I just finished reading the book, “Chi Running” last night.
The author and famed ultrarunner, Danny Dreyer, suggests that the runner should imagine that he or she is being pulled forward at the chest to a point forward of the runner, “like he is being pulled forward with a bungee chord.”
This visual image or metaphor of imagining being pulled forward by a “bungee chord” is used throughout the book, to help the runner visualize the proper leaning forward method of running.
Now, if you go outside and practice the techniques suggested in the book, you are thinking, here I am, out here, leaning forward, running, and I am to imagine being pulled forward, at the chest, by a bungee chord, to that spot up there, perhaps to that big rock, or blue Chevy Malibu car, way up there, 300 yards ahead, just like Danny says.
But wait.
Did he say Bungee Chord?
Yes. He did. Bungee Chord. Not a rope, or steel wire. He said, “Bungee Chord.”
Questions. Has Danny ever worked with a bungee chord? Seen people tie them to their ankles and jump off bridges? He realizes does he not, that this is not an ordinary rope, that, tension in a bungee chord is temporary. Or is this a new kind of bungee chord that only Chi Running people have?
They are unlike ones, known to mankind.
If it were truly a bungee chord, you would get pulled ONCE, violently. There would be one violent snap, and you would be slingshotted up to a point, ahead, all at once, fast.
And, as you are screaming forward, catapulted out of control, whipped forward, toward that point, there is no longer any tension in the bungee chord. Tension is RELEASED ONCED. And the sad fact is, Mr. Dreyer, is that the bungee chord is now slack after that first violent pull. To suggest that such an action would cause you to imagine to lean forward, in a regulated manner, places a huge premium on your real world experiences with bungee chords. Yes, Mr. Dreyer, a bungee chord is a rope, but, sir, it is an elastic rope. It is not something, sir, which could ever apply constant, regular, consistent force on you.
We may lean forward from a bungee chord, but that “lean forward,” would be preliminary to the snap, and the breaking of our necks, right before we are slingshotted forward 400 yards, right into the body of that Blue Chevy Malibu.
Maybe what we really wanted to say here is that, in Chi Running, you should imagine being pulled forward from the middle of your chest by a tight steel wire, connected to a wench, at that point up ahead, because, if so, there would be constant tension all the way pulling on you, making you lean forward.
But not by a bungee chord.
It defies physics.
