Friday, November 5, 2010
Saturday, October 30, 2010
Cutting edge Cryotherapy?? Plenty of cold air here in Canada for free!
Link
Favorite comment:
"The coldsauna tricking your body....uhmmmm.....ice baths do the same thing. Your body does the same thing if you are in an ice bath......your skin gets cold....really cold......I mean really...have you ever not been in an ice bath and start to shiver. Your body will always move blood to the center of the body when the core temp drops. So how this 'sauna' does it any better for someone....is beyond me. Plus, like the AlterG treadmills.....I'm sure this costs about $75,000 or so.....give me cheap ice, a bath tube and some thing warm to drink anyday"
Alberto Salazar has always embraced new technology as a way to minimize injuries, stay on target, and gain a competitive edge.
The altitude tent (and altitude training in general). The Alter-G treadmill. The underwater treadmill. Those are some of the examples.
And now, welcome to the world of cryotherapy.
There is a new thing at Nike called a “Space Cabin,” and it is the 21st century’s answer to the ice bath.
Step inside this metallic cylinder and liquid nitrogen-cooled air (say, 170 degrees below zero) rushes in and cools your skin to a chilly 30 degrees, yet penetrates just a half millimeter. You slowly rotate for two and a half minutes, holding your hands up and out of the freeze, wearing socks on your toes, and at least some underwear to cover your privates.
“It feels like walking out into the coldest day of the year, naked,” Salazar said.
Salazar, and Nike, are using this device to cool runners down after workouts. Galen Rupp and Amy Yoder Begley used it last Thursday while I was there. Dathan Ritzenhein (training in Albuquerque last week) was reportedly the first member of the group who agreed to try it.
Ice baths are somewhat painful and lower skin temperature to usually no lower than 50 degrees, according to Millennium Ice representatives on site to supervise training.
The theory behind the cryosauna’s use is that it tricks your body into believing it is in serious danger of freezing. The brain sends signals to the rest of the body to draw blood from the extremities and rush it to the core for protection. After you step out, the blood rushes back out again. The phenomena is said to cause an energy boost and skin rejuvenation. It is said to particularly effective to help heal after surgery.
For the sake of athletes, the cryosauna helps sore muscles recover much faster.
Last June, Tyson Gay reportedly used one of the devices to help alleviate his troublesome hamstring.
When you stand inside the chamber, your head remains above the cold air. It’s not advisable to breath in the nitrogen, lest it put you to sleep.
Cryotherapy already has numerous medical applications.
Athletes who use it may require less down time after workouts, or be able to work harder on back to back days. And it may prevent, or reduce, injuries.
And while there are currently less than 20 of them in the U.S., devices like this are apparently the wave of the future. They’re more common in Europe, where the technology was developed. But some day soon, I’m told, you might find one at your local spa or country club.
Salazar got linked up with the Millenium Ice folks through Tom Shaw, one of the country’s top speed coaches who help NFL prospects prepare for the combine and draft. Shaw is already a big believer.
Favorite comment:
"The coldsauna tricking your body....uhmmmm.....ice baths do the same thing. Your body does the same thing if you are in an ice bath......your skin gets cold....really cold......I mean really...have you ever not been in an ice bath and start to shiver. Your body will always move blood to the center of the body when the core temp drops. So how this 'sauna' does it any better for someone....is beyond me. Plus, like the AlterG treadmills.....I'm sure this costs about $75,000 or so.....give me cheap ice, a bath tube and some thing warm to drink anyday"
Alberto Salazar has always embraced new technology as a way to minimize injuries, stay on target, and gain a competitive edge.
The altitude tent (and altitude training in general). The Alter-G treadmill. The underwater treadmill. Those are some of the examples.
And now, welcome to the world of cryotherapy.
There is a new thing at Nike called a “Space Cabin,” and it is the 21st century’s answer to the ice bath.
Step inside this metallic cylinder and liquid nitrogen-cooled air (say, 170 degrees below zero) rushes in and cools your skin to a chilly 30 degrees, yet penetrates just a half millimeter. You slowly rotate for two and a half minutes, holding your hands up and out of the freeze, wearing socks on your toes, and at least some underwear to cover your privates.
“It feels like walking out into the coldest day of the year, naked,” Salazar said.
Salazar, and Nike, are using this device to cool runners down after workouts. Galen Rupp and Amy Yoder Begley used it last Thursday while I was there. Dathan Ritzenhein (training in Albuquerque last week) was reportedly the first member of the group who agreed to try it.
Ice baths are somewhat painful and lower skin temperature to usually no lower than 50 degrees, according to Millennium Ice representatives on site to supervise training.
The theory behind the cryosauna’s use is that it tricks your body into believing it is in serious danger of freezing. The brain sends signals to the rest of the body to draw blood from the extremities and rush it to the core for protection. After you step out, the blood rushes back out again. The phenomena is said to cause an energy boost and skin rejuvenation. It is said to particularly effective to help heal after surgery.
For the sake of athletes, the cryosauna helps sore muscles recover much faster.
Last June, Tyson Gay reportedly used one of the devices to help alleviate his troublesome hamstring.
When you stand inside the chamber, your head remains above the cold air. It’s not advisable to breath in the nitrogen, lest it put you to sleep.
Cryotherapy already has numerous medical applications.
Athletes who use it may require less down time after workouts, or be able to work harder on back to back days. And it may prevent, or reduce, injuries.
And while there are currently less than 20 of them in the U.S., devices like this are apparently the wave of the future. They’re more common in Europe, where the technology was developed. But some day soon, I’m told, you might find one at your local spa or country club.
Salazar got linked up with the Millenium Ice folks through Tom Shaw, one of the country’s top speed coaches who help NFL prospects prepare for the combine and draft. Shaw is already a big believer.
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Interesting..
Excerpt from NY Times:
Dathan Ritzenhein, 27, was the top American finisher in the Olympic marathon in Beijing and is among the favorites in New York.
He will be among the favorites at the New York City Marathon on Nov. 7, and is expected to battle Meb Keflezighi, the defending champion and 2004 Olympic silver medalist from San Diego, and Haile Gebrselassie, the world-record holder from Ethiopia. But Ritzenhein’s career has been as undulating in the last two years as the New York course, full of rises and depressions and unexpected turns caused by feet that have alternately elevated and betrayed him.
At the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Ritzenhein was the top United States finisher, taking ninth place in brutal heat. Last year, he set an American track record, since broken, of 12 minutes 56.27 seconds for 5,000 meters, then won a bronze medal in the half-marathon at the world championships. A former high school phenom from Rockford, Mich., he had shouldered expectation and blossomed into an elite international professional at 26.
He had a new coach, Alberto Salazar, a former great marathoner, and a career on the ascent. He was the Ritz, his alter ego, the aspiring toughest guy in the race, the one who hung with the leaders, who countered every surge, who put everything on the line every time he stepped on the track and the roads.
Great runners, though, are as finely tuned and fragile as racecars, always at that redlining edge between extreme speed and mechanical agony. From November to July, Ritzenhein’s running was frequently interrupted, sometimes halted, by inflammation, a stress fracture and a cyst in his right foot. He has raced little in the last year. Only recently has he been running pain free.
Meanwhile, the New York race is only three weeks away. Before injury hobbled his training, Ritzenhein planned this to be a glorious return to the marathon, a head-to-head battle with Gebrselassie. And it still could be.
If Ritzenhein lowers his personal best of 2 hours 10 minutes and perhaps runs 2:08, he could win or finish in the top three. But he cannot be quite as aggressive as he once planned and must check his pride, knowing he will be ready but perhaps not as ready as he will be at his next marathon in the spring. He has been running 120 miles a week but says that ultimately, he will have to run 130 or 140.
“I wouldn’t count myself out of winning, but I’m not going to think that I’m going to win and it’s a failure otherwise,” Ritzenhein, now 27, said Wednesday.
“If I run 2:08 to 2:10 range, that will put me on the podium, probably. I think I can do that, judging by my workouts. I’ll just have to be a little smarter, as opposed to do-or-die and being right there with every surge. If I can run that in New York, I know I can turn around next spring in London and run 2:06. That would be a big confidence booster.”
He suspects that his recent foot problems are because of, in part, the law of unintended consequences.
Salazar thinks that form is as important for distance runners as for sprinters. He changed Ritzenhein’s posture and stride, admonishing him to hold his arms higher, to bend less at the waist and quit hunching his shoulders, to keep his chest and hips out for a more forceful and efficient stride.
“Ethiopians and Kenyans are running 160 miles a week, more than you will ever run, because it’s their only way out, and those who survive that are going to be really hard to beat unless you do everything perfectly,” Salazar told Ritzenhein. “If they have better biomechanics, too, you are in trouble.”
Ritzenhein also altered the way his foot struck the ground. He tended to strike toward the back of his foot, near the heel, which applied a braking motion to each stride. This could be a significant factor over 26.2 miles.
