Blog 9/25

The Ageless Athlete

April 10th 2024

By Martin Parnell and Malc Kent

Chapter 6
Malc Kent: The Evolution of the Running Specialist
(Part 2 of 2)

In 2013 and 2014, a significant shift had occurred in the running technology game. Body-mounted sensors had evolved and were now starting to get smart and deliver some very interesting insights. I had seen first-hand how Garmin had progressed with developing indoor pace readout from the watch, as well as wrist-based heart rate and basic running dynamics information. And I’d seen first-hand how Stryd had developed the world’s first reliable running power meter. From pretty early on I had come to realize that running gait analysis would move away from labs and would be reliably and accurately measured outside, in any environment.

This small but simple decision was to inform everything I did with runners, from 2013 onwards. But, to ensure that I really knew what I was talking about, I still felt I needed to better understand the real world application and challenges. So in 2014, 2015 and 2016, I made a push to learn everything I could to help me become the best running gait analyst I could be. I travelled regularly to Oregon to help Nike with field data collection and to gain insights into how different running shoes affected gait.

I spent time in southern Oregon, in the town of Eugene, working with elite runners to help me collect gait data in the field. Most profound for me, though, was spending time with physical therapists David McHenry and Matt Walsh at their clinic in Portland, and learning from them how they were approaching injury prevention with a wide range of runners (they are most noted for helping Mo Farah and Galen Rupp stay injury free for several years) and how they viewed gait analysis as part of the process.

In 2015 I got the rare opportunity to spend time with marathon runner Wilson Kipsang. Wilson had held the marathon world record until 2014 and was an Olympic silver medallist. I felt incredibly privileged to spend a few days with him in the US and learn a huge amount about his training, race preparation and strategy to stay injury-free, in particular his preparation prior to breaking the world record in Berlin. Although in the next two years I would go on to assess and help a number of famous runners around the world, this quality time with Wilson in 2015 still registered most vividly in my thoughts.

In 2016, I began working as a consultant to medical technology companies in the field of running gait analysis. Most prominent was my work with an Australian company called dorsaVi. I essentially occupied the role of advisor and expert in wearable running biomechanics. One of the most attractive points of partnering with them was that they had a product that was measuring off each leg individually and produced, among other metrics, a value for average ground reaction force.

Average Ground Reaction Force

One of the benchmark metrics that is commonly used in biomechanics study and advanced gait analysis is that of average ground reaction force. It is the average over a period of time of the peak vertical forces for every foot contact on that side of the body.

In essence, ground reaction force is the force that is returned from the ground back into the body when we are in single leg contact. We apply the force into the ground and through Newton’s third law we receive a force back in the opposite direction. We can approximate that the two forces are the same magnitude, but in reality we do lose some of it through different mechanisms and so don’t quite get all of it back to us.

So why is it important? Well, it tells us key information about the amount of load the runner can apply or is willing to apply and accept. And the differences between the left and right sides, if there are any, can tell us about loading imbalance that could be a “red flag” for mechanical dysfunction in the body.

This was still a relatively novel thing in early 2016, especially from a device that was affordable, small and light.

At this time some well-known university study groups were beginning to jump on the bandwagon of wearable gait analysis, and so, having a link with dorsaVi and access to their insights, as well as several years of my own work in the area, it felt like a good time to be ahead of the curve.

Aside from the product development aspects of the work, with dorsaVi one of the perks I liked the most was the opportunity to travel around the US and Canada to meet physiotherapists, chiropractors, doctors and podiatrists in their clinics and discuss with them their methods, their challenges and how to improve their gait analysis. Even now I often find myself telling clinicians about what’s happening across North America and how the range of what is called gait analysis can vary hugely. None this advice would exist if not for my work with dorsaVi.

My issue with dorsaVi, as with many other technologies, was that it was trying to be many things to many people and I felt I just wanted to have a focused piece of technology that worked brilliantly with runners. So, after a short stint advising the leaders in running power, Stryd, I found myself talking to Tim Clark, the founder of RunScribe. And so began a long-term relationship that still exists today. There’s no doubt that most of what I’ve achieved with runners around the world in the last two years would not have been possible without the fantastic piece of kit that Tim, largely on his own, had masterfully developed.

While wearable gait analysis was rapidly becoming a specialist niche for me, coaching had also been bubbling along in the background, and combining the two became a potent way to add real value to runners who formed longer-term partnerships with me. I had a big breakthrough with this in 2015 when I coached a local runner, Dave, who was struggling with a long-term Achilles injury that meant he couldn’t run pain-free. Over a three-month period I helped him to recover from the injury, and using weekly gait monitoring I was able to prescribe and modulate his training optimally. We carried on working together for a further year afterwards, during which Dave broke his lifetime best in the half marathon at the age of 52.

