Well, there's another day that just drifted away. They slip past almost unnoticed, one by one by one. And they're busy days, full of work and family and everything else that matters. Until you suddenly sit up and think, hey, it's nearly the end of April, that's another month lost by stealth, another month without running. And you start to realize what it means, that yet another season is just going to pass you by. It's a cold feeling in the pit of your gut, to face up to the fact that all those races you had hoped to enter for the first time in, what, 3 years? will be run without you. Oh, just checked, 4 years. This will be my 4th year without a single race from the spring/summer program. But it's not even the racing, or the CI of a sub 6 minute mile before Lori - it's the horrible thought that I haven't run since early February. What? How? Why? And I've worked on the phlegmatic and I've worked on the philosophical and I've worked on the optimistic and I've done all the XXXXing boring exercises that the physio reckoned would sort out this sore knee in 8 weeks.... and you start to lose hope when there's just no traction, that, actually, it's not improving, that it's not making a difference, that, if anything, it's getting worse. Going down stairs, going up stairs, any kind of knee bend, but especially, yikes, especially, the dreaded pistol squat, gives the distinct impression that someone is trying to lever off my kneecap with a crowbar. Knee tracking problems, apparently. Weak quad muscles, they reckon. But giving it a name and a diagnosis and a whole heap of corrective strengthening exercises hasn't changed a damn thing. And so the sense of something slipping away increases. Oh, I plug away. I keep doing the fitball core stuff, if only because a six pack at my age is no small achievement. And I stand dutifully on the slant board, though more out of habit that any sense that it will be of any immediate use. But it's so frustrating, because it seemed so close to realizing the dream of just being able to run and run and run...

Sorry, very depressing post. Needed to get it off my chest.

It was too beautiful a day to resist. Breathless, slightly chilly, but glorious spring sunshine; perfect running weather. And I had to go into town anyway, so I slipped quietly out of work and tried a cautious mile down to the bike shop. And I didn't collapse in agony on the side of the road. My knee held up pretty well, perhaps feeling very slightly sore in the last 100m or so. And I didn't seem to have forgotten running form, and with lots of things to think about it may even have improved. Fast into the knee drive... and then let the ground come to you - be patient. I was worried this would slow that hard won high cadence, but no, spot on 180bpm, straight out of the box. Running (even!) taller, straighter - could I feel those fitball lunges coming into play? No idea of pace, no idea of HR, but it felt effortless. I could imagine running 50 miles with that kind of efficiency. And, oh, the feeling of sun and wind on face and skin.

There's lots still to do, particularly on getting this knee strong. It's not just building up the non-existent quads - it's getting them to fire appropriately - they have an annoying habit of sagging on the slant board, even with my knee locked out - I have to watch them in the mirror and consciously tense them up again. But it's getting there. I can even do pistol squats, provided I've got support on either side so that the knee doesn't take all my weight on the way down. Cheating? Probably, but it feels like work and the right muscles are getting tired.

Blah blah blah.

A query for Eric. I'm trying to stay positive about this knee pain that's stopped me running, and I'm trying to address it by figuring out what is wrong with my run form. In The CI, there's a list of Common Run Form Mistakes, and I'm wondering if my knee pain, tight IT band and tight hip flexors are the result of being a "bender". Just to clarify, is a "bender" someone who runs with excessively bent legs (that do straighten with take-off), or someone who never straightens their legs at all?

I'm starting to feel that running at 47 is like being the owner of a vintage classic car. I'd like to think that I have an old MG, though it's closer to an Austin 7, but the analogy still holds. Basically, to keep this old banger on the road requires constant maintenance and attention. That's OK as far as it goes, but the problem is that no sooner have I fixed the gear box than the gaskets blow. I sort out the gaskets and the suspension goes. I invest time and effort mending the suspension, and the drive shaft promptly snaps.

Basically, I'm cronked again. I fixed that dodgy glute, reinforced those feeble calf muscles, sorted the over stride and the knee drive, could represent the UK at can-openers on the fitball at the Olympics.... but my left knee is still hurting for some unfathomable reason.

Heigh ho, back into the workshop, out with the toolkit and the maintenance manual... this old model T is getting back on the road one way or another...

In the French Foreign Legion, new recruits are expected to learn French. More to the point, when disassembling and reassembling a rifle, they are expected to know the French names of all the components. Recruits who cannot instantly recall the correct term, are hit with that part.