Salazar encouraged him to strike at the midfoot or toward the forefoot. But as Ritzenhein practiced the new stride, he developed irritation of the tendon-sheathed and jelly-bean-size sesamoid bones behind his right big toe. Training through that injury in February, he developed a stress fracture in the metatarsal bone on the middle toe of his right foot.
A similar problem had affected his left foot since 2004, when Ritzenhein fractured a metatarsal and limped home during the 10,000-meter race at the Olympic trials. Now his other foot had broken down. “He was devastated,” Salazar said.
A mad tinkerer and devotee of duct tape, Salazar tried to alleviate the pain by constructing various pads and cutouts in the inserts of Ritzenhein’s shoes. In retrospect, they said, these well-meaning fixes might have exacerbated the problem instead of remedying it.
Ritzenhein’s new coach, Alberto Salazar, right, altered his running mechanics, which has helped him to run pain free.
In the spring, Nike, which sponsors Ritzenhein in the Oregon Project running program, did biomechanical and force-plate analyses of his feet. It was determined that he struck the ground with 15 percent more force than the average person in the area of the third metatarsal. And he may be predisposed to stress fractures because of a structural anomaly of his second toe, which is long and impinges on the third toe, curving at the tip like a periscope as if searching to make sure the other digits are in proper alignment.
Gordon Valiant, Nike’s head of biomechanical research, devised an insert for Ritzenhein’s shoes that features a slight depression beneath the third metatarsal. The insert is “not a cure; it is a Band-Aid,” Salazar said that Valiant had cautioned. But it helps disperse the force of each stride more evenly across the forefoot.
Ritzenhein began running again in early July, but a cyst had formed below his right foot, in the joint of the third metatarsal. He resumed full training even though it was too painful to walk barefooted. Finally, in mid-August, the cyst popped.
“It was excruciating,” Ritzenhein said. “I thought I had done something really bad. But the pain went away overnight. It’s the first miracle cure I’ve had.”
His recent training has been encouraging. Under Salazar, Ritzenhein has added more speed workouts: 8 to 10 repeats of 200 meters in 29 to 30 seconds on a track, then on a hill. And four repeats of 1,600 meters (4:37), 1,200 meters (3:24), 800 meters (2:14) and 400 meters (63 to 64 seconds).
“You get the muscles used to higher, faster workloads and marathon pace feels slower,” Salazar said.
This month, Ritzenhein is also making day trips to sea level at Nike headquarters in Beaverton, Ore., for tempo runs of 15 to 20 miles at marathon pace of sub-five minutes per mile, which is not possible here at 6,000 feet. He has opted to do one Monday instead of running Sunday in a half-marathon in mile-high Denver.
At Nike, he is also refining his race-day hydration techniques to reduce the risk of cramping and a loss of energy. Previously, Ritzenhein tended to overhydrate with water before a marathon, leaving him with too few electrolytes during the race. Meanwhile, he ingested 1,200 calories as he ran, carbohydrates that his body could not fully absorb. Now he plans to reduce race-day carbohydrates and begin drinking electrolyte-rich sports drinks for the next few weeks.
“I’ll have a lot of cavities afterward, but I can replace my teeth if I have a good marathon,” he said with a laugh.
On Sept. 19, Ritzenhein faced Gebrselassie at the Great North Run, a half-marathon in England. Gebrselassie won in 59:33; Ritzenhein went out too fast and finished a disappointing fourth in 62:35. He was still the Ritz in his head, but not in his legs.
The hills and bridges of New York will surely prevent Gebrselassie from breaking his marathon world record, 2:03:59. But, at 37, he could challenge the course record, 2:07:43. If Gebrselassie goes out at 2:07 pace, Salazar said he would probably instruct Ritzenhein to let him go and perhaps aim for 2:08.
“The public might say that’s defeatist, that you got to go for it and if you die, you die,” Salazar said. “That might sound romantic, but it’s stupid. You don’t want to risk falling apart and losing too much in terms of his development.”
Yet Ritzenhein is a superb cross-country runner, which seemingly suits him to New York’s heaving course. And Gebrselassie, who prefers flat courses staged for world-record attempts, has sometimes struggled when facing top competition on robust terrain. New York also does not allow pacemakers, which he prefers.
“Who knows, he could blow up,” Ritzenhein said. “He’s not invincible, even though he looks like it sometimes. One thing you’ve got to remember: everybody is beatable.”
Dathan Ritzenhein, 27, was the top American finisher in the Olympic marathon in Beijing and is among the favorites in New York.
He will be among the favorites at the New York City Marathon on Nov. 7, and is expected to battle Meb Keflezighi, the defending champion and 2004 Olympic silver medalist from San Diego, and Haile Gebrselassie, the world-record holder from Ethiopia. But Ritzenhein’s career has been as undulating in the last two years as the New York course, full of rises and depressions and unexpected turns caused by feet that have alternately elevated and betrayed him.
At the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Ritzenhein was the top United States finisher, taking ninth place in brutal heat. Last year, he set an American track record, since broken, of 12 minutes 56.27 seconds for 5,000 meters, then won a bronze medal in the half-marathon at the world championships. A former high school phenom from Rockford, Mich., he had shouldered expectation and blossomed into an elite international professional at 26.
He had a new coach, Alberto Salazar, a former great marathoner, and a career on the ascent. He was the Ritz, his alter ego, the aspiring toughest guy in the race, the one who hung with the leaders, who countered every surge, who put everything on the line every time he stepped on the track and the roads.
Great runners, though, are as finely tuned and fragile as racecars, always at that redlining edge between extreme speed and mechanical agony. From November to July, Ritzenhein’s running was frequently interrupted, sometimes halted, by inflammation, a stress fracture and a cyst in his right foot. He has raced little in the last year. Only recently has he been running pain free.
Meanwhile, the New York race is only three weeks away. Before injury hobbled his training, Ritzenhein planned this to be a glorious return to the marathon, a head-to-head battle with Gebrselassie. And it still could be.
If Ritzenhein lowers his personal best of 2 hours 10 minutes and perhaps runs 2:08, he could win or finish in the top three. But he cannot be quite as aggressive as he once planned and must check his pride, knowing he will be ready but perhaps not as ready as he will be at his next marathon in the spring. He has been running 120 miles a week but says that ultimately, he will have to run 130 or 140.
“I wouldn’t count myself out of winning, but I’m not going to think that I’m going to win and it’s a failure otherwise,” Ritzenhein, now 27, said Wednesday.
“If I run 2:08 to 2:10 range, that will put me on the podium, probably. I think I can do that, judging by my workouts. I’ll just have to be a little smarter, as opposed to do-or-die and being right there with every surge. If I can run that in New York, I know I can turn around next spring in London and run 2:06. That would be a big confidence booster.”
He suspects that his recent foot problems are because of, in part, the law of unintended consequences.
Salazar thinks that form is as important for distance runners as for sprinters. He changed Ritzenhein’s posture and stride, admonishing him to hold his arms higher, to bend less at the waist and quit hunching his shoulders, to keep his chest and hips out for a more forceful and efficient stride.
“Ethiopians and Kenyans are running 160 miles a week, more than you will ever run, because it’s their only way out, and those who survive that are going to be really hard to beat unless you do everything perfectly,” Salazar told Ritzenhein. “If they have better biomechanics, too, you are in trouble.”
Ritzenhein also altered the way his foot struck the ground. He tended to strike toward the back of his foot, near the heel, which applied a braking motion to each stride. This could be a significant factor over 26.2 miles.
Salazar encouraged him to strike at the midfoot or toward the forefoot. But as Ritzenhein practiced the new stride, he developed irritation of the tendon-sheathed and jelly-bean-size sesamoid bones behind his right big toe. Training through that injury in February, he developed a stress fracture in the metatarsal bone on the middle toe of his right foot.
A similar problem had affected his left foot since 2004, when Ritzenhein fractured a metatarsal and limped home during the 10,000-meter race at the Olympic trials. Now his other foot had broken down. “He was devastated,” Salazar said.
A mad tinkerer and devotee of duct tape, Salazar tried to alleviate the pain by constructing various pads and cutouts in the inserts of Ritzenhein’s shoes. In retrospect, they said, these well-meaning fixes might have exacerbated the problem instead of remedying it.
Ritzenhein’s new coach, Alberto Salazar, right, altered his running mechanics, which has helped him to run pain free.
In the spring, Nike, which sponsors Ritzenhein in the Oregon Project running program, did biomechanical and force-plate analyses of his feet. It was determined that he struck the ground with 15 percent more force than the average person in the area of the third metatarsal. And he may be predisposed to stress fractures because of a structural anomaly of his second toe, which is long and impinges on the third toe, curving at the tip like a periscope as if searching to make sure the other digits are in proper alignment.
