Category Archives: Pool Running

National Running Day

Posted in injuries, Pool Running, Posterior tibial tendinitis, Running by

Today was National Running Day. I went swimming for an hour to celebrate. I would rather have gone for a nice outdoor run but with the ankle issue, I can’t. So, into the pool I go.

I am sort of excited about one running related thing that happened today. My Runners Rehab kit arrived from AquaJogger. This kit includes an AquaJogger belt, some funky little floaty shoes, a tether, and some triangular dumb bells.

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Nope, not gonna look dorky at all in that getup…

The belt is the only critical piece of the kit – you pretty much can’t do pool running in deep water without it. The other items – shoes, dumb bells, tether, are mainly intended to increase resistance. I intend to use the shoes and belt every time I do this because I have a hard time feeling my legs without the shoes. I think I need a little more resistance. Not sure about the dumb bells, and I probably won’t use the tether until I start transitioning my running back onto dry land.

In other running related news, I also had an MRI this morning for my ankle. That meant 35 minutes with my ankle locked into a flexed position and inserted inside a very loud and clanging machine. You cannot move at all while they are taking images, which is tough because each of the images takes 4 or so minutes to be done, and they take 10 of them. And the machine sometimes causes your muscles to twitch from the magnets (or something). I got yelled at a couple of times for involuntary movements, but overall they said they got a good image quality.

It was a very long and uncomfortable 35 minutes. But in a day or so I will finally have definitive information about my ankle, and once I have that, I’ll be able to start formulating some kind of plan for how to get this thing healed up. So, I’m glad it’s finally done.

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Pool Running

Posted in Cross training, General Fitness, Health and Fitness, Pool Running, Workouts by

On Monday, I still thought I had a plan in place whereby I would be getting back to running and doing PT and all would be well, but I also knew I was having ankle pain and that when that is the case, running on it was not a great idea. So, since Monday was supposed to be a running day, I decided to try something new: pool running.

However, what I did not do was actually investigate ahead of time how you are supposed to do pool running. I mean, it sounds like the name tells you what you need to know: get in the pool and start running. Right?

But no. There is a right way and a wrong way, and there is a bit more to it than just dunk and go. Although, that was my approach. I just went to the pool and found an open lane. It happened to be about 3.5 feet deep. My legs would be underwater, I figured that was probably enough, so I jumped in and started to run.

It didn’t feel so great. There was still quite a bit of impact on the ankle, it was very hard to stabilize the foot underwater for the landings, and the tile tears up the bottom of the feet. So, my little experiment was sort of a failure.

Being the sort of person I am (shoot first, ask questions later) I decided to go home and figure out why what I was doing didn’t work.

For starters, you are supposed to be completely submerged. Most sources recommend you do pool running in 5′ or more of water. Your feet should not be touching bottom. As you are running completely submerged (well, except for your head of course), there will be no impact on the foot structures. This is the part that is important for injured runners such as yours truly to prevent reinjury.

You are also supposed to try to maintain proper running form – standing tall, high cadence, etc. You basically are just running in place, or with slight forward motion, under the water. This is the part that provides running specific training. Evidently your body will try to turn this into a dog paddle or half baked swimming, so you are supposed to be wearing some sort of flotation device so that your legs are working on running, and not trying to keep you afloat.

There is also another type of pool running that involves a tether and not being completely submerged, but that isn’t what you want to be doing with an injury.

This following video gives a good overview of how to do a pool running workout.

Some other resources I found helpful include:
Pool Running and Why You Are Doing it Wrong from StrengthRunning
Head for the Pool from Runners World
Best Pool Running Workouts by Eat Run Read

Now that I know what I was doing wrong, I will probably try this again the right way and maybe incorporate pool running in place of regular running in my workout plan.

So I guess I can keep being the Eat and Run Mom – I might just be doing the running in the pool for a while.

Your turn:

Pool running: have you tried it?
What other exercise is good for injured runners?