Running

Also prompted me to get round to entering Bowstones on NYE, turns out it's full :(

Think there's a transfer process you can get a space via, check fb group. I got my entry in in time, looking forward to it.

I've got a slight soreness in the top of my foot and have just been googling foot anatomy to try and describe it.

The pain is located on the instep in the area around the medial cuneiform bone, or where the tibialis anterior tendon seems to run over the top of it. On my feet this area seems to have a slightly raised bone which doesn't seem to appear on many of the anatomy diagrams.

For me it feels like I have bruised it (possibly by having my new spikes too tight in Sunday's XC) but this isn't the first time it's been sore so I wonder if other shoes also aggravate it?

Anyone else suffer from this? Any suggestions? I was wondering about trying some funky lacing on my spikes if it persists.

I'll have a look at that, might just come along and heckle instead...

Theres so much going on within feet and hands.
Heres a few pics of a foot in various states of undress..
The wide band of the Cruciate Crural ligament could be the "raised bone" your feeling. This holds the tendons inplace over the top of the foot/ankle joint.

Ligaments/connective tisue are shown in white
Nerves are thin yellow lines
Veins are thin blue lines
Arteries are thin red lines

Hopefully those are a help in pinpointing what you've brused or aggravated

6 Attachments

It'll be nice to be heckled, see you there!

A slightly disappointing 6th. I got to the top of the second hill and my legs wouldn't go on the flat. It is my longest run duration wise since the summer in the Alps and there we were having photograph stops. If I were to do it again it would involve some proper hill training and not running with a rucksack.

5:34 is a very tidy xc pace. roll on the Vets. where is that?

Did someone say undulating? Did the Cardington Cracker at the weekend, after missing it last year.

Had a decent race, lost about 10 places after a big fall descending Caer Caradoc and landing in some rocks. Still got a dead leg and a load of scrapes now.

Had XC on Saturday too, that was a bit less interesting.

Sounds like an excellent warm-up for North Downs next June. Definitely no rucksack required there.
The Southern Vets is Horspath near Oxford. Herne Hill and Brighton looking strong apparently.

I get a very similar pain. I even got it last night. The main cause for me is doing up my laces too tight, especially at the top by the knot. My running shop, which includes a sports injuries clinic, does say that overtightening the laces is a major cause of the injuries that they deal with.

+1 if I pull the locklaces too tight they cause pain here after a while.

@ewanmac and @The_Seldom_Killer.
If you often overtighten your laces, try tying them with your foot dorsiflexed (flexed upwards) as that position will probably be largest size around your foot. That way they should never be a point where the trainer pinches your foot whilst running...
Compare it to tying the laces with your foot in plantar flexion and you will probably notice them get very tight when you dorsiflex.

Loop/lock lacing the top of your trainers gives an extra couple of passes of lace right at the top, which then doesn't stretch so much under load. So you dont need to tie them quite so tight to prevent the trainer slipping on your heel.

Horspath is a great XC course. Attack the hill!

Ah, course knowledge. What's the surface like? Grass, mud, stony trails? If by "attack" you mean gurn like a loon, I'll give it a go.

Ran with them last night, decent group and I enjoy the casual commitment (plus ending a run in a beer shop albeit counter intuitive to gains is a nice touch).

Start in a field, which was bone dry back in October, then a hill with a mostly sandy surface up and down. We did two laps of that then back along a muddy woodline and through the fields to finish.

I could have done with road shoes frankly, was so dry. Did it in X-Talons though because it was so dry and there was a section where running down the middle of the tarmac path was faster than the grass verges. Definitely worth recceing the descent, it's hairy for a cross country course but useful for closing gaps if you can run it.

It's one of my favourites, had much better results there than on other courses.

This was our course: https://www.strava.com/activities/745482574

Really useful especially the Strava link, thanks! I've got in the habit of course reccying in XTalon 190s so I'll have those and the spikes to choose from. Either way I'm bound to lose places on the downhill so definitely need to blast it on the way up. 500+ ft over 5 miles is pretty hilly, looks like an interesting course.

IIRC The key thing to note on the downhills is that there are "steps" on the way down. It's a sort of gravelly/muddy path strait down the hill but every few metres there is a plank in the ground to stop all the dirt rolling downhill. Last time I ran there I got the feeling most people were descending pretty gingerly whereas I felt pretty happy bounding down there. It's definitely worth a recce though. My main worry would be carrying too much speed into the corners. (I'll have a look to see if I can find a photo that shows the surface)

I've raced XC there once or twice and used to run around Shotover quite a lot on training runs. I didn't own spikes at the time so it's hard to make a comparison but I've run those trails tens of times in Xtalons and never felt unsteady.

The other bit of advice I've heard from experienced local racers is to keep pushing over the false flat at the top of the hill. If you look at the strava link the main part of the hill runs all the way up until you get to Old Road. At that point you turn left and run parallel to old road on a sort of open grassy boggy track that runs parallel to the road... it looks flat but it isn't, and local knowledge says that that section is where the race can be won. Most people will be flagging at the top of the main section of hill so if you can get a gap on the false flat section then all you need to do is hold on on the long descent all the way to the finish.

keep pushing over the false flat at the top of the hill

This is good advice for any xc course with false flat, so many runners seem to back off where keeping the gas on will gain plenty of places. There are 2 points like this at Heaton Park where I raced last weekend.

Great stuff, thanks guys.
I repeated last Thursday's "mini-taper" tempo run this morning in Greenwich Park, and managed to run the same pace (5:46/m) for an extra mile, 5 rather than 4 (9 miles total), feeling a little more comfortable. I often measure my tempo efforts by whether I can maintain a 2/2 breathing pattern (breathe in for 2 steps, out for 2), without resorting to 2 in/1 out, which seems to correspond roughly to ~MP vs. threshold intensity or quicker, and I managed to hold on all the way today, so that was pleasing. Looks like I'll be blowing out me arse on Saturday. Should be fun.

Very good point about the steps. I was taking places up and down but losing out a bit on the flat bits, as usual.

How was it?

Hope it went well for @PhilPub

I'm near Brentford next weekend and may go Parkrun... which is more fun locally Osterley, Old Deer, or Gunnersbury? All a nice warmup jog from where I'm staying.

I'm hearing they changed up the course @PhilPub...

I do Gunnersbury fairly regularly. It's pretty friendly; the winter course is all on tarmac paths, downhill at the start, uphill at the end. Haven't been to any of the others, I think Osterley is the smallest and the most off road of those three.

Ta, probably head to Osterly if I do any as hopefully softer underfoot being off-road.