Notes
Another day of feeling good! Again, surprised by the pace and just how easy it felt. Before my injury/recovery, my solo runs always had the problem of me going too slow. Now I am running faster than 7min pace normally. It may be euphoria at the moment but it still feels natural and easy.
Another thing about these past couple of runs is that it seems my natural cadence is rising. 83-84 seems to be the new norm. Pretty excited about that. Lots of room for improvement of course but that will come with time. After a few more runs in a row I think I will start throwing in strides.
Once I made the turn onto 38 from Pulpit Rock I ran into Josh and Tim from UML. I had already met Josh last summer but was just meeting Tim today. Josh said my stride looked "way better" than how it did before. Pretty happy to hear that there's already been that noticeable of an improvement. I'm a little concerned about how bad it may or may not have been before, but that's in the past and it's way better now.
And to put it out on the record here, last night I finally did a gait analysis, at least on the treadmill from a side angle. Overall, pretty good, but a couple areas of improvement I saw. First, I have barely any forward trunk lean. It feels like I do when I'm running but maybe not in reality. The second thing is my foot does land very slightly forward of my pelvis. I midfoot strike, and my leg has a slight bend to it when I land, but the foot is out in front slightly.
When I did the analysis I tried a range of speeds from 7:30 pace down to 5:00 pace. At 5 flat I was barely keeping pace, and what I both felt and afterwards saw happening was that my foot was landing more forward than at a slower pace. I think what was happening is I was trying to "stay ahead" of the treadmill by landing closer to the front of the treadmill than the back. That had the effect of pulling my foot farther forward. I think a track/road-based gait analysis is needed in the near future to remove any artificial modifications to my running form the treadmill introduces.