Originally Posted by XC99TF00
Well, as opposed to everyone else in this thread, the run is my best part. And whoever said earlier to stay on your toes, wow, are you asking for an injury? No offense, but the crashpad in your heal is there for a reason.....In my opinion, unless your biomechanics are extremely poor, first worry about aerobic conditioning, and then worry about form.
Take care.
I'm going to ingnore the tone of this post and agree with most of what was said. A few quick points though:
1) Most people with a swimming background have not extremely poor but APPALING form. The kind that will cause injuries as soon as mileage is increased.
2) Recommendations on foot strike vary tremendously, both in the medical/biomechanical literature and in the philosophy of various coaches (I have worked for years as an orthopedic research engineer). In my experience, older coaches tend to recommend heel-strike while more recently trained coaches tend to recommend midfoot strike (which feels like "on your toes" to most people who heel strike). Personally, by changing from heel-strike to midfoot strike I halted a never-ending cycle of running injuries and watched my times plummet.
Happy running to all.