I was thinking of this today as I reflected on how much my knowledge of human leg anatomy has advanced in recent years. mainly as a result of particular muscles getting sore or hurt. A lazy gluteus medius took me out of running for half a year - more recently, in an over-enthusiastic attempt to get it firing (and alleviate IT band soreness ), I managed to tear it. And I'd always assumed glute muscles were just too big and powerful to ever get injured. The transition to forefoot running took me through all the muscles of the calf, as my soleus,  gastrocnemius, entensor digitorum longus and peroneus longus all took the strain. And the pain. Thanks to the slant board, these are now all now bull-calf strong, but there's plenty more relevant muscles and plenty more anatomy for me to learn. Latest is the tibialis anterior, the muscle at the front of the shin. Pulls the foot up and helps flex it inwards. I've no idea what it's suddenly complaining about - it's not like it has to do a whole lot - but yikes it hurts on downhill stretches, my left leg almost buckling under me. Needless to say, it's stopping me running. Massage, ice, rest, the usual.

Any suggestions on how to strengthen this one gratefully received...

So, let's ignore iffy one mile test objectives for the moment. After all, my main CI for this year, and every year, is to run injury free and as often as possible with my wife. But I'm not a miler, I would never run a mile race, it really isn't a major preoccupation of my running aims - apart from some curiosity in whether Lori or I will get there first. In any case, Eric's training programs are about speed and endurance over longer distances.

Which is great, because I do enjoy running 10K races and the occasional half marathon. Yet I haven't entered a race for ages (summer 2010 was my last) because of persistent injury. And then I read Born to Run and was really struck by Eric's words to Chris - "you're like everyone else, you don't know what you're doing." And that really started the long, slow journey back to running consistently. So maybe I'll be able to enter a few 10K races this year. Perhaps I'll run some PBs, perhaps not. But that's not much of a CI.

And then today, as I set out on a week or so of running for the thrill of running - my reward to myself for finishing Phase 1 and a short break before starting Phase 2, I thought, hey, how about trying to beat all the PBs for all our local routes? We've loads of these, built up from The Time Before Children when we ran together all the time, going as fast as we could, not a clue about training, racing each other, and having an absolute blast. We gave them names - The Horse Course, Hatching Lane Half Hour, the long Swinbrook via Langley - and we (I) recorded the times...

so I ran the short Swinbrook via Fordwells today, 7.4 miles along empty country lanes, and with a couple of killer hills, the second about 2 miles long, a real leg and lung buster. But now I love hills, I go at them "like kids churning through a leaf pile" to quote my favorite bit of B2R ("and they sure as hell aint laughing about it" :-)). The whole thing felt utterly fantastic. I've still got a huge grin. And to cap it, the 59'45" time knocked 4 minutes off my previous best for this route, from March 2010. One down, a dozen or so to go...

Thanks Lori and Jason for the encouraging words! I'm planning on taking ten days/2 weeks out to recuperate a bit, do some general running with Kath, my wife, and enjoy the freedom of running without the HRM and GPS keeping me under surveillance... and then I'll launch into Phase 2 when the days will be a bit longer and the trails, maybe, a bit drier. I'm limited to road running at the moment on this drowning island and I'd like some variety.

Anyway, the mile test. This wasn't at the Roger Bannister track, that's for next time (and, as you'll see, I want to repeat this test), it was where I did the original test back in October when I started Phase 1. University Parks, Oxford, a beautiful circuit of a really lovely public park. 6'20" I recorded then, though it was without the GPS so I had suspicions at the time that it wasn't a full mile....

Now one of the joys of Phase 1 is that I deliberately haven't set any targets, haven't entered any races, I didn't want to build up a whole load of hope and excitement and expectation, and then get injured - that used to happen a lot. I just wanted to enjoy the running and the process of training and improving. But, I did have one small goal...

...which was to go under 6 minutes (before Lori gets there!). I've no idea how realistic it is to knock 20 seconds off a mile time after 12 weeks of training, but I was significantly lighter and had made significant progress with form. Plus I was hitting 5'30" pace easily on the 30 second speed ups, and topping 4'20" pace on the sprints (aside: amazed that people can go at sub 4' pace for a mile! and 5' pace for 26 miles!). 

I formulated a strategy. Go off at 6' pace, or close to, and blitz the last minute with my killer 5' sprint! Ahem. Did the warm-up - felt OK - did the speed ups - felt OK. And then set out.... Almost immediately hit 5'45" pace - yikes! way too fast! dial it back! quickly reined it in to 6'05" pace - perfect! 5 minutes of this and then accelerate! It felt fine, relaxed, smooth, easy... but suddenly, and with no conscious move on my part, I was down to 6'20" and stuck there. Try as I might, I couldn't change gear, couldn't shift the pace. It was very odd. Aerobically, I felt great, really strong, much better than I had felt 12 weeks ago - but my legs just weren't doing it. I tried everything - relax, run tall, don't overstride, kneedrivekneedrivekneedrive, dammit, throttle jammed at 6'20". And in the last 20 seconds it all fell away...

