Apart from a short plod in torrential rain and lightning - quite spectacular at night in an open field - I'm taking a week or two's rest to get the achilles back to normal (which it pretty much is).
I was interested to see
The Great One quoting Chi recently, in particular "Land on the mid-sole or even the toes, but NOT the heel".
Conversely I found
this old blog post where Danny Dreyer, in context of achilles problems, says "midfoot strike should be changed to fullfoot strike so as to not cause the same confusion you have experienced in the description. When you land on your fullfoot, the ball and heel of your foot are simultaneously touching as you land."
Like all religions, it seems that not all followers (or leaders) are agreed on exactly how to practice it.
But enough Chi-bashing. Any system that could be resolved down to a couple of one-liners wouldn't be worth bothering with. There's clearly more to it than exactly which bit of your foot you land on - and anyway, we're all an experiment of one.
In the interests of digging deeper, I was about to click "Buy Now" on the Chi book... but decided against, for now. I think we can over-complicate things by reading lots of books. I'd like to think I can work this out by myself. It stands to reason that landing too far forward over-stresses the achilles, so I need to try practicing landing a bit further back and see what effect that has. This needs to include some hard runs, too.
Now I'm used to the shorter strides, I do prefer the style, compared with my old lolloping plod where I could feel every footfall through my hips and spine. It feels a more active way to run. I recall MLCMM talking once about "running quietly", i.e. one the forefoot rather than hell-plodding, and it struck a chord.
So I'll just enjoy this rest a few more days, then get out there again.
Tune in next month, when I've bought the Chi book after all.
