Cold turkey for me. I had no choice due to severe knee cap pain if I overstrided by an inch.

This is a great time of year to run frequently, slowly and not too far. That's what I did for 6-8 weeks. I did drill sessions twice a week. What worked nicely for me was to take my weekly mileage and spread it over 6 or 7 runs instead of 4. No total mileage increase, so each run was shorter for a while. I got fitter faster and my knee pain gradually went away. Then I upped the mileage. Now that I'm back into full-on cycling training, too, I'm back to 4 runs per week and I can run longer and harder without ill effect. I still do one drill session a week and strides during or after every run.

If you run with headphones, leave them home for a while so you can focus. Do the drills. Don't try to go fast (except during strides drills).

Do the drills. (did I say that already? :-) )

This advice is from a novice runner that barely finishes while there's still muffins left at the local road races. But, I have fun now and my knee doesn't hurt.

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When I changed my form, I went absolutely cold turkey, just went out for a 5 mile run and never looked back. My calves were really, REALLY sore the next day and for the next couple of months, but since that initial "break-in" period, I haven't had any problems. My plantar fascitis (sp?) is gone, the hip pain I would get on occasion is gone and my legs feel (relatively) fresh after every run, as opposed to how tired they were when I was a heel-striker.

(BTW, I changed over to the POSE/forefoot strike method back in April. I didn't buy the POSE video, but I used info I gathered in various places (here, gordo's site, gordonpirie.com) and ventured out on my own.)

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Dave in WI
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"What you once were isn't what you want to be anymore" - Wilco

I know nothing about the Pose method but after reading about running cadence on this and other forms I figured that I needed a change. I have no formal running training and had a slow cadence with longish strides. After the season I decided to force myself to shorten the stride length and go up to ~90 strikes/min(same foot). To do this I set my count-down timer to 30 seconds and count the foot strikes every once in a while. After a few runs it will be easy if you concentrate. Don't listen to music and do shorter runs when starting, also use this cadence ALL of the time and change stride length to change speed (I used to change cadence to change speed). This may be common knowledge for most slowtwitchers but when I run on the treadmill in the gym I see all sorts of running forms.


A

cold turkey right after the 2001 seattle half marathon (my last race each year). I have yet to purchase the pose book or video (though I keep saying I will). I was following the advice from Dan of focusing on cadence and keeping your feet underneath you.

I've added to that over the year romanov's suggestion of thinking about just pulling up the foot, and yessis suggestion of focusing on the knee drive. but to me the basics are still 90+ cadence and don't let your feet get in front.

my calves were tight for 3 months.

I improved my course record on the seattle half (considered to be a hilly course) by 9 min. From 1:38 to 1:29. And was able to have many sub-5 min/mile's during training. Previous best was 6:20, current is 5:33. Even better, I was a pronator before and I'm pretty much neutral these days.

I've been running for years and this is the best thing I've done to improve my times and my joy of running.

Great feedback from all of you, thanks

Barr