Final time, 6'18". I lay on my back in the wet grass and laughed at myself for being so ridiculously over-ambitious. But, and this is why I'm glad I ran it at the same place, my original mile was not a mile. It was at least 10 seconds short of a mile. So I did improve! Yay! Maybe by around 12 seconds. Of course, I've been running all my SPZ sessions too fast! Oh well, they were loads of fun.

And so was the program. Looking forward to the next one. Can I blitz another 18 seconds off the mile? Impossible? That's cool.

Made it. And that in itself is a first. I haven't completed a training program, including 3 of Eric's, in 2 years, as something always breaks down in the 7th or 8th week. The difference? It has to be the slant board. Slavish adherence to the leg strengthening exercises has not quite eliminated tweaks and niggles, but it's a zillion percent better and has kept me running.

And the final run was a joyous way to finish the 12 weeks of running. Setting out into a gale that nearly blew me off my feet and driving rain that stung my face, the first 3 miles were exhilarating, and then I was at the bottom of a valley and the miles just seemed to flow by effortlessly. I felt I could run forever. At one point I had to take off my trainers and socks to wade knee deep through some of this flood water that the UK is slowly disappearing beneath. The last 2 miles, uphill, were starting to feel like work, but the GPS showed later there was no change in pace. Awesome.

So, to the tests! And, living near Oxford, I think I'm going to do my mile test at the Roger Bannister athletics track.... not that his record is any danger, though mine might be. Watch this space!

So, fitball core stuff - sorted. Slant board leg/foot strength - sorted. Time to try those pistol squats. Right leg first... tum ti tum.... OK, not much range of movement, but fine. Down, up, down, up. Left leg.... down....OUCH!!!!! Yikes, that hurt. Tiny little dip and sharp, acute pain on the outside of my knee which feels like it's about to collapse - no strength or support at all. IT band also sore. Something in my left hip also sore. Strange thing is, none of this hurts when I run (unless I overstride on my left leg and get a jarring pain in my knee).

I'm seeing a physio next Monday - something's clearly not right - but any suggestions?

So I was due for one of those slow, steady mitochondria building Zone 2 30 minute type of runs. But I met an old student on my way out who wanted to come. Now she's seriously talented, super quick, and in the past, well, I've managed to stay with her for about a mile before having to collapse quietly in a ditch and throw up. Only reason I can stay with her at all is that she's 16 and some way off her potential. But after 10 weeks of Phase 1? Hey, I stayed with her for over 3 miles (way out of zone, sorry coach!), and hell it was fun and exhilarating and the Garmin chirruped up to point out that I had just obliterated my previous PB for 5K. By 2 minutes. After 3 miles she was still going strong and I made my excuses and relaxed gratefully into the Zone 1 warm down, but it was brilliant fun. Now, if I could just clear up this quirky little injury (see Injury Corner - Eric, I'm booked in to see a physio, but I'd be interested in your views.)

Phase 1 Week 8 Long Run today - I don't have any of that amazing wilderness or bone-achingly cold temperatures - so instead I sploshed my way round the floods of central Oxford, padding down old streets past 15th Century colleges and exploring this beautiful university town for an hour or so. Felt effortless, too (well, for the first 50 minutes at least!).

Big party of friends and relatives on Boxing Day. Someone spots the slant board in the corner of the room. Hey, what's that? Can we try? Suddenly, it's a party game - who can hold position for longest (made more fun by the wine/champagne quotient)? End result, two people have ordered the book and asked me to make them a slant board each... I'm doing my bit for getting a runner in every family!

Eric's training has had other, unexpected effects.

Do you listen to music when you run? I used to. Fast salsa or French Caribbean music for speed sessions, loud, angry live Bob Dylan for the long runs. The fast stuff was great for setting a brisk rhythm, then loud stuff kept me going through the pain of a long hill, or the pain of the last 2 miles of a 13 mile run. It was a motivation and also a distraction - if I was listening to music then there was less of my brain reporting on the ache in my legs.

But that was heel striking. Bash! (onto the heel, braking energies racing up the leg). Grunt! (effect of deceleration). Oooff! (huge muscular effort from hamstrings to power forward with no momentum). No wonder I needed distracting. No wonder it hurt.