Gordon Valiant, Nike’s head of biomechanical research, devised an insert for Ritzenhein’s shoes that features a slight depression beneath the third metatarsal. The insert is “not a cure; it is a Band-Aid,” Salazar said that Valiant had cautioned. But it helps disperse the force of each stride more evenly across the forefoot.
Ritzenhein began running again in early July, but a cyst had formed below his right foot, in the joint of the third metatarsal. He resumed full training even though it was too painful to walk barefooted. Finally, in mid-August, the cyst popped.
“It was excruciating,” Ritzenhein said. “I thought I had done something really bad. But the pain went away overnight. It’s the first miracle cure I’ve had.”
His recent training has been encouraging. Under Salazar, Ritzenhein has added more speed workouts: 8 to 10 repeats of 200 meters in 29 to 30 seconds on a track, then on a hill. And four repeats of 1,600 meters (4:37), 1,200 meters (3:24), 800 meters (2:14) and 400 meters (63 to 64 seconds).
“You get the muscles used to higher, faster workloads and marathon pace feels slower,” Salazar said.
This month, Ritzenhein is also making day trips to sea level at Nike headquarters in Beaverton, Ore., for tempo runs of 15 to 20 miles at marathon pace of sub-five minutes per mile, which is not possible here at 6,000 feet. He has opted to do one Monday instead of running Sunday in a half-marathon in mile-high Denver.
At Nike, he is also refining his race-day hydration techniques to reduce the risk of cramping and a loss of energy. Previously, Ritzenhein tended to overhydrate with water before a marathon, leaving him with too few electrolytes during the race. Meanwhile, he ingested 1,200 calories as he ran, carbohydrates that his body could not fully absorb. Now he plans to reduce race-day carbohydrates and begin drinking electrolyte-rich sports drinks for the next few weeks.
“I’ll have a lot of cavities afterward, but I can replace my teeth if I have a good marathon,” he said with a laugh.
On Sept. 19, Ritzenhein faced Gebrselassie at the Great North Run, a half-marathon in England. Gebrselassie won in 59:33; Ritzenhein went out too fast and finished a disappointing fourth in 62:35. He was still the Ritz in his head, but not in his legs.
The hills and bridges of New York will surely prevent Gebrselassie from breaking his marathon world record, 2:03:59. But, at 37, he could challenge the course record, 2:07:43. If Gebrselassie goes out at 2:07 pace, Salazar said he would probably instruct Ritzenhein to let him go and perhaps aim for 2:08.
“The public might say that’s defeatist, that you got to go for it and if you die, you die,” Salazar said. “That might sound romantic, but it’s stupid. You don’t want to risk falling apart and losing too much in terms of his development.”
Yet Ritzenhein is a superb cross-country runner, which seemingly suits him to New York’s heaving course. And Gebrselassie, who prefers flat courses staged for world-record attempts, has sometimes struggled when facing top competition on robust terrain. New York also does not allow pacemakers, which he prefers.
“Who knows, he could blow up,” Ritzenhein said. “He’s not invincible, even though he looks like it sometimes. One thing you’ve got to remember: everybody is beatable.”
Monday, October 11, 2010
Commonwealth performance
Congrats Jaime. A great athlete and nice guy.
Link here
John MacKinnon, Postmedia News · Friday, Oct. 8, 2010
DELHI, India — If the city of Windsor, Ont., needs an ambassador, they need look no further than decathlete Jaime Adjetey-Nelson, who won the gold medal in his gruelling discipline at the Commonwealth Games on Friday night.
After he did, he 26-year-old Adjetey-Nelson wasted little time lauding his hometown to a pair of journalists in the interview area.
“The legs could have really stopped and I could have gone down, but I was chasing that gold,” said Adjetey-Nelson, who laboured noticeably on the final lap of the men’s 1,500-metres, the final indignity decathletes must suffer in their 10-event competition. “I was just thinking, ‘I’m so close to the gold.
“I’m doing this for Windsor back home. You know, it has been a tough few years and they’ve been behind me. My community, my university team. People always ask me if I train in Toronto and I tell them, ‘I’m not four hours south from Toronto, they’re four hours north of me.’
“I’m the big dog and we’re doing it in Windsor, and there’s great things happening there. I want people to know it’s happening in small towns all over Canada.”
Adjetey-Nelson won the decathlon with a total of 8,070 points, off his personal best of 8,239 he set at a meet in the Czech Republic, but over the 8,000-point threshold he just missed attaining when the Canadian Olympic trials were held in Windsor in 2008.
He’ll take it.
“I had the big breakthrough this year,” Adjetey-Nelson said. “Some people didn’t think I could follow it up.
“The calibre of competition I had there (Czech Republic) was a bit more prestigious, you know. I had the world record holder and the Olympic champion, but coming to Commonwealth, it’s all about competing.
“Whoever was here to push me to compete, I wanted to one-up them. I came here for the gold.”
Mission accomplished.
Link here
John MacKinnon, Postmedia News · Friday, Oct. 8, 2010
DELHI, India — If the city of Windsor, Ont., needs an ambassador, they need look no further than decathlete Jaime Adjetey-Nelson, who won the gold medal in his gruelling discipline at the Commonwealth Games on Friday night.
After he did, he 26-year-old Adjetey-Nelson wasted little time lauding his hometown to a pair of journalists in the interview area.
“The legs could have really stopped and I could have gone down, but I was chasing that gold,” said Adjetey-Nelson, who laboured noticeably on the final lap of the men’s 1,500-metres, the final indignity decathletes must suffer in their 10-event competition. “I was just thinking, ‘I’m so close to the gold.
“I’m doing this for Windsor back home. You know, it has been a tough few years and they’ve been behind me. My community, my university team. People always ask me if I train in Toronto and I tell them, ‘I’m not four hours south from Toronto, they’re four hours north of me.’
“I’m the big dog and we’re doing it in Windsor, and there’s great things happening there. I want people to know it’s happening in small towns all over Canada.”
Adjetey-Nelson won the decathlon with a total of 8,070 points, off his personal best of 8,239 he set at a meet in the Czech Republic, but over the 8,000-point threshold he just missed attaining when the Canadian Olympic trials were held in Windsor in 2008.
He’ll take it.
“I had the big breakthrough this year,” Adjetey-Nelson said. “Some people didn’t think I could follow it up.
“The calibre of competition I had there (Czech Republic) was a bit more prestigious, you know. I had the world record holder and the Olympic champion, but coming to Commonwealth, it’s all about competing.
“Whoever was here to push me to compete, I wanted to one-up them. I came here for the gold.”
Mission accomplished.
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Saturday, August 28, 2010
Friday, August 27, 2010
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Cross Country Running: a winter sport?
http://espn.go.com/action/freeskiing/blog/_/post/5480597
Last week, the International Olympic Committee announced it had received a request from track and field's world governing body (IAAF) to add cross-country running to the Olympic docket.
The Winter Olympic docket, starting in 2018.
Generally this wouldn't warrant coverage on a freeskiing site, but given that halfpipe skiing is under heavy consideration to be included at the 2014 Sochi Games (in addition to slopestyle snowboarding, women's ski jumping and an alpine racing team event), there suddenly exists a real possibility that Olympic athletes could be running on snow before they'd be launching 20 feet out of a pipe.
According to an Associated Press story on the cross-country bid, the Olympic Charter states that "only those sports which are practiced on snow and ice are considered as winter sports." But the IOC also strives for universality among its sport offerings, and with only 82 of 200 Olympic nations having participated in this year's Vancouver Games, the addition of cross-country running could vastly increase that number, especially among African countries.
U.S. Cross Country champ Deena Kastor: future winter Olympian?
As expected, the running community is celebrating the news. Deena Kastor, the 2004 Olympic marathon bronze medalist and an eight-time U.S. cross-country champion, lives and trains in Mammoth Lakes, Calif., along with many of America's top runners. "I think it's fantastic," she said in a phone interview. "Running is a year-round sport. In the winter months it's a pretty extreme sport, but running in general is the most participated sport in the world."
Kastor said the Winter Olympic potential has been talked about for years at events ranging from small cross-country races to the Summer Games. "It was always a pipe dream," she said. But given the conditions in which many of the world's elite runners train, she believes the winter bid is fair. "I live at 8,000 feet. We get 50 feet of snow each year. This winter we had snow from October to May. I run about 20 to 30 miles a week on the snow (out of 110 miles total), in spikes, crampons, whatever. To me, the worse the conditions, the better."
Peter Olenick, a two-time Winter X Games medalist in the halfpipe and a potential Olympic contender in 2014, doesn't share the runners' view. "I think that's absolutely ridiculous," he said of the IAAF request. "Winter sports involve actually sliding on snow or ice, not just doing a summer sport in the winter. I've never even heard of cross-country running in the winter."
