Sharon Lokedi was the surprise winner of the New York Marathon earlier this month, running 2:23:23 on a day that many runners found too hot. She came into the race as a near-unknown, running her first marathon and ranked outside of the top 40 in the world for the half-marathon.
On first impression, her form is… ungainly, I think is a fair term. She looks very knock-kneed, she takes off from the inner edge of her foot, and her arm-swing is conspicuously asymmetrical.
Jae Gruenke, founder of The Balanced Runner, has done detailed video analysis of many top distance runners, and she is tremendously insightful. You can find her analysis of Lokedi’s New York run here. She observes that these apparent “flaws” in form are issues that many runners would attempt to correct, but in fact in this case are part of Lokedi’s strengths. She’s getting tremendous power out of last bit of her gait cycle as she toes off, and this is associated with extreme internal rotation of the thigh.
Do we all want to run like that? By no means – it’s a form particular to Lokedi’s body and her training background. It’s another reminder of how much form can vary among elite runners. I think that for most of us, given our physiology, there is a limited range of adjustments that can be effective, and attempts to achieve an “ideal” form are likely to fail for most of us. Not to say that we can’t improve form – Gruenke, in fact, makes her living doing so – but caution and moderation are the order of the day.