Sunday, November 15, 2009

Ode to my Running Stroller

One of my absolute favorite baby contraptions is the running stroller. In fact, it's on a short list of baby devices that I believe are essential to my standard of living. It's right up there with the car seat and crib. Obviously I could live without it, but I'd probably be grumpy. Up until recently, I was running with the stroller three days a week. And last year I was using it five days a week. Most of my marathon training was done with Kaylee keeping me company in the stroller. She has dutifully aided my training by continuing to grow big and adding the essential weight I need for better training (or so I've convinced myself).

Recently though, my love of the great running stroller has waned. The groin injury I have seems to be exacerbated when I run with it. Nick and I did a seven miler with the old stroller today (family run day is imperative). I haven't used it in two months, and immediately noticed the groin twinging when I started pushing it. Nick and I took turns pushing. I noticed that when Nick pushed, his form changed. He started landing on the inside of his foot, rather than the outside. I'm not sure why, but pushing the stroller causes some gait change that bothers me now. It's so sad...I think I'll have to retire the stroller. Sniff, sniff...

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Looks like you have a relatively new blog here - welcome to the running blog world! You should try videotaping yourself running with and without the stroller to see what it does to your gait. My students filmed runners in the Manchester Marathon this year and we caught a stroller jogger in slow motion - it occured to me that a stroller must have a big effect oon gait. With a new baby arriving in April (our third), I'll probably be experimenting with one soon myself!

Katie said...

Thanks for the comment Pete! I've been blogging for about a year and a half, but my training updates starting taking over the family blog. As a result, I'm starting a new one dedicated to running! Yay!

I agree videoing me running with the stroller would be helpful. I have funny feeling though, that the change has occurred because Kaylee is so much bigger now. I ran all last year with no issues at all!

You'll have to post about your stroller experiments! In not too much longer we might try for another ourselves.