Jonny Moseley, the 1998 Olympic moguls gold medalist and also a cross-country runner in high school, remains dubious on whether halfpipe skiing would be prioritized ahead of an objective event like running. "I think they just hate judged sports," he said of the IOC. "It's too much of a hassle for them."
Tom Kelly, vice president of communications at the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association, first learned of the news earlier this week. "I can honestly tell you we've never had any discussions on this at all. So there's no way we'd have a position on it," he said. "But it is pretty fascinating. And we have high regard for the process at the IOC. They put a lot of time and thought into adding sports."
The potential 2014 additions could be decided as early as October, when the IOC's executive board meets in Acapulco, Mexico. But the cross-country fate likely won't be known until next July, when the 2018 host city is chosen.
Last week, the International Olympic Committee announced it had received a request from track and field's world governing body (IAAF) to add cross-country running to the Olympic docket.
The Winter Olympic docket, starting in 2018.
Generally this wouldn't warrant coverage on a freeskiing site, but given that halfpipe skiing is under heavy consideration to be included at the 2014 Sochi Games (in addition to slopestyle snowboarding, women's ski jumping and an alpine racing team event), there suddenly exists a real possibility that Olympic athletes could be running on snow before they'd be launching 20 feet out of a pipe.
According to an Associated Press story on the cross-country bid, the Olympic Charter states that "only those sports which are practiced on snow and ice are considered as winter sports." But the IOC also strives for universality among its sport offerings, and with only 82 of 200 Olympic nations having participated in this year's Vancouver Games, the addition of cross-country running could vastly increase that number, especially among African countries.
U.S. Cross Country champ Deena Kastor: future winter Olympian?
As expected, the running community is celebrating the news. Deena Kastor, the 2004 Olympic marathon bronze medalist and an eight-time U.S. cross-country champion, lives and trains in Mammoth Lakes, Calif., along with many of America's top runners. "I think it's fantastic," she said in a phone interview. "Running is a year-round sport. In the winter months it's a pretty extreme sport, but running in general is the most participated sport in the world."
Kastor said the Winter Olympic potential has been talked about for years at events ranging from small cross-country races to the Summer Games. "It was always a pipe dream," she said. But given the conditions in which many of the world's elite runners train, she believes the winter bid is fair. "I live at 8,000 feet. We get 50 feet of snow each year. This winter we had snow from October to May. I run about 20 to 30 miles a week on the snow (out of 110 miles total), in spikes, crampons, whatever. To me, the worse the conditions, the better."
Peter Olenick, a two-time Winter X Games medalist in the halfpipe and a potential Olympic contender in 2014, doesn't share the runners' view. "I think that's absolutely ridiculous," he said of the IAAF request. "Winter sports involve actually sliding on snow or ice, not just doing a summer sport in the winter. I've never even heard of cross-country running in the winter."
Jonny Moseley, the 1998 Olympic moguls gold medalist and also a cross-country runner in high school, remains dubious on whether halfpipe skiing would be prioritized ahead of an objective event like running. "I think they just hate judged sports," he said of the IOC. "It's too much of a hassle for them."
Tom Kelly, vice president of communications at the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association, first learned of the news earlier this week. "I can honestly tell you we've never had any discussions on this at all. So there's no way we'd have a position on it," he said. "But it is pretty fascinating. And we have high regard for the process at the IOC. They put a lot of time and thought into adding sports."
The potential 2014 additions could be decided as early as October, when the IOC's executive board meets in Acapulco, Mexico. But the cross-country fate likely won't be known until next July, when the 2018 host city is chosen.
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Are we addicted to our sport?
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/17/health/nutrition/17best.html
When Dr. Michael Joyner, an exercise researcher at the Mayo Clinic, heard I’d gotten a second stress fracture, high on my fibula, less than two years after recovering from my first one, in a metatarsal bone in my foot, he sent me some advice by e-mail.
Well
“I would urge you to take a year off of running,” he wrote. “Stop trying to rope-a-dope this. Cycle and do the elliptical and take some swimming lessons.” He added, “I did — took 10 years off of running and my perspective is different.”
Right. He’s got to be kidding. I am one of those people who seem to lurch from injury to injury but keep coming back to my sport. I also am a serious cyclist, but running is my true love.
I’m not alone. Margaret Martonosi, one of my running friends and an electrical engineering professor at Princeton University, is a runner and a competitive swimmer. Last year, she injured her Achilles’ tendon. She took a month off and finally saw a doctor, who told her that her running days were over and that at age 45, she really shouldn’t be running anyway.
That was “a bit incongruous,” Margaret told me, because she had just had her best times ever in the New York marathon and in a half marathon she ran while training for it.
She changed doctors.
What is the difference between Mike Joyner and athletes like Margaret or me? Or between us and the legions of others in the Joyner camp — people like Dr. Michael Weiner, an Alzheimer’s researcher who told me he used to run marathons but took up swimming when his back kept bothering him. Now he belongs to the Dolphin Club in San Francisco. He swims with them every morning at 5 a.m. in the San Francisco Bay — without a wet suit — and never looks back. Or Dr. Jason Karlawish, an associate professor of medicine and medical ethics at the University of Pennsylvania. He reluctantly abandoned running after he tore his meniscus, a crucial piece of cartilage in the knee.
“I was frankly demoralized that I’d be one of those people who ‘used to run’ and athletics would slowly become part of my past,” Jason said. It took time and effort to learn a new sport, he added. But now he loves swimming, especially, he says, the meditative aspect. “For 45 minutes, I can see little, hear only my thoughts, and talk to no one.”.
At least one expert, recommended by the American College of Sports Medicine for this column, would say we stubborn athletes have a psychological problem.
Our behavior, said the expert, Dr. Jon L. Schriner, an osteopath at the Michigan Center for Athletic Medicine, is “compulsive”: we let our egos get in the way, persisting beyond all reason.
But another expert recommended by the college, David B. Coppel, a clinical and sports psychologist at the University of Washington, has another perspective. There are several reasons some people find it hard to switch sports, he told me. Often, their friends do that sport, too; it is how these people identify themselves, part of their social life. And then there is another, more elusive factor.
“There is something about the experience — be it figure skating or running or cycling — that really produces a pleasurable experience,” Dr. Coppel said. “That connection is probably not only at a psychological level but probably also something physiological that potentially makes it harder for these people to transition to other sports.”
Jennifer Davis, a physical chemist who is my cycling, running and weight-lifting partner, adds another reason. Often we stubborn athletes — and Jen, an ultra runner who competes in races longer than marathons, includes herself in that group — have found that we do well, get trophies, win at least our age group in races. That makes it hard to stop.
My doctor, Joseph H. Feinberg at the Hospital for Special Surgery in Manhattan, says it’s not always necessary to give up a sport because of injuries.
“Some will say you need to stop,” he said. “But often correcting faulty mechanics, the right exercises or rehab, or just changes in training techniques are all that is needed.”
He knows what it’s like to have a passion for a sport. Dr. Feinberg, a runner, swimmer and cyclist, has had two stress fractures yet keeps running.
Meanwhile, Margaret Martonosi says her tendon has improved enough that she can run two miles five days a week. It’s not much, she said, but “I’ll take it.”
I too am starting to run again. I also did so much rigorous bicycling when I could not run that I am considering entering my first bike race, a 35-kilometer time trial, which means you ride as fast as you can for 21 miles. But running is still my passion.
And Mike Joyner? He went from running to swimming and is now doing triathlons. And he’s glad.
“Whenever I have switched sports it has been energizing because it is a new set of experiences and challenges,” he said. “There are new opportunities to P.R.” (The initials stand for personal record, the best time you’ve ever had.)
“Now that I am doing more running again it feels fresh, too,” he said, “and by essentially skipping 10 years, I did not have to deal with the existential death spiral associated with progressively slower times. I came back with a blank slate.”
Margaret understands that — her swimming times had leveled off, but with running, she says, “I feel in ways like I just started, and that I have a lot more to get out of the sport.” She says there might be a day when she gives up running, but she is not there yet.
But Mike will never convince people like Jen and me.
“I could give up cycling,” Jen said. “But I could never give up running.”
When Dr. Michael Joyner, an exercise researcher at the Mayo Clinic, heard I’d gotten a second stress fracture, high on my fibula, less than two years after recovering from my first one, in a metatarsal bone in my foot, he sent me some advice by e-mail.
Well
“I would urge you to take a year off of running,” he wrote. “Stop trying to rope-a-dope this. Cycle and do the elliptical and take some swimming lessons.” He added, “I did — took 10 years off of running and my perspective is different.”
Right. He’s got to be kidding. I am one of those people who seem to lurch from injury to injury but keep coming back to my sport. I also am a serious cyclist, but running is my true love.
I’m not alone. Margaret Martonosi, one of my running friends and an electrical engineering professor at Princeton University, is a runner and a competitive swimmer. Last year, she injured her Achilles’ tendon. She took a month off and finally saw a doctor, who told her that her running days were over and that at age 45, she really shouldn’t be running anyway.
