WFR #16: Unplug, or Not! | Wed 29th Oct, 7:30pm | Prospect Park Weekly Form Run

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When: Every Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. (run leaves at 7:37 abouts).

Where: Find The Big Red Pointer(TM) (center of the map, click here).

Distance: A single figure 8 lap of Prospect Park, ~4.6139 miles.

Optional Distance Sub-group: 3 miles or less if that's helpful (please let Run Leaders know).

Today's Direction: Left as you face the park at startup.

Pace: Welcome to all. Fun.

AQI: We're monitoring Air Quality Index here and have been asked to not run if the local index exceeds 125.

New Stuff:

I dragged this week's bubble ("Unplug") to the top of the topics hierarchy and gave it a good shake. The result was this diagram. "Unplug" facilitates both "Arm Swing" and "Quiet Feet".

Just in case you'd like to explore, here's a pretty QR Code for Week #19:

Towards the end of Week #19 Notes (below "The Mantra"TM) there are links to all the WFR weekly topics.

This week's focus: Headphones (AirPods) and Body Awareness (accident avoidance, injury prevention, efficiency - week 16)

TL;DR: Free your ears. Listen to your body. Avoid cars, bikes, electric vehicles (esp. from behind you).

Jeff's well-articulated contribution (Thanks Jeff - it does not get much better than this):

Not to re-open old battles, but…… I’d be a hypocrite to simply recycle/post an old “headphones are bad” post. If I’m not a) running with people b) running a race or c) running in the woods I usually have headphones. 

Are there problems with headphones? Yes, and the post below will go over a bunch that you should consider for both safety and form. That being said, there are ways to run with headphones to mitigate these issues. Want to avoid hearing damage? Keep the volume down. Want to hear your surroundings? Keep the volume down, don’t use noise canceling, turn on transparency, or use bone conduction headphones. Want to avoid extra weight or asymmetric weight distribution? Earbuds with integrated storage, watches with storage, extremely small devices, etc. There are also reports that listening to music while you run could be beneficial (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1469029202000419 or this blog shoes 2012 study showing that running to up-tempo music helps to actually decrease energy expenditure because you get in a rhythm. ) 

All that being said, the counter arguments are real. Whether it is hearing your surroundings for safety or monitoring form (foot strikes, breathing), you are likely not going to pay as much attention with music on. 

I’ll close this section with a couple of last thoughts relevant to WFR. Headphones can make conversations on a group run difficult/impossible, and leaving the headphones home occasionally allows you to focus on audible feedback on your form. It's also possible to over-focus on what you're doing while racing (thanks again Jeff for more recent information). With all that in mind, I’ll see you Wednesday, without headphones, so we can concentrate on our weekly forms. 

Let me preface this by saying MANY PEOPLE MAY BE OFFENDED BY THE FOLLOWING:

Good, I'm glad you decided to keep reading. Because surprising as it may seem, running with music can have a significant impact on your running form, can hold you back from improving as a runner and even be the cause of injury.

As runners we need to heighten our body awareness. 

Without music you can start to learn to listen to what your body is telling you - it's like spiritual or something. 

If you want to improve as a runner and avoid injury you'll have to master listening to what your body is telling you (except for when it's saying "WTF are you doing! Stop!!", then tell it to shove off), while you are running, so you know when you can push harder, when to change what you are doing, or back off.

If you're running in the crowd and looking for a way to criticize everyone else and feel better about yourself (like we always are, let's be honest) listen for the person with the heaviest footstrike (besides yourself) and it is often the person listening to music. That's right I said it! It's chump with headphones. Some might argue the tempo benefits do not outweigh the chronic knee pain and the stress fractures - chump. 

A more obvious way headphones can have a deleterious effect on running form is asymmetry. From wearing your music device on one arm or in one hand, or to one side. 

