Heel to Midsole Blues

I did my mid-sole exercises before running (high knee running in place at a fast pace). Then I ran my custom Interval workout tonight. During the fast intervals in the middle of the run, I practiced midsole landing. Remembering what I saw and heard at the mini-class on form last Tuesday night, I made a conscientious effort to do the flat midsole landing and that worked. I was landing midsole. I told my self with each left foot, "land" and each right foot "flat". I stopped all heel rolling movement.

But....

Am I supposed to be feeling the landings so much? With my rolling gait, I was not going up/down at ALL and there was therefore no sensation of landing. I didn't feel impact. Today, getting my midsole strikes to fall under my center of gravity I was definitely landing. I felt impact. During the exercises I even felt the impact all the way up to my jaw. I tried flexing knees more to cushion but for the first time on the treadmil since I can remember, I felt knees.

*sigh*  I went back to my rolling heel strikes to finish the run.

Checking stats afterwards:

I increased my efforts, and LOWERED my cadence (foot strikes per minute) during the midsole section. I was supposed to INCREASE my cadence.  I was told I would work LESS.

I obviously need to keep working at this. Hoping the training coach can help me when I start the 20 week course.

UPDATE: a few hours later I am ICING BOTH KNEES! I am NOT happy about this. This sucks and I am afraid. I can't remember ever having this much knee burn hours after running, let alone having BOTH at once. There ARE elite runners that heel strike. I watched one at the Olympic trials place #2 in the marathon. I will NOT be trying to change my stride/landing until I have a coach with me. So not worth what I am experiencing right now.

IPDATE #2: This is NOT good. I was cupping my right knee with my hand and an ice pack when I bent it. It felt like I could feel something moving, on the top outer side of the knee cap. I researched this and found this is similar to IT band issues. The physical therapist last month said to take care of mine as it was very "tight". I have been doing exercises she gave me but didn't worry much because I had never even heard of an IT band before then and because I never had a sports injury. Calling my doctor tomorrow and seeing if I can get a referral to a sports doctor/PT. Better safe than sorry.