That was “a bit incongruous,” Margaret told me, because she had just had her best times ever in the New York marathon and in a half marathon she ran while training for it.
She changed doctors.
What is the difference between Mike Joyner and athletes like Margaret or me? Or between us and the legions of others in the Joyner camp — people like Dr. Michael Weiner, an Alzheimer’s researcher who told me he used to run marathons but took up swimming when his back kept bothering him. Now he belongs to the Dolphin Club in San Francisco. He swims with them every morning at 5 a.m. in the San Francisco Bay — without a wet suit — and never looks back. Or Dr. Jason Karlawish, an associate professor of medicine and medical ethics at the University of Pennsylvania. He reluctantly abandoned running after he tore his meniscus, a crucial piece of cartilage in the knee.
“I was frankly demoralized that I’d be one of those people who ‘used to run’ and athletics would slowly become part of my past,” Jason said. It took time and effort to learn a new sport, he added. But now he loves swimming, especially, he says, the meditative aspect. “For 45 minutes, I can see little, hear only my thoughts, and talk to no one.”.
At least one expert, recommended by the American College of Sports Medicine for this column, would say we stubborn athletes have a psychological problem.
Our behavior, said the expert, Dr. Jon L. Schriner, an osteopath at the Michigan Center for Athletic Medicine, is “compulsive”: we let our egos get in the way, persisting beyond all reason.
But another expert recommended by the college, David B. Coppel, a clinical and sports psychologist at the University of Washington, has another perspective. There are several reasons some people find it hard to switch sports, he told me. Often, their friends do that sport, too; it is how these people identify themselves, part of their social life. And then there is another, more elusive factor.
“There is something about the experience — be it figure skating or running or cycling — that really produces a pleasurable experience,” Dr. Coppel said. “That connection is probably not only at a psychological level but probably also something physiological that potentially makes it harder for these people to transition to other sports.”
Jennifer Davis, a physical chemist who is my cycling, running and weight-lifting partner, adds another reason. Often we stubborn athletes — and Jen, an ultra runner who competes in races longer than marathons, includes herself in that group — have found that we do well, get trophies, win at least our age group in races. That makes it hard to stop.
My doctor, Joseph H. Feinberg at the Hospital for Special Surgery in Manhattan, says it’s not always necessary to give up a sport because of injuries.
“Some will say you need to stop,” he said. “But often correcting faulty mechanics, the right exercises or rehab, or just changes in training techniques are all that is needed.”
He knows what it’s like to have a passion for a sport. Dr. Feinberg, a runner, swimmer and cyclist, has had two stress fractures yet keeps running.
Meanwhile, Margaret Martonosi says her tendon has improved enough that she can run two miles five days a week. It’s not much, she said, but “I’ll take it.”
I too am starting to run again. I also did so much rigorous bicycling when I could not run that I am considering entering my first bike race, a 35-kilometer time trial, which means you ride as fast as you can for 21 miles. But running is still my passion.
And Mike Joyner? He went from running to swimming and is now doing triathlons. And he’s glad.
“Whenever I have switched sports it has been energizing because it is a new set of experiences and challenges,” he said. “There are new opportunities to P.R.” (The initials stand for personal record, the best time you’ve ever had.)
“Now that I am doing more running again it feels fresh, too,” he said, “and by essentially skipping 10 years, I did not have to deal with the existential death spiral associated with progressively slower times. I came back with a blank slate.”
Margaret understands that — her swimming times had leveled off, but with running, she says, “I feel in ways like I just started, and that I have a lot more to get out of the sport.” She says there might be a day when she gives up running, but she is not there yet.
But Mike will never convince people like Jen and me.
“I could give up cycling,” Jen said. “But I could never give up running.”
Monday, August 9, 2010
Feeling grumpy 'is good for you'
LINK
An attack of the grumps can make you communicate better, it is suggested
In a bad mood? Don't worry - according to research, it's good for you.
An Australian psychology expert who has been studying emotions has found being grumpy makes us think more clearly.
In contrast to those annoying happy types, miserable people are better at decision-making and less gullible, his experiments showed.
While cheerfulness fosters creativity, gloominess breeds attentiveness and careful thinking, Professor Joe Forgas told Australian Science Magazine.
'Eeyore days'
The University of New South Wales researcher says a grumpy person can cope with more demanding situations than a happy one because of the way the brain "promotes information processing strategies".
He asked volunteers to watch different films and dwell on positive or negative events in their life, designed to put them in either a good or bad mood.
Next he asked them to take part in a series of tasks, including judging the truth of urban myths and providing eyewitness accounts of events.
Those in a bad mood outperformed those who were jolly - they made fewer mistakes and were better communicators.
Professor Forgas said: "Whereas positive mood seems to promote creativity, flexibility, co-operation and reliance on mental shortcuts, negative moods trigger more attentive, careful thinking, paying greater attention to the external world."
The study also found that sad people were better at stating their case through written arguments, which Forgas said showed that a "mildly negative mood may actually promote a more concrete, accommodative and ultimately more successful communication style".
His earlier work shows the weather has a similar impact on us - wet, dreary days sharpened memory, while bright sunny spells make people forgetful.
An attack of the grumps can make you communicate better, it is suggested
In a bad mood? Don't worry - according to research, it's good for you.
An Australian psychology expert who has been studying emotions has found being grumpy makes us think more clearly.
In contrast to those annoying happy types, miserable people are better at decision-making and less gullible, his experiments showed.
While cheerfulness fosters creativity, gloominess breeds attentiveness and careful thinking, Professor Joe Forgas told Australian Science Magazine.
'Eeyore days'
The University of New South Wales researcher says a grumpy person can cope with more demanding situations than a happy one because of the way the brain "promotes information processing strategies".
He asked volunteers to watch different films and dwell on positive or negative events in their life, designed to put them in either a good or bad mood.
Next he asked them to take part in a series of tasks, including judging the truth of urban myths and providing eyewitness accounts of events.
Those in a bad mood outperformed those who were jolly - they made fewer mistakes and were better communicators.
Professor Forgas said: "Whereas positive mood seems to promote creativity, flexibility, co-operation and reliance on mental shortcuts, negative moods trigger more attentive, careful thinking, paying greater attention to the external world."
The study also found that sad people were better at stating their case through written arguments, which Forgas said showed that a "mildly negative mood may actually promote a more concrete, accommodative and ultimately more successful communication style".
His earlier work shows the weather has a similar impact on us - wet, dreary days sharpened memory, while bright sunny spells make people forgetful.
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Phys Ed: How Much Does Knee Surgery Really Help?
NY TIMES article- http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/04/phys-ed-how-much-does-knee-surgery-really-help/?src=me&ref=health
A new study published late last month in The New England Journal of Medicine is raising provocative questions about how best to treat a torn anterior cruciate ligament. For the study, researchers from Lund University in Sweden recruited 121 young adults who’d injured their A.C.L.’s. The volunteers, between 18 and 35, were physically active, and many were competitive athletes. They agreed, rather bravely, to be randomly assigned to one of two groups and accept radically different treatments for their torn A.C.L.’s. The first group began physical therapy and then underwent surgical reconstruction of the ligament, considered by many people to be the best option for injured athletes. The second group received only physical therapy, with the option to have the operation later. Twenty-three subjects of that group did eventually have the operation. (For those fortunate enough not to be personally familiar with A.C.L. surgery, reconstruction involves replacing the injured ligament with tissue from elsewhere in your own leg or from a cadaver.)
Over two years, the injured knees were assessed using a comprehensive numerical score that rated pain, function during activity and other measures. At the time of the original injury, the knee also had been scored. At the end of the two years, both groups showed considerable improvement. The scores for the surgically repaired knees had risen by 39.2 points. The scores for the more conservatively treated knees also had risen, by 39.4 points. In other words, the outcomes for the two groups were virtually identical. Despite a widespread belief that surgery leads to a stronger knee, the results showed that surgically reconstructing the A.C.L. as soon as possible after the tear “was not superior” to more conservative treatment, the study’s authors wrote. The findings suggest, the authors concluded, that “more than half the A.C.L. reconstructions” currently being conducted on injured knees “could be avoided without adversely affecting outcomes.”
This possibility should reverberate across playing fields nationwide, where, at the moment, preseason high school, collegiate and adult-league sports practices are under way, with a concomitant surge in A.C.L. tears. By one estimate, as many as 1 in every 556 fit, active people will tear an A.C.L., particularly if they participate in sports that involve frequent pivoting and landing, like soccer, football, tennis, skiing and basketball. At the same time, the urge to treat the injury with surgery appears to be growing. The “belief among most surgeons and patients is that surgery is a ‘must,’ at least if you aim to go back into an active lifestyle,” the Swedish authors of the study wrote in an e-mail response to questions.
