PRs & Pointe Shoes

Crosstraining really does make you faster

Looking really closely at the details.

Last sunday, I ran a race for the first time since 2018. That 2018 run was the first time I ran a race in over a decade. The race on sunday was fine, nothing to celebrate. I’m glad I did it, but mostly because I got my Sunday run done. 

That’s my feeling about racing: it should be something you do if you enjoy it, but if you’re not competitive, don’t worry about it. My main take away from the race on Sunday wasn’t my time or place; it was the fact that I had skipped cross training the week before, and so my hips were super tight. So today, let’s not talk about racing; you can talk about racing in roughly a bazillion running blogs and threads somewhere else in the internet. Let’s talk about cross training. 

Cross training for running is very underdeveloped. Memes about how runners eschew cross training are usually humorous, casting the runner as a person who is obsessed with mileage and endearingly ignores the pleas of their coaches and physicians to cross train in some way. This is, like so many memes, both entertaining and slightly alarming in that the overall message is that cross training keeps you healthy, but doesn’t make you faster. I disagree: cross training does keep you healthy, but it also makes you faster. Here’s why: 

• Most runners don’t use their bodies perfectly efficiently. Maybe professional athletes do, but for the rest of us, probably not.

• Cross training can help you strengthen the muscles you don’t naturally tap into and make your runs faster, not just less injury prone (although that is a great benefit to cross training).

Personal experience, and I am not a scientist, but this is a pattern from 34 years of running. When I was in 7th grade, my 5K cross country times dropped by an astonishing 2 minutes. In one summer. I hadn’t grown tall, and I hadn’t lost weight. I had always been fast, but not top-tier fast. Suddenly, I was winning races against high schoolers. Why? I didn’t put it together until recently, but something changed that year that I thought was unconnected to running: I started dancing on pointe shoes. 

I was a weirdo who went straight from school to running practice and then straight from practice to dance rehearsal, for 2 hours per day, 2 or 3 times per week. I was an intense kid. My coaches didn’t object to my dancing, but by 9th grade, when I started getting recruited by dozens of colleges, many of those college coaches, as well as serious club coaches in Atlanta, started telling me I needed to drop the dancing to focus on running. So I did. After ninth grade, I quit dance. I wasn’t slow (I still won races and got recruited every year), but I never broke my freshman year times again. Some part of that had to do with my best coach leaving my school after 9th grade, but not all of it.  

Fast forward to college. My parents prevented me from accepting a running scholarship, for which I am forever grateful, so I walked on to the Columbia team. At the same time, I auditioned for a dance troupe on campus and got several roles. I quit the team early in the year (there’s a post coming up on that) but just to prove to myself I could still run, I walked onto an indoor track 1500 in the winter. Friends, I won. The coach couldn’t believe it. I could barely believe it. I left the gym as quickly as possible; I was so embarrassed and yet convinced it was luck. 

It was not luck: it was dance. 

This insight came together for me only recently, postpartum, after 34 years of running, so it’s been a long journey for me. Dance requires strength and flexibility in stabilizer muscles, like your transverse abdominals and your adductors. You don’t grand plie without those muscles, and you don’t have a lightening-fast turn over without them, either. Dance also strengthens your ankles and loosens your hip flexors, allowing your feet to dangle freely on a high back kick, launching your body forward and keeping you in the air for longer than you would with sheer muscle strength. And here’s the thing: flying through the air over the ground is the fastest and least impactful way to cover that ground. 

Unsurprisingly, dance is not high on the list of Things Runners Do for Cross Training. There’s lots of gym time. There’s lots of awkward, mechanical physical therapy moves. Those are great for increasing power and, yes, preventing injury. But cross training can give you more than that, if it is well-rounded and balances your natural running form. 

It was only by sheer luck that I was a dancer and runner, both. I have naturally good rhythm and great parents who would drive me around town to dozens of practices and rehearsals. Not everyone has that, but I encourage you to start investigating what movements might work for you for cross training. Many of your running buddies might insist that there are other answers, the “Kenyan shuffle” or trail running or whatever, and those might work for you. But there’s more movement out there in the world than mileage of different types and lifting weights. 

So think about what things you like that are not mileage: anything that gets the small muscles in your hips and core moving and strengthens your ankles will probably do. Let me know your thoughts in the comments, and for today remember: go run.