But now? Well, one of the things I love about the Eric style is the ease of changing gears. The engine just chugs away at the same revs, and you just adjust the gearing (stride length) according to speed or terrain. Now my long runs are not a battle and I really look forward to hills because I just change gear, stay in HRZ, and float to the top (hmmm, float isn't quite the right word, but you know what I mean).

So I don't need the music anymore and it's great. I'm more in tune with what's happening around me (e.g. early morning bird song), I can chat to my running partner, I'm much more aware of form.

I've tried two different running coaches this year, hoping to get someone with an expert eye to look at my form, and suggest improvements. But finding someone who knows anything about forefoot striking is not easy. My wife eventually found someone styled as the Paleo Runner, and bought me a 2 hour 1 on 1 training session for my birthday. It was certainly interesting. On the one hand, there was a load of stuff I just don't buy - the paleo diet, for one. And as far as running went, he was a Chi runner, so wanted me to use gravity to help me move forward, and to increase cadence to increase pace. Again, I just don't buy this - the only place gravity is ever going to take you is the ground, and all the other on-line coaches that I like and admire agree that 180 ppm is the optimum cadence - and 180 cadence is one of the few things I can actually do. On the other hand, he was a good runner, and did spot my main fault - prancing. I was stepping over those logs OK, but I looked like a prancing horse because I was also over-striding. And in an attempt to run tall and straight, I was actually leaning slightly back, exacerbated again by the overstride. The session was worth it just to get those 2 things sorted - it's made a massive difference to the efficiency and enjoyment of my running.

The second coach was a runner/osteopath and we thought he might be able to offer advice on my calf soreness and my wife's hip soreness. But no. As a devotee of the Alexander technique, he believed that running starts with the head.... at which point I'm afraid he lost me. But he was also a talented runner himself and made some useful suggestions about my arms (which hardly move at all) and my stride pattern, which I've tried to improve subsequently.

So, what am I saying? Um, good running coaches are like hen's teeth. Eric! Come to England for a visit! But having someone cast an eye over your running form is really useful - there's a limit to how much you can self coach.

These CIs are going to seem terribly tame and mundane compared to some of the inspiring examples already posted. But as Eric says in the book, the real point of the CI is the process of getting there, not the actual accomplishment. So I plan to just concentrate on the process and let the accomplishments take me by surprise (at current rates of speed improvement, in six months I'll be completing a 10K before I've actually started, which would surprise everyone!).

So, for 2014, I want to stay injury free and complete both Phases of the running program in the CI book. I've started various Eric programs 5 times now, and not completed one, because I break down at some point. Not this time. Not this year. I also want to run with my wife at least once a month. Living in the middle of nowhere with 3 small children makes this a real challenge, but we both love running together. This year it's going to happen. And in all this running, I'm going to relish every forefoot strike, every knee drive, every glute engagement, because I know of no other activity that makes me feel so alive. And just to stick a number in for the hell of it, I'm going to break 6 minutes for the mile before Lori... ;-)

Taking some time out to let my calf muscles relax and unknot after their hour of cadence work. Soft tissue massage this afternoon. But even on the non-running days I get to have fun on the fitball - the children love crawling underneath while I'm doing rockers as they try to avoid being run over by the big white squishy ball...

Phase 1 Week 7 Day 1
Eric, I just want to say thank you. You've made an immeasurable change to the quality of my life. This program is incredible! Running feels so strong, so easy, so fast. My cadence Zone 2 run today was a 7.5 mile zip through the West Oxfordshire countryside, an amazing 35 seconds per mile quicker than exactly the same run just a month ago. My progress is just amazing - I never thought I could run like this. And all the old aches and niggles and stiffness and chronic injuries in hamstring, adductors, knees have just melted away in the face of correct form and strength exercises. yay for the slant board! I just wish I could shake off a persistent soreness in one or both of my flexor longus muscles/tendons. Am I doing too much? It doesn't feel like it, and my left leg is granite strong, but it's a worry. But otherwise, wow. You really are a miracle worker.

Hi Eric,
I'm into my 2nd week of your 6 week progamme, and it's brilliant -I love the variety, the structure, and learning a new form.  2 questions. The "running on hot coals" and the bare foot sessions, really help with forefoot strike... but when will my calves stop hurting? And I see what you're saying about the importance of high cadence, even at low speeds, but what changes when I want to go faster? I can't increase the cadence, I can't lengthen the stride... so what do I do?

Paul