Part of the reason for A.C.L. surgery’s popularity is that, by most measures, it works. In the current study, most of the group who had reconstructive surgery reported that their injured knee felt healthy after two years and that they had returned to activity — not, in most cases, at the same level as before their injury, but they were active. Significantly, their knees also were notably more “stable” than the joints that hadn’t been surgically fixed. Stability is, in theory, desirable. A stable knee rarely gives way.
But in practice, the importance of stability after A.C.L. treatment is “controversial,” the New England Journal study’s authors, Richard Frobell, Ph.D., and Stefan Lohmander, M.D., Ph.D., of Lund University, wrote in their e-mail. In an important 2009 study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, researchers retrospectively compared outcomes after 10 years in competitive athletes who had surgery or had opted for conservative treatment of their torn A.C.L.’s. The surgically repaired knees were notably more stable. But they weren’t fundamentally healthier. The surgically reconstructed knees and the conservatively treated joints experienced similar (and high) levels of early-onset knee arthritis, a common occurrence after an A.C.L. tear. The treatments were almost identical, too, in terms of whether the athletes could return to sports and whether they reported subsequent knee problems.
Why, then, undergo A.C.L. reconstruction, an operation that can be expensive and, like all surgical procedures, carries risks? Several top-flight orthopedic surgeons I contacted say that they remain convinced that surgery leads to a better long-term outcome for certain patients, particularly if they want to return to pivoting sports. “The reason to have the surgery is to preserve” other parts of the knee from injury during activity, says Dr. Warren Dunn, an assistant professor of orthopedics and rehabilitation at Vanderbilt University who has extensively studied A.C.L. tears. He points out that in the N.E.J.M. study, only 8 percent of the patients in the first surgical group subsequently tore a meniscus, a fragile pillow of cartilage that can rip if a knee gives way. Twenty-five percent of those in the physical therapy group eventually tore their meniscuses.
What these numbers mean for anyone who tears an A.C.L. or is the parent of a young athlete in that situation is that they should have a long, frank conversation with an orthopedic surgeon and possibly also a nonsurgical sports-medicine specialist about options. “We recommend surgery based on activity level and sports,” Dr. Dunn says. “Most subjects can do in-line activities” like running or biking “without an A.C.L.” He adds, “On the other hand, we believe that A.C.L.-deficient subjects that do return” to sports involving cutting, pivoting or planting the leg “can consequently injure the meniscus” or other cartilage in the knee and would benefit from a replacement A.C.L.
The authors of the N.E.J.M. study are less sure. “On the basis of our study results, we’d tell patients” that “there is no apparent downside of starting a good rehab program and waiting with the surgery decision to see if it is needed or not,” the authors wrote to me.
The ultimate lesson of the N.E.J.M. study is almost certainly that more science on the subject is needed. “We definitely know only parts of the long-term outcome” after different A.C.L. treatments, says Dr. Duncan Meuffels, an assistant professor of orthopedic surgery at Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam and lead author of the British Journal of Sports Medicine study.
But large-scale, randomized controlled studies, the gold standard of medical research, may be difficult to orchestrate, in part because people with shredded A.C.L.’s can balk at being denied surgery. In the N.E.J.M. study, some of those assigned to physical therapy wound up requesting surgery, although they weren’t experiencing any knee problems. For them, it seems, “the desire to undergo surgery was based on expectations rather than symptoms,” the authors told me. It may be years, unfortunately, before we know if such expectations are justified or if unreconstructed injured knees can be fine.
A new study published late last month in The New England Journal of Medicine is raising provocative questions about how best to treat a torn anterior cruciate ligament. For the study, researchers from Lund University in Sweden recruited 121 young adults who’d injured their A.C.L.’s. The volunteers, between 18 and 35, were physically active, and many were competitive athletes. They agreed, rather bravely, to be randomly assigned to one of two groups and accept radically different treatments for their torn A.C.L.’s. The first group began physical therapy and then underwent surgical reconstruction of the ligament, considered by many people to be the best option for injured athletes. The second group received only physical therapy, with the option to have the operation later. Twenty-three subjects of that group did eventually have the operation. (For those fortunate enough not to be personally familiar with A.C.L. surgery, reconstruction involves replacing the injured ligament with tissue from elsewhere in your own leg or from a cadaver.)
Over two years, the injured knees were assessed using a comprehensive numerical score that rated pain, function during activity and other measures. At the time of the original injury, the knee also had been scored. At the end of the two years, both groups showed considerable improvement. The scores for the surgically repaired knees had risen by 39.2 points. The scores for the more conservatively treated knees also had risen, by 39.4 points. In other words, the outcomes for the two groups were virtually identical. Despite a widespread belief that surgery leads to a stronger knee, the results showed that surgically reconstructing the A.C.L. as soon as possible after the tear “was not superior” to more conservative treatment, the study’s authors wrote. The findings suggest, the authors concluded, that “more than half the A.C.L. reconstructions” currently being conducted on injured knees “could be avoided without adversely affecting outcomes.”
This possibility should reverberate across playing fields nationwide, where, at the moment, preseason high school, collegiate and adult-league sports practices are under way, with a concomitant surge in A.C.L. tears. By one estimate, as many as 1 in every 556 fit, active people will tear an A.C.L., particularly if they participate in sports that involve frequent pivoting and landing, like soccer, football, tennis, skiing and basketball. At the same time, the urge to treat the injury with surgery appears to be growing. The “belief among most surgeons and patients is that surgery is a ‘must,’ at least if you aim to go back into an active lifestyle,” the Swedish authors of the study wrote in an e-mail response to questions.
Part of the reason for A.C.L. surgery’s popularity is that, by most measures, it works. In the current study, most of the group who had reconstructive surgery reported that their injured knee felt healthy after two years and that they had returned to activity — not, in most cases, at the same level as before their injury, but they were active. Significantly, their knees also were notably more “stable” than the joints that hadn’t been surgically fixed. Stability is, in theory, desirable. A stable knee rarely gives way.
But in practice, the importance of stability after A.C.L. treatment is “controversial,” the New England Journal study’s authors, Richard Frobell, Ph.D., and Stefan Lohmander, M.D., Ph.D., of Lund University, wrote in their e-mail. In an important 2009 study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, researchers retrospectively compared outcomes after 10 years in competitive athletes who had surgery or had opted for conservative treatment of their torn A.C.L.’s. The surgically repaired knees were notably more stable. But they weren’t fundamentally healthier. The surgically reconstructed knees and the conservatively treated joints experienced similar (and high) levels of early-onset knee arthritis, a common occurrence after an A.C.L. tear. The treatments were almost identical, too, in terms of whether the athletes could return to sports and whether they reported subsequent knee problems.
Why, then, undergo A.C.L. reconstruction, an operation that can be expensive and, like all surgical procedures, carries risks? Several top-flight orthopedic surgeons I contacted say that they remain convinced that surgery leads to a better long-term outcome for certain patients, particularly if they want to return to pivoting sports. “The reason to have the surgery is to preserve” other parts of the knee from injury during activity, says Dr. Warren Dunn, an assistant professor of orthopedics and rehabilitation at Vanderbilt University who has extensively studied A.C.L. tears. He points out that in the N.E.J.M. study, only 8 percent of the patients in the first surgical group subsequently tore a meniscus, a fragile pillow of cartilage that can rip if a knee gives way. Twenty-five percent of those in the physical therapy group eventually tore their meniscuses.
What these numbers mean for anyone who tears an A.C.L. or is the parent of a young athlete in that situation is that they should have a long, frank conversation with an orthopedic surgeon and possibly also a nonsurgical sports-medicine specialist about options. “We recommend surgery based on activity level and sports,” Dr. Dunn says. “Most subjects can do in-line activities” like running or biking “without an A.C.L.” He adds, “On the other hand, we believe that A.C.L.-deficient subjects that do return” to sports involving cutting, pivoting or planting the leg “can consequently injure the meniscus” or other cartilage in the knee and would benefit from a replacement A.C.L.
The authors of the N.E.J.M. study are less sure. “On the basis of our study results, we’d tell patients” that “there is no apparent downside of starting a good rehab program and waiting with the surgery decision to see if it is needed or not,” the authors wrote to me.
The ultimate lesson of the N.E.J.M. study is almost certainly that more science on the subject is needed. “We definitely know only parts of the long-term outcome” after different A.C.L. treatments, says Dr. Duncan Meuffels, an assistant professor of orthopedic surgery at Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam and lead author of the British Journal of Sports Medicine study.
But large-scale, randomized controlled studies, the gold standard of medical research, may be difficult to orchestrate, in part because people with shredded A.C.L.’s can balk at being denied surgery. In the N.E.J.M. study, some of those assigned to physical therapy wound up requesting surgery, although they weren’t experiencing any knee problems. For them, it seems, “the desire to undergo surgery was based on expectations rather than symptoms,” the authors told me. It may be years, unfortunately, before we know if such expectations are justified or if unreconstructed injured knees can be fine.
