I notice my joints feel better and i dont get injured when i run fast. I feel that when i run at a good fast pace, my legs seem to absorb the impact and i spring forward, thus very little shock goes to my joints, and my knee doesnt hurt. On the contrary, when i run slower, i seem to plod along and the impact seems to go straight to my knee. Has anyone else experienced this? A lot of people say if you have something wrong to take it easy, but i find that the “taking it easy” is what gave me the problem in the first place.
My guess is that this is common. I’m much smoother at faster paces, too.
There is a faster pace where I begin to get "rougher’, though, but, I’m already at an unsustainable fast pace due to high heartrate before I get to the rougher fast pace stride. It would be nice to be able to run at my fastest smooth pace for long periods of time…I still might not be considered to be fast…but, at least I’d be faster!
I think this is one of the reasons it is important to train at the speed you’ll be running on your longest races (even if you have to hold back to do it)…to get used to your personal mechanics of running your actual long race pace. I find at some point, I’m better off walking, alternating with running, compared to just schlepping along inefficiently.
I notice the same thing. I think it is mostly because your stride rate increases. It seems to me that the faster your stride rate, the less time your body has to fall toward the road and thus the less shock you will have with each stride. This sounds like the Pose technique restated. Maybe we need to learn to run slowly with the same form we use when running fast.