Running Revolution
Become an elastic runner with the help of movement coach Shane Benzie
It was an email that took half an hour to draft and several days of nervous deliberation to send. e question – perhaps a bold one for someone who had never written one before – was whether the Mr Miyagi of movement, Shane Benzie, wanted to write a book with me. e answer, in typical fashion for a man dubbed the “Indiana Jones of the running world”, came from a remote location on the other side of the globe:
‘In the middle of the race but came across some internet! I am absolutely up for that. Let’s get together on my return for a chat!!’
And with that, we set o on our own epic journey. It was a journey, though, that didn’t start because I particularly wanted to write a book. It started because what Shane taught me when we worked together on my running was so mind-blowingly powerful, that I knew we had to get his story out to as many runners as humanly possible.
THE BEGINNING
I wanted to improve. After years of searching for e ortless gains in shoes, gear and gadgets, I nally realised that what I’d never invested in was how I actually run. For a sport that requires such a repetitive movement, that was verging on negligence.
I’d heard about Shane from running coach Robbie Britton, and approached him for some help. At our rst session
I ran around like a show pony waiting for Shane to praise my form, hoping for a few minor pointers for improvement. “Well, it’s not a complete disaster,” he said with a conciliatory tilt of the head. High praise indeed.
e video footage didn’t lie. I honestly thought I’d cut out heel-striking long ago but, sure enough, it was alarmingly
evident with every strike of the ground. I was running with a low cadence (of around 165 steps per minute), my left arm seemed to be conducting an imaginary orchestra and I was bending forwards at the waist – a trait, I was told, of many a tall runner.
As we worked together on my form, Shane talked enthusiastically about his research. Motivated by those familiar running bedfellows – constant injury and lack of improvement – he’d decided to train as a running coach in the hope of nding a better way. When the traditional biomechanics he was schooled in didn’t add up, he started to travel the globe to live with and study a wide range of athletes and indigenous people in search of better answers. He studied some of the fastest runners on the planet in Ethiopia and Kenya, analysed endurance runners racing through the frozen depths of the Arctic, watched Peruvians moving through the harsh humidity of the Amazon Jungle, and lived with the Sherpas in the high mountains of the Himalayas. Most of us throw everything at our running when we go out – blood, guts, thunder and all. Yet, what Shane eventually unearthed ipped that ‘go hard or go home’ theory entirely on its head. “As my research developed,” he says, “I went from viewing good running as humans moving over the ground trying to save energy to humans having the ability to move over the ground and actually create energy.” e Holy Grail he had discovered was so ancient and valuable that, as ultra runner Damian Hall put it when I spoke to him, “It had the potential to not only be gamechanging, but life-changing for those who embraced it.” It’s best described in one simple but extremely exciting word: elasticity.