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Does running a marathon push the body further than it is meant to go?
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/27/health/27well.html
The conventional wisdom is that distance running leads to debilitating wear and tear, especially on the joints. But that hasn’t stopped runners from flocking to starting lines in record numbers.
Last year in the United States, 425,000 marathoners crossed the finish line, an increase of 20 percent from the beginning of the decade, Running USA says. Next week about 40,000 people will take part in the New York City Marathon. Injury rates have also climbed, with some studies reporting that 90 percent of those who train for the 26.2-mile race sustain injuries in the process.
But now a best-selling book has reframed the debate about the wisdom of distance running. In “Born to Run” (Knopf), Christopher McDougall, an avid runner who had been vexed by injuries, explores the world of the Tarahumara Indians of Mexico, a tribe known for running extraordinary distances in nothing but thin-soled sandals.
Mr. McDougall makes the case that running isn’t inherently risky. Instead, he argues that the commercialization of urban marathons encourages overzealous training, while the promotion of high-tech shoes has led to poor running form and a rash of injuries.
“The sense of distance running being crazy is something new to late-20th-century America,” Mr. McDougall told me. “It’s only recently that running has become associated with pain and injury.”
The scientific evidence supports the notion that humans evolved to be runners. In a 2007 paper in the journal Sports Medicine, Daniel E. Lieberman, a Harvard evolutionary biologist, and Dennis M. Bramble, a biologist at the University of Utah, wrote that several characteristics unique to humans suggested endurance running played an important role in our evolution.
Most mammals can sprint faster than humans — having four legs gives them the advantage. But when it comes to long distances, humans can outrun almost any animal. Because we cool by sweating rather than panting, we can stay cool at speeds and distances that would overheat other animals. On a hot day, the two scientists wrote, a human could even outrun a horse in a 26.2-mile marathon.
Why would evolution favor the distance runner? The prevailing theory is that endurance running allowed primitive humans to incorporate meat into their diet. They may have watched the sky for scavenging birds and then run long distances to reach a fresh kill and steal the meat from whatever animal was there first.
Other research suggests that before the development of slingshots or bows, early hunters engaged in persistence hunting, chasing an animal for hours until it overheated, making it easy to kill at close range. A 2006 report in the journal Current Anthropology documents persistence hunting among modern hunter-gatherers, including the Bushmen in Africa.
“Ancient humans exploited the fact that humans are good runners in the heat,” Dr. Bramble said. “We have such a great cooling system” — many sweat glands, little body hair.
There is other evidence that evolution favored endurance running. A study in The Journal of Experimental Biology last February showed that the short toes of the human foot allowed for more efficient running, compared with longer-toed animals. Increasing toe length as little as 20 percent doubles the mechanical work of the foot. Even the fact that the big toe is straight, rather than to the side, suggests that our feet evolved for running.
“The big toe is lined up with the rest, not divergent, the way you see with apes and our closest nonrunning relatives,” Dr. Bramble said. “It’s the main push-off in running: the last thing to leave the ground is that big toe.”
Springlike ligaments and tendons in the feet and legs are crucial for running. (Our close relatives the chimpanzee and the ape don’t have them.) A narrow waist and a midsection that can turn allow us to swing our arms and prevent us from zigzagging on the trail. Humans also have a far more developed sense of balance, an advantage that keeps the head stable as we run. And most humans can store about 20 miles’ worth of glycogen in their muscles.
And the gluteus maximus, the largest muscle in the human body, is primarily engaged only during running. “Your butt is a running muscle; you barely use it when you walk,” Dr. Lieberman said. “There are so many features in our bodies from our heads to our toes that make us good at running.”
So if we’re born to run, why are runners so often injured? A combination of factors is likely to play a role, experts say. Exercise early in life can affect the development of tendons and muscles, but many people don’t start running until adulthood, so their bodies may not be as well developed for distance. Running on only artificial surfaces and in high-tech shoes can change the biomechanics of running, increasing the risks of injury.
What’s the solution? Slower, easier training over a long period would most likely help; so would brief walk breaks, which mimic the behavior of the persistence hunter. And running on a variety of surfaces and in simpler shoes with less cushioning can restore natural running form.
Mr. McDougall says that while researching his book, he corrected his form and stopped using thickly cushioned shoes. He has run without injury for three years.
The conventional wisdom is that distance running leads to debilitating wear and tear, especially on the joints. But that hasn’t stopped runners from flocking to starting lines in record numbers.
Last year in the United States, 425,000 marathoners crossed the finish line, an increase of 20 percent from the beginning of the decade, Running USA says. Next week about 40,000 people will take part in the New York City Marathon. Injury rates have also climbed, with some studies reporting that 90 percent of those who train for the 26.2-mile race sustain injuries in the process.
But now a best-selling book has reframed the debate about the wisdom of distance running. In “Born to Run” (Knopf), Christopher McDougall, an avid runner who had been vexed by injuries, explores the world of the Tarahumara Indians of Mexico, a tribe known for running extraordinary distances in nothing but thin-soled sandals.
Mr. McDougall makes the case that running isn’t inherently risky. Instead, he argues that the commercialization of urban marathons encourages overzealous training, while the promotion of high-tech shoes has led to poor running form and a rash of injuries.
“The sense of distance running being crazy is something new to late-20th-century America,” Mr. McDougall told me. “It’s only recently that running has become associated with pain and injury.”
The scientific evidence supports the notion that humans evolved to be runners. In a 2007 paper in the journal Sports Medicine, Daniel E. Lieberman, a Harvard evolutionary biologist, and Dennis M. Bramble, a biologist at the University of Utah, wrote that several characteristics unique to humans suggested endurance running played an important role in our evolution.
Most mammals can sprint faster than humans — having four legs gives them the advantage. But when it comes to long distances, humans can outrun almost any animal. Because we cool by sweating rather than panting, we can stay cool at speeds and distances that would overheat other animals. On a hot day, the two scientists wrote, a human could even outrun a horse in a 26.2-mile marathon.
Why would evolution favor the distance runner? The prevailing theory is that endurance running allowed primitive humans to incorporate meat into their diet. They may have watched the sky for scavenging birds and then run long distances to reach a fresh kill and steal the meat from whatever animal was there first.
Other research suggests that before the development of slingshots or bows, early hunters engaged in persistence hunting, chasing an animal for hours until it overheated, making it easy to kill at close range. A 2006 report in the journal Current Anthropology documents persistence hunting among modern hunter-gatherers, including the Bushmen in Africa.
“Ancient humans exploited the fact that humans are good runners in the heat,” Dr. Bramble said. “We have such a great cooling system” — many sweat glands, little body hair.
There is other evidence that evolution favored endurance running. A study in The Journal of Experimental Biology last February showed that the short toes of the human foot allowed for more efficient running, compared with longer-toed animals. Increasing toe length as little as 20 percent doubles the mechanical work of the foot. Even the fact that the big toe is straight, rather than to the side, suggests that our feet evolved for running.
“The big toe is lined up with the rest, not divergent, the way you see with apes and our closest nonrunning relatives,” Dr. Bramble said. “It’s the main push-off in running: the last thing to leave the ground is that big toe.”
Springlike ligaments and tendons in the feet and legs are crucial for running. (Our close relatives the chimpanzee and the ape don’t have them.) A narrow waist and a midsection that can turn allow us to swing our arms and prevent us from zigzagging on the trail. Humans also have a far more developed sense of balance, an advantage that keeps the head stable as we run. And most humans can store about 20 miles’ worth of glycogen in their muscles.
And the gluteus maximus, the largest muscle in the human body, is primarily engaged only during running. “Your butt is a running muscle; you barely use it when you walk,” Dr. Lieberman said. “There are so many features in our bodies from our heads to our toes that make us good at running.”
So if we’re born to run, why are runners so often injured? A combination of factors is likely to play a role, experts say. Exercise early in life can affect the development of tendons and muscles, but many people don’t start running until adulthood, so their bodies may not be as well developed for distance. Running on only artificial surfaces and in high-tech shoes can change the biomechanics of running, increasing the risks of injury.
What’s the solution? Slower, easier training over a long period would most likely help; so would brief walk breaks, which mimic the behavior of the persistence hunter. And running on a variety of surfaces and in simpler shoes with less cushioning can restore natural running form.
Mr. McDougall says that while researching his book, he corrected his form and stopped using thickly cushioned shoes. He has run without injury for three years.
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
NY Times nutrition article
By GINA KOLATA
Published: July 19, 2010
Link here
Exercise scientists say they have stumbled on an amazing discovery. Athletes can improve their performance in intense bouts of exercise, lasting an hour or so, if they merely rinse their mouths with a carbohydrate solution. They don’t even have to swallow it.
It has to be real carbohydrates, though; the scientists used a solution of water and a flavorless starch derivative called maltodextrin. Artificial sweeteners have no effect.
