I’m picked up “The Art of Running Faster” by Julian Goater on my Kindle app earlier this week and to my surprise I found I have a totally incorrect technique.

Your arms are your accelerators and should be pulling back in a straight line by your sides not across your body. If you increase the speed of your arm pull you will run faster.

I should be running on my toes and not landing on my heels and the foot should be placed on the ground behind the knee otherwise your foot acts like a brake. So I need to focus on driving my knee forward.

When running lean forward as if you are going to fall over (but don’t stick your bum out) and then it becomes natural to place your feet in front of you.

Picture a fast cycling circling movement with your feet with a fast pitter patter.

So I went out for a spin to try out the new technique. I only went for a 4 km spin but I really focused on being on the balls/toes of my feet. My heel barely if at all touched the floor.

OMG! Well it’s fair to say my calves took a battering. It felt like I had a rock in each calf. I focused on stretching afterwards but the next day I was in a lot of discomfort. I have a new found respect for girls in stilettos, I have no idea how they do it. Two days later I went out for a very gentle run to loosen things up.

In hindsight my mistake was to totally land on the balls of my feet. I’ve started to adapt the style to land on the rear of the ball of my foot and allowing my heel to gently touch the floor.

I’ve found that if I get the technique right, particularly the slight forward lean; the correct for placement of the foot behind the knee to ‘take the brake off’ and lifting my rear foot to my backside as I bring it through … I float along and running feels easier. It flows. That feeling of noticing things clicking into place feels promising as I try to find a technique to run to the best of my ability.