You must run, before you run hills...

Ok so its not as catchy as "You must walk before you run", but its still just as true. The reason why toddlers must walk before they run has to do with muscle development. There must be a base amount of muscle tone and development, all of which is acquired by walking. Once the muscles are sufficiently developed, toddlers stop simply toppling over when they try to run, and finally take off.

As a runner, you are once again a toddler. No, that doesn't mean that you can wear a diaper to work. Unless your boss treats you like a baby and you want to make a statement - in which case, please send pictures! No, new runners are just developing and slowly strengthening key muscles and tendons. Here's where the hills come in: don't do it!

When I first started running, my husband and I were trying to figure out what to do with the kids. We came to the conclusion that we would have to bring them with us, so we asked them whether they would rather run with us, or play while we ran (probably around a track while they played in the grass in the middle). They said that they wanted to run too. So then we had to find a place to run that would be safe with young kids. There is an absolutely adorable park near us that has nice rolling hills and a 1.5 mile jogging loop with its own lane. Perfect!

I had wondered about the wisdom of running hills, but as my husband pointed out, you have to run hills sometime, and if you do it from the beginning, then it won't be such a big deal when it comes up - after all, you'll have lots of practice. The logic was seemingly airtight.

So we did our runs for the first several weeks - and a couple repeated weeks due to allergies and the flu - in this lovely park with the bucolic rolling hills. But then I got the weirdest sensation in my left hip joint. It felt like it needed to pop, but it wouldn't - no matter what I did - and it hurt to walk. After a really good, deep stretch it felt better, so I decided to investigate what it might be. I went to the library and checked out several books on sports injuries, injury prevention, and so on. The culprit: strained groin muscle.

It turns out, I was trying to run before I had spent a sufficient time walking. I hadn't built up enough of a base strength to be able to run those nice, rolling hills. And the really funny part? It wasn't the up-hills - it was the down-hills! When you run down-hill, you shift your weight back, take shorter strides, and basically just run completely differently. Now don't get me wrong, the up-hills can be just as bad - after all, its just like down-hills but in reverse: we lean into the hill, and really dig to try to get up the hill (or just take tiny steps, which still alters which muscles you're working). Going up-hill puts even more strain on your knees than you were already subjecting them to, and it makes the run more difficult than it needs to be for a beginner runner.

So what to do? Plan your runs to avoid hills if at all possible. If its not possible, minimize how many hills there are, and try to keep the incline as low as possible - the steeper it is, the worse it is. And above all, don't try to pop your groin muscle!!