Friday, December 12, 2014

LYNO

OK so if you have been reading this blog for some time you will know that I'm injured and have been for a long time. So I can run, but not the way I want too, I can't come into the home straight and kick for the finish... "Cross Training": I might be up for a waltz, but there won't be any "Murder On The Dance Floor".

Clear the dance floor I'm on fire!
Back to the injury, I look at it this way:

You get 2 types of injuries...
  • Acute injuries, like when you twist an ankle on the dance floor!
  • Overuse injuries, Like what I have...
Now if you run perfectly you really shouldn't ever get an overuse injury unless you do something stupid like run 1000 miles on a camber!

With very few injuries over the last 30+ years of running I would say I run OK, so why the injury now? I can't answer that but there are a number of things that could be the cause and I'm not going to get into that now (it could turn into a blog on it's own!), the question now is where to from here?

On Facebook I saw that Benita was hosting a LYNOTHERAPY course and was looking for models (imagine me on the catwalk!) to be assessed... I put my name down!

Think of it like this: your car has one wheel that is wearing flat on the one side, now you could just change the wheel and drive on, but the wheel will just wear again, so what do you do? You take it for wheel alignment and your problem is solved, RIGHT? So why not with your body!

OK so if you were standing/sitting in front of a physio, you would be telling them where it hurts! While with Benita things are very different! While knowing where you hurt is important, it's not what she's interested in! She looks at you, she bends/moves your legs and arms to see how your body moves! (There are also a couple exercises she makes you do!) Each movement she records on her clipboard so she get a full picture of how unbalanced you are!

Then the treatment starts... I read the theory like this:

If your left leg only bends 90* while the right leg moves 115* you have a problem and she will aim at getting them the same...

Look there is a lot more to it than that, but that is the simple idea, so with the "wheel alignment" fixed the injury will come right!

If you want to know more about it have a look at her website:


Then get your running back on track!

Running off into the sunset!

Wednesday, December 10, 2014

BIRTHDAY 2014

Some people sleep late on their birthday, me on the other hand... I was up at 05h00 to meet a friend at Constantia Nek. Last year Ake had joined me for 3 hours of mountain trail running... This year I didn't have that sort of time as the day was full, in fact the weekend was full and it was only Thursday!

While I had asked a couple of guys if they had wanted to join me only Katya found the time. (It could have been the early morning or the fact that it was a week day, I don't know!)

It was such a perfect morning we could have met at 05h00, the mountain was ready for us... We weren't the only ones up there as we caught someone else venturing out before the rest of the Mother City woke!

the first bit of sun!

The top was deserted and full of morning magic, will have to do this again...

I would have love to have spent 3-4 hours exploring every single track again, but my day was not ending there I had places to go and people to see...

Katya took the picture...
By 09h30 I was home after fulling the car with petrol and a case of beer! That is not all the bags were packed and I was infront of the PC...

Entries for the Two Oceans trail opened at 10h00 and in order to get an entry you need to be sitting there waiting for the site to open.

With the entry confirmed we packed the bags and the dogs and headed out to the wine country for a few days...

Vineyards forever...
We only stopped at 4 farms before reaching Mcgregor the little town we were staying at for a couple of nights.

Hurry up with the key
Since it wasn't a hot evening, and with the cloud cover and few drops of rain had cooled it down enough to really settle in for the night...

What more could a man want?
The next morning started like any other morning which doesn't include work...

Running on the mountain
I had to go looking for trails to run on and I was lucky to end up on top for the mountain... it wasn't a long run, but just enough to stretch the legs and shake out the cobwebs befor we hit the wine farms again...

Let's go wine tasting!
7 wine farms later it was time to head back to our little cottage...

OK I took this as we were leaving in the morning
Come Saturday mornng and it was time to drive the 200km home so there wasn't time to explore the other mountains around Mcgregor. Don't worry I did have time to head out for a run, but the the sun rising and the thermoneter heading to 30*c I didn't want to be out there for more than an hour... I stuck to a gravel road and after a couple of km decided that since we had a couple of friends coming over that evening I had better earn the right to eat... So I upped the pace and ran 6km tempo before taking a single track back to the cottage!

It was after 13h00 when we got home (maybe we shouldn't have stopped at another wine farm!) and with guests arriving from 18h30 there was no time to sit around... While Dawn hit the shops for a few things I headed for the kitchen!

Remember I had bought beer before leaving? Well other than needing a couple of beers to drink I also make a beer bread...

It didn't last long