Working with Dave validated a method that I could take and apply elsewhere. In 2017, for example, I applied this model to coaching a runner called Norm. Norm and I started working immediately after he had just posted a 4 hour, 50 minute time in the marathon. Fourteen months later he ran a new personal best in the marathon of 3 hours and 7 minutes. For the entire 14 months Norm had stayed injury free and run consistent workouts, every week. This consistency was key to him cutting so much off his race time in such a short period.

While I’ve seen, over my years in the sport, a continual focus on performance and how runners can get fitter and faster and achieve better race times, the hard truth is that runners first need to make it through the training period and then get themselves to the start line in a healthy enough state to be able to tackle their goals. And this is no easy task. The published numbers on running injury occurrence, around the world, vary from one source to another and depend largely on what the definition of an injury is, exactly. But it’s not entirely off the mark to suggest that between 60 and 70 per cent of runners annually are suffering at least one running injury.

Over the past five years this has really crystallized my vision of how I want to approach helping runners. Hence my coaching has become as much about injury-prevention methods as performance-improvement methods, with a stubborn goal in mind to minimize the number of injuries that a runner gets, to as close to zero as possible, during the time they are under my care.

This philosophy has been justified several times for me in watching how other runners are succeeding or not at their ambitious goals. Even with steady simple training, week in, week out, runners can achieve great success simply because they are not forced into significant down time and can thus maintain solid consistent mileage that compounds over time.

But keeping runners from sustaining a running-related injury is not easy; in fact it’s very hard to do for an extended period, and harder still when the stated objective of the runner is to push as hard as they can for a lifetime best. While the majority of running coaching in the world today is performed remotely, I am still not yet convinced that this can be done in a way that really improves the chances of the runner not getting injured. There is still nothing to beat face-to-face weekly coaching with regular monitoring to ensure that the runner is not heading towards a trend that indicates a likelihood of an injury.

More recently still I had the chance to apply an even more refined version of my method with two athletes simultaneously. One was an Ironman triathlete whom I helped with her running and the other was a 50K ultramarathon runner who wanted to break his personal best at the world 50K championships. In both cases I blended together aspects of running coaching, strength training and gait monitoring.

After four months the triathlete, Barb, completed the Ironman Canada race with a 30-minute improvement on her previous time. After three months of working together the 50K runner, Sanjay, ran 3 hours, 9 minutes in the challenging championship race, to improve his best time in the distance by just under 10 minutes. Most importantly, both athletes were able to train really hard, in the time, without sustaining any injuries.

Of the methods I was using, it’s probably the regular gait monitoring that might potentially confuse or intrigue other practitioners out there. This concept of always keeping a check on the runner’s gait was something I had developed specifically in parallel with the development of RunScribe technology. Since 2017 I had found myself in the fortunate situation of being able to help Tim steer the refinement of the tech while, simultaneously, refining how to apply it best and hence, almost by default, leading the way in how to perform gait analysis in all environments.

To really understand how to take gait analysis out of the lab and apply it in a scientifically robust way, absolutely anywhere, was a mammoth challenge. For example, to monitor and interpret the gait of a trail runner in a mountain ultramarathon, with all its terrain and environment idiosyncrasies, requires a deep understanding of trail running, a deep understanding of running mechanics, a lot of experience in the field of data collection and an extremely trustworthy wearable device, that the operator knows inside and out. And, of course, the only way to tackle this challenge and demonstrate that all of these criteria are ticked off is to get out there and perform some ambitious ultra-trail studies.

This is how, in 2017, I first met Martin. He was a well-known runner in my local town of Cochrane, Alberta, at the time. His feat of running 250 marathons in just one year was local folklore. Clearly he was up for a challenge. Knowing that he had a background in mining and engineering, I figured there might be a good chance that he’d like to see some data on his running. So, after a local Saturday club run I pitched him the idea of measuring his running during the three-day Golden Ultra trail race. As a test run I added a few sensors to Martin during a 150-km road ultra in Calgary. This highlighted some really important issues for me with my data collection that would then inform the process for Golden.

After the race Martin made a casual comment to me that he was getting a little bit tired of running in a conservative way at slower paces. Honestly, at the time, I thought Martin was joking and that it wasn’t really a serious statement. So I was a little surprised when later in the year Martin came back to me with renewed vigour and told me he wanted to run faster and push his body to see what it could do.

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If you have any comments, please email Martin. info@martinparnell.com

View The Ageless Athlete Documentary (18 minutes)

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