Catherina McKiernan tells Ian O'Riordan how chi running has given her an injury-free life.
Every day at any given moment thousands of us all over the world perform one of the most simple and basic human actions: step out the front door, put one foot in front of the other, and go for a run.
It could be a 10-minute jog around the block or a hard 10-miler over the hills. It could be every day, every second day, or whenever we feel like it. But we all know and seek the same benefits. Running is still the perfect cure for a multitude of human excesses.
What we don't necessarily know is how to run. Watch a dozen people running and chances are you'll see a dozen different running styles, and some of those are probably asking for trouble.
Despite some common perceptions, it's not running that causes injury, but the way we run.
And there's nothing more frustrating for even the most recreational of runners than injury. One recent study revealed that of the estimated 23 million runners in America, 65 per cent incurred at least one injury a year that interrupted their training. It could be a simple muscle ache or back spasm, but the implications can be felt way beyond the troubled area. Just ask Catherina McKiernan.
Anyone who saw McKiernan running in her prime was typically struck by her smooth, free-flowing stride and her seemingly effortless ability to cover ground. Poetry in motion, as we say on the sports pages. As it turns out, it wasn't always good poetry.
As a youngster growing up on the family farm in Cavan she discovered a love of running, and would soon develop into one of Ireland's greatest ever athletes.
At 22, she won the silver medal at the 1992 World Cross Country championships in Boston, and repeated that superb feat in the next three successive years.
When she later moved up to the marathon McKiernan's great talent for running was fully realised. In 1997 she won the Berlin marathon in two hours 23 minutes and 44 seconds, followed by winning the famous London marathon, and in October 1998 ran 2:22.23 to win the Amsterdam marathon - at the time just 96 seconds outside the world record, and setting the Irish record which still stands today.
In the years after, however, a series of injuries forced McKiernan out of running for long periods. The harder she tried to get back, the more her body seemed to break down and, worst of all, she gradually lost her love of running.
After the birth of her first child, Deirbhile, in 2002 she made one last effort to reach the top again, but it wasn't to be.
"I would get fierce down and be very hard on myself whenever I was injured and couldn't run," says McKiernan. "It wasn't a happy time for me. I never really liked the pressure of competition anyway, but I always loved to run.
"It's a part of me and the way I am, and that's why whenever I was injured my whole life seemed miserable."
The constant effort of trying to get back eventually took its toll, convincing McKiernan to announce her retirement from competitive running.
That was almost two years ago. Today she can count on one hand the number of days she hasn't gone running since - which is even more remarkable considering she's given birth to her second child, Patrick, during that time.
And almost incredibly she hasn't had even one minor injury. She now runs freely and effortlessly again, purely for the love of it.
That hasn't happened by accident but rather with a lucky and perfectly timed twist of fate. A week or so after retiring a friend lent her a book with the somewhat strange title Chi Running. McKiernan didn't expect much until she started reading. It was like a revelation, suddenly explaining all those injury problems she'd sustained over the years.
"Normally I'd be a little slow getting into books," she says, "but this one I couldn't leave down. I was hooked. The first thought when I finished was that I'd have to get in contact with the man."
That man was Danny Dreyer, a marathon runner living in San Francisco. For years Dreyer had been trying to develop a more efficient running style, and the turning point came 10 years ago when he took his first t'ai chi class. That, he believed, provided the starting point for the correct mechanics of running.
He also studied other runners, mostly the highly efficient Kenyans, and two years ago put his ideas into print. Chi Running has sold more than 65,000 copies and is the number one running book on Amazon.com.
"I didn't make this up," says Dreyer, in Dublin recently to give one of his two-day chi running seminars.
"It's not even my material. These ideas have been out there for thousands of years. I just put a structure to them, and articulated those ideas in a way the average runner could relate to," he says.
"It started with the principles of t'ai chi, which is about co-operating with natural energy forces, rather than fighting them. That's quite simply done in running if people just lean forward a little, let gravity assist them, and also engage the core muscles.
"Too many people are power running, and letting the legs do all the work. Not only does that create a great waste of energy, it's also more likely to create injury problems."
At first the ideas aren't the easiest to grasp, mental as much as physical - a sort of Zen and the art of distance running. Yet McKiernan was instantly sold.
Within months of retiring she was in America studying with Dreyer, and is now Ireland's first and so-far only certified chi running instructor.
"I often ask myself now what could I have done if I'd discovered this during my running career," she says.
"I just never realised it at the time, but my style was setting me up for injury. I was up on my toes too much, which eventually led to tight calf muscles and Achilles tendon injuries. I was also bobbing up and down and wasting energy, and carrying my arms out way too far.
"But it was the idea of injury-free running that really excited me, and in the past year I've got more satisfaction teaching chi running than the things I achieved as an athlete. It does take practice, and some runners take to it quicker than others, but once the bad habits are broken, people are running a lot better, which I love to see."
Naturally, she uses the technique all the time herself and, having perfected her running style, she was able to run throughout her second pregnancy - which included an hour's run in the morning, and a 30-minute run in the evening, the day before Patrick was born last March.
If that doesn't suggest efficient running, it's hard to imagine what does.
Ian O'Riordan worked with Catherina McKiernan on her autobiography, Running for My Life, which was published last year.
For information on Catherina McKiernan's chi running courses, e-mail chirunning@eircom.net