Let your feet be brave

I don't really think about my feet much. I've always just taken them fore-granted. They are there, somewhere between the floor and the rest of my body. I spend loads of time running to get my heart and lungs fit and my legs strong, I reluctantly do press ups to keep my arms from looking too twig-like, and I do core work because I know I'm supposed to. But it's never occurred to me to think about training my feet. 

Until this week.

This revelation has revealed itself quite by accident. I decided in the week leading up to the Blackpool Marathon (tomorrow, uh oh) that I would trial a new approach of actually trying to taper my running down properly before the race, as I was feeling quite tired at the beginning of the week, and thought all this professional advice about easing off the running prior to a long race might actually be worth something. Naturally, I needed an alternative activity to focus on to get my exercise fix (can't go cold turkey). And so this brought me to doing three yoga classes in a week, which is a record for me in a year, never mind a week.

I was stood on my mat on one leg, the other wrapped around it, with my arms in the air, in the 'tree pose' which is so ridiculed by those who are not fans of the yoga experience. I was focusing so hard on a speck of dust on the floor, trying to keep my balance, that I almost didn't hear my teacher when he said, "let your feet be brave". I kept my balance for a few more minutes (yeah, who am I kidding, for about 2 more seconds), with my foot muscles wobbling all over the place, trying to keep balanced on one leg. I gracefully (yep, still kidding) unwrapped myself from being a tree, and caught up with what he was saying, which caught my interest, as it seemed a bit odd. But he carried on talking, and I tuned back in, and it just made total sense. Your feet are active all the time! Your whole body is supported by whichever part of it is touching the ground. I'd not really thought of that before. All of the strength and stability in your body is coming from those points of contact with the ground. Gosh. My feet are supporting my whole body! Just those two little bits of mostly bones (26 in each foot) wrapped up in some skin. I didn't even know there were muscles there too, but in the tree pose, I could see the muscles in my feet actually working, side to side, back and forth, trying to support my whole body above it in that one position. Amazing! Amazing! Feet are amazing! 

The name of my blog is Time on Your Feet. I suppose that a lot of the focus of my training right now is the 'time' part, the time you need to train for to get ready for a ultra. I pretty much totally ignore the 'feet' part. But not any more. 

Apparently, yoga is all about strengthening your feet. Once your have strong feet, your base is strong, and the rest of your body is supported. In the words of Socrates "when our feet hurt, we hurt all over". Once I started to focus on my feet, I really started to understand this. It sounds a bit wacky, I know, but it does make sense. We did lots of exercises, standing on tip-toes on all different parts of our feet, and working on our arches. Apparently, I have fantastic muscles in my arches. Who knew. It was quite embarrassing, as my teacher shouted to everyone to look at my arches because my muscles were so defined, which I was initially quite embarrassed about because my feet do get quite a battering from all this running, and I'm missing a toe nail right now. But then I embraced it. Feet are amazing, and my feet are amazing! Be proud, not embarrassed! Hurrah for my arches! And I have a whole new set of muscles that I didn't even know about. Apparently, there are 20 muscles in each foot and about 100 ligaments! I've just started reading about it, and boy does it look complicated. I've had to lie down to give my feet a rest from all the work they seem to be doing all the time.

And so, I now understand the phrase "let your feet be brave". In yoga, it means if you are finding a pose challenging, focus on building up from your feet, and challenging them to be strong (unless, of course, you are doing a headstand, then I suppose your head becomes your foot, but I'm not that advanced yet). I've tried it our running this morning (5 km pre-marathon preparation run with my Dad), thinking about where my foot hit the ground, and the movement with each step. And I'm going to think about it more tomorrow on the marathon (there will be plenty of time then). 

And there we are. Put your best foot forward (either, as they are both bloody marvelous), and let your feet be brave.