hometownhero wrote:
Why are Pros always running on the roads or hard surfaces (at least when we see them shooting videos)... These same people seem to be injured all the time.
Why not run on soft surfaces? Wood chips, grass, soft dirt, etc... Seems like a no brainer. What am I missing here?
1) I'd love to know the breakdown of soft surfaces vs track vs roads for pros but if you see them doing a faster effort I bet for 95% of them it's going to be on a track or road because a) the surface is even and b) you can run faster. Some of the point is to get the faster turnover. I guess they could do it on a dirt road, but in some locales that's not possible.
2) If they are doing pickups or something on trails, someone filming it isn't likely to be there as it's a lot harder to film.
3) They can still warmup/cooldown on trails.
HRE wrote:
In my best years I found a long horse trail around a state park that I did most of my running on. I also started having trouble with my legs going dead in the second half of marathons. Eventually I decided the problem was that all that soft surface running wasn't preparing my legs for a long race on a road. So I started running on roads most of the time and the problem went away. It didn't lead to any injury troubles.
I used to wonder why I struggled in the marathon relative to track and I wondered this above but also I wonder if I was wearing too thin shoes. This was pre supershoes and I tried to wear the lightest thing possible which mean no cushioning som of the time.