Observe a runner with an iPod/iPhone/iAnything on one side it is not hard to trace the asymmetry to their music player. You may think this is negligible, but even a slight imbalance in arm swing translates to stride length on the opposing side and can accumulate over time into injury (headphone runners who attach player to one side also seem to have issues with one leg that gets a shortened stride).

As a related asymmetry anecdote: one marathon training season I noticed an alarming incidence of runners who carry their water bottles and back pain, so watch out for that too.

The reality is the headphone runners carry their music-bearing limb differently. This compromises your running form.

The high repetition of running motions means that imbalances have consequences. The more experience you have the more you will be aware of the subtleties. Change your arm swing and it changes your stride. If you do wear headphones, wear them sparingly, and make sure you leave them behind on long runs. Or like me, make sure you bring them on all your long runs because you need company. 

Good running form is always about listening to your body. Can you hear how your foot hits? Can you hear if your stride cadence is uneven. When you are listening to music you get detached and are less aware of how you may need to adapt your form to your environment. Not to mention your failure to hear that car approaching from the rear (especially a Tesla).

NPR's Peter Fricken "Wait wait don't tell me" Sagal wrote an article in the New York Times. (For those of you who are bored by or aren't aware that public radio exists, "Wait, Wait..." is also a podcast! (which I hope you're not listening to while you're running)).

Hope to see everyone there with iPod invisas! (Well AirPod, anyway.)

Related WFR Topics
"Arm Swing" #4 (bubbles), "Quiet Feet" #6 (bubbles).

Reading Bubble Diagrams:

Bubbles in the pictures are individually linked to the most recent notes. They are now no longer pictures (hooray), they're auto-generated scalable vector drawings.

Topics are related to each other. Some more or less directly than others. Bubble Diagrams (e.g. this week's topic bubble diagram) illustrate how they are related. Bubbles nearest the top are more directly related to this week's topic. The path to the top illustrates a chain of related topics. Topic bubbles are expanded once in their highest position (most closely related to this week's topic) and are colored blue (or colored black if this is a topic's only appearance). Duplicated bubbles are colored green, which is no less important than a blue colored bubble at the same vertical distance from the root.

Lines that join topic bubbles have been colored. Blue connecting lines illustrate a child topic (lower) supported by its parent topic (upper... think waterfall). Purple connecting lines illustrate the child topic supporting its parent topic. Black connecting lines indicate bi-directional (mutual) topic support. Lightly colored connecting lines indicate topics that are pulled out of the way, as the level they occupy is too crowded. One day 3D (AV) will allow us to walk through bubble diagrams (like tinkling mobiles hanging from your ceilings) and currently lightly-connected bubbles will just be viewable at a different angle (by spinning the view) and not colored differently. One Day... ahhh... One Day.

📢 ANNOUNCEMENTS 📢

10/31 at 5pm Pasta & Pajamas: NYC Marathon Carb Load  at McCarren Park House

(Ticket cost to cover the cost of catering for this event - please Venmo Kelly-Y in advance or upon arrival! $9 from Forma!

Wear your comfiest pjs (Kelly will be rocking her unicorn onesie) ✨Hope to see you there!!

11/2 at 6pm Post Marathon Celebration  🪩at Rocka Rolla!

Come hang and eat free Vinnie’s pizza, enter prize raffles, and celebrate Marathon day!! Whether you ran, cheered, or just want to catch the tail end of shenanigans, we want you here!!

Wear your medal if you have one 🏅

The New Member Coordinators are hosting Runnersgiving this year on Saturday, November 15th from 6:30-8:30pm at Reclamation Bar (817 Metropolitan Ave Brooklyn, NY 11211)! We encourage you to bring a dish if you wish to eat, since this is a potluck: NBR Runnersgiving Dish List. Please bring ID/cash/mobile payment/etc. If you have any questions, please reach out to Joelle or Callie (newmembers at northbrooklynrunners.org).

📢 Weekly Daddy Joke 📢

Q. What happens if you drop a piano on a military base?

A. You get A-flat major.