New thinking on training the mind/muscle connection Every
competitive runner is familiar with the “sticky road”
phenomenon. In the latter stages of a race or tough workout you
begin to feel as though the pavement beneath you has been
replaced with some type of flypaper or resurfaced with gluey,
wet tar. Whereas in the early miles your feet bounced lightly
off the ground, you now have to actively yank them away from the
gummy surface. With each stride the effort required to do so
increases, and as a result your feet seem to spend twice as much
time in contact with the earth as they did in the beginning.
Studies have shown that this feeling is no illusion. Our feet
really do remain “stuck” to the ground longer as we begin to
fatigue. Exercise scientists do not yet fully understand what
causes the running stride to deteriorate in this manner during
prolonged hard running, but they do know that it’s fundamentally
a neuromuscular phenomenon — that is, a phenomenon based on
brain-muscle communications. In response