together – stride for stride on a life changing ride! – Sean Muller

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