Lately, the Mach 12 has also been my racing shoe of choice. I finished second overall in a small, local 5K in them (my best ever finishing place), and I set a 4-mile PR in them on a very hilly course in early July. Their light weight and low ride makes them an ideal shoe for running fast!The Brooks Mach 12 is a super-light, great looking shoe that is well-designed for speed – with my recent race performances as an indication, it has certainly proved itself to me. In a market where so-called “minimalist” shoes are starting to pop up all over (many costing upwards of $100), being able to purchase a low drop shoe that is built Nike Air Max 1 Dames close to the ground for less than $50 www.emilytorino.it (see Running Warehouse link below) makes the Mach 12 a great choice for anyone wishing to experiment with less shoe without breaking the bank. Who knows, as some of my friends have discovered with the Mach 11, you might just decide that you don’t need anything more!I’m fairly well convinced at this point that runners will do just about anything to get in their miles. With this in mind, I wanted feature the ingenuity (and perhaps slight insanity, but who am I to talk after running 15 miles last weekend in toe shoes?) of a local New Hampshire running friend.One of the challenges we face while trail running up here in the summer are deer flies. They’re a major annoyance whenever you enter the woods, and advice on dealing with them ranges from sticking a fern frond in your hat so that it extends Adidas Campus Femme vertically from your head (apparently they Nike Air Max 270 Womens aim for the highest spot, and you get to look like a crazy person while you run), or the more common advice to simply “run faster.”Well, my friend Jim just posted a picture on Facebook showing a little contraption that he made to deal with the flies so that he could continue to get in his runs on his favorite trails. He coated a plastic cup with some sticky stuff called Tanglefoot, pinned it to his running hat, and took off through the woods. Here’s what he had to say: “One “trolling deer fly trap” + one slow jog on the local trails = 50+ deer flies, DEAD!!! Silly, fun, and effective. I shall reclaim my beloved trails now, thankyouverymuch.” The photographic evidence is below – I’d love to hear what his wife had to say about this!Last week fellow running scientist/blogger Steve Magness put up Nike Air Max 90 Womens a long, thorough post explaining his Nike Air Max TN Donne thoughts about “How to Run.” One of the things I found interesting about his post was his discussion of the use of “cues” to help one improve running form. Often, as Magness admits, the cues are an exaggeration of what happens in reality, the purpose there being to get a runner to change form in the direction wanted by thinking in terms of a cue that overshoots the actual goal. As an example, here’s what Magness has to say about cues used with the goal of getting a runner to shorten their stride (to avoid overstriding – more on this below) and adopt a more midfoot/forefoot footstrike“Sometimes when giving cues it helps to overemphasize the point, such as telling a runner to feel like they are putting their feet down behind them when correcting foot strike. Since “normal” is incorrect, such as Nike Air Max 95 Dam reaching out and heel striking in this Nike Air Max 90 Womens example, sometimes over-correcting is necessary initially.”As indicated, the basic goal of the above cue is to help a runner to avoid overstriding (see picture below), which is when a runner reaches out ahead of the body with the lead foot and (typically) heel strikes with an extended leg (I should emphasize that overstriding and heel striking are not necessarily always linked). Overstriding is linked to the generation of braking forces and deceleration of the body upon footstrike, reducing efficiency and potentially increasing risk of injury due to impact shock transmitting up the leg. While there is debate about a lot of aspects of running form, avoidance of overstriding is one thing that most people seem to agree about (though some have questioned if we even have an accurate definition of Nike Air Max 270 Dames overstriding). Returning to Steve’s Nike Air Max 270 Femme cue, the reality is that the runner will never “put the foot down behind them,” but consciously thinking about this cue can help the runner to land closer to their center of mass and avoid the dreaded overstride.