When I was doing a lot of endurance sports and triathlons, I started to notice something with the runners.
People would run fast down the hill, run fast up the hill, or try to run the fastest on the “nice flat” sections.
When we start to look at running efficiency as a maintenance of sound running “posture,” (like many movements), then we notice something interesting.
When people get tired, they tend to “fold” forward at the hip and lean into the run. The gait changes to a “heel strike” and their posture slouches and they slow down.
There is one place where almost everyone gets tired: cresting over the top of a hill.
They climb the hill, wilfully push through to try and maintain pace up the hill, then almost fold over as they shuffled to catch their breath once they were over the crest.
Soon in my races, I was constantly looking for hills. It turned out, you could maintain a consistent pace up the hill, without going too hard, and then really focus on maintaining posture and turnover once you crested the hill.
Relative to the others, this feels like an acceleration over the top. You pass a lot of people.
Sometimes when we overcome a hurdle or resistance, we can feel like we failed, we come to a standstill. A lot of times we feel the need to really dissect what happened.
Often though, even though talking through it a lot might seem like it makes us feel a little better, this can also be the perfect time to regain posture and momentum and get straight back into it.