And the scientists think they have figured out why it works. It appears that the brain can sense carbohydrates in the mouth, even tasteless ones. The sensors are different from the ones for sweetness, and they prompt the brain to respond, spurring on the athlete.
Many athletes depend on sugary beverages to keep them going. But often, when blood is diverted from the stomach to working muscles during intense exercise, drinks or foods cause stomach cramps. So a carbohydrate rinse can be a way to get the same effect.
“You can get an advantage from tricking your brain,” said a discoverer of the effect, Matt Bridge, a senior lecturer in coaching and sports science at the University of Birmingham in England. “Your brain tells your body, ‘Carbohydrates are on the way.’ ” And with that message, muscles and nerves are prompted to work harder and longer.”
It’s a relatively small effect, said George A. Brooks, an exercise researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, who was not involved with the research. But a small difference, he added, “can make a big difference in competition.”
The discovery began with some puzzling findings dating to the 1990s.
Until then, exercise scientists thought they knew why it could help to eat or drink carbohydrates during a long endurance event like a marathon. Muscles can use up their glycogen, the storage form of glucose, during long exercise sessions. But if athletes consume carbohydrates, they can provide a new source of fuel for their starving muscles.
That theory predicts that carbohydrates should have no effect on performance in shorter races, an hour or less. Muscles can’t use up their glycogen that fast, and by the time the body metabolizes the carbohydrates for fuel, the race is almost over.
Then came a handful of studies showing that carbohydrates did have an effect in short exercise sessions. Athletes, often trained cyclists, rode hard and fast for an hour or so after drinking either a beverage containing carbohydrates or one that tasted the same but contained an artificial sweetener.
In intense exercise sessions lasting more than half an hour, the athletes were able to go faster or keep going longer when they had the drink with carbohydrates. Their performance improved as much as 14 percent.
Some studies, though, did not find an effect. And the difference seemed to be that athletes who were hungry showed improved performance.
It made no sense. Could the body somehow have metabolized the carbohydrates in the drinks and put them to use in such a short time? Did the muscles even need carbohydrates in such short bouts of exercise?
Asker Jeukendrup, an exercise physiologist at the University of Birmingham, and his colleagues put that idea to the test. They were among the first researchers to discover a carbohydrate effect in cyclists riding hard for an hour, and they had been puzzling over what could account for it.
So they gave trained cyclists intravenous infusions of glucose or, as a control, intravenous salt water, before asking them to ride as fast as they could for about 24 miles, about an hour. The intravenous glucose meant the athletes had large amounts of sugar available right away — no digestion required. But it had no effect on their performance.
Next they tried what seemed like a crazy idea. They asked the cyclists to do the same ride, but first to rinse their mouths with the maltodextrin solution (or, as a control, with water).
“The results were remarkable,” the researchers wrote. Just rinsing with a carbohydrate had the same effect as drinking it.
Other scientists repeated the experiment. One group used runners, asking them to run for 30 minutes or, in another study, 60 minutes. Rinsing the mouth with carbohydrates consistently led them to run farther, as compared with rinsing with placebos.
Dr. Jeukendrup and his colleagues continued to tweak the study conditions. What happened, they asked, if athletes ate breakfast before rinsing with carbohydrates, or drinking a carbohydrate solution? Then, they found, carbohydrates had no effect.
Meanwhile, neuroscientists found that rodent brains, at least, responded to carbohydrates in the mouth independently of their response to sweetness. It is carbohydrates that matter, and so artificial sweeteners do not stimulate these pathways that go from the mouth to the brain.
Then Dr. Bridge and his colleagues in Birmingham used functional magnetic-resonance imaging to determine whether glucose, which tastes sweet, has the same effect on the brain as the tasteless carbohydrate maltodextrin. They also tested artificial sweeteners for comparison. The brain scan results confirmed the exercise study results: Carbohydrates activated brain areas involved with rewards and muscle activity. Artificial sweeteners did not.
Is rinsing worthwhile for most athletes? Scott J. Montain, an exercise researcher at the United States Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine, thinks not. The effect is real, he said, but added, “Endurance competitors are better off just consuming the calories.” That way they get real fuel, instead of “sipping and then spitting out expensive, sticky spit.”
Dr. Jeukendrup and Dr. Bridge, though, say they use the mouth-rinsing trick themselves.
“You do notice a benefit,” Dr. Bridge said. But he noted that in a study, the athletes don’t know if they are getting carbohydrates or not. “If you know you are doing it,” he said, “then there’s a chance it’s a placebo effect.”
Published: July 19, 2010
Link here
Exercise scientists say they have stumbled on an amazing discovery. Athletes can improve their performance in intense bouts of exercise, lasting an hour or so, if they merely rinse their mouths with a carbohydrate solution. They don’t even have to swallow it.
It has to be real carbohydrates, though; the scientists used a solution of water and a flavorless starch derivative called maltodextrin. Artificial sweeteners have no effect.
And the scientists think they have figured out why it works. It appears that the brain can sense carbohydrates in the mouth, even tasteless ones. The sensors are different from the ones for sweetness, and they prompt the brain to respond, spurring on the athlete.
Many athletes depend on sugary beverages to keep them going. But often, when blood is diverted from the stomach to working muscles during intense exercise, drinks or foods cause stomach cramps. So a carbohydrate rinse can be a way to get the same effect.
“You can get an advantage from tricking your brain,” said a discoverer of the effect, Matt Bridge, a senior lecturer in coaching and sports science at the University of Birmingham in England. “Your brain tells your body, ‘Carbohydrates are on the way.’ ” And with that message, muscles and nerves are prompted to work harder and longer.”
It’s a relatively small effect, said George A. Brooks, an exercise researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, who was not involved with the research. But a small difference, he added, “can make a big difference in competition.”
The discovery began with some puzzling findings dating to the 1990s.
Until then, exercise scientists thought they knew why it could help to eat or drink carbohydrates during a long endurance event like a marathon. Muscles can use up their glycogen, the storage form of glucose, during long exercise sessions. But if athletes consume carbohydrates, they can provide a new source of fuel for their starving muscles.
That theory predicts that carbohydrates should have no effect on performance in shorter races, an hour or less. Muscles can’t use up their glycogen that fast, and by the time the body metabolizes the carbohydrates for fuel, the race is almost over.
Then came a handful of studies showing that carbohydrates did have an effect in short exercise sessions. Athletes, often trained cyclists, rode hard and fast for an hour or so after drinking either a beverage containing carbohydrates or one that tasted the same but contained an artificial sweetener.
In intense exercise sessions lasting more than half an hour, the athletes were able to go faster or keep going longer when they had the drink with carbohydrates. Their performance improved as much as 14 percent.
Some studies, though, did not find an effect. And the difference seemed to be that athletes who were hungry showed improved performance.
It made no sense. Could the body somehow have metabolized the carbohydrates in the drinks and put them to use in such a short time? Did the muscles even need carbohydrates in such short bouts of exercise?
Asker Jeukendrup, an exercise physiologist at the University of Birmingham, and his colleagues put that idea to the test. They were among the first researchers to discover a carbohydrate effect in cyclists riding hard for an hour, and they had been puzzling over what could account for it.
So they gave trained cyclists intravenous infusions of glucose or, as a control, intravenous salt water, before asking them to ride as fast as they could for about 24 miles, about an hour. The intravenous glucose meant the athletes had large amounts of sugar available right away — no digestion required. But it had no effect on their performance.
Next they tried what seemed like a crazy idea. They asked the cyclists to do the same ride, but first to rinse their mouths with the maltodextrin solution (or, as a control, with water).
“The results were remarkable,” the researchers wrote. Just rinsing with a carbohydrate had the same effect as drinking it.
Other scientists repeated the experiment. One group used runners, asking them to run for 30 minutes or, in another study, 60 minutes. Rinsing the mouth with carbohydrates consistently led them to run farther, as compared with rinsing with placebos.
Dr. Jeukendrup and his colleagues continued to tweak the study conditions. What happened, they asked, if athletes ate breakfast before rinsing with carbohydrates, or drinking a carbohydrate solution? Then, they found, carbohydrates had no effect.
Meanwhile, neuroscientists found that rodent brains, at least, responded to carbohydrates in the mouth independently of their response to sweetness. It is carbohydrates that matter, and so artificial sweeteners do not stimulate these pathways that go from the mouth to the brain.
Then Dr. Bridge and his colleagues in Birmingham used functional magnetic-resonance imaging to determine whether glucose, which tastes sweet, has the same effect on the brain as the tasteless carbohydrate maltodextrin. They also tested artificial sweeteners for comparison. The brain scan results confirmed the exercise study results: Carbohydrates activated brain areas involved with rewards and muscle activity. Artificial sweeteners did not.
Is rinsing worthwhile for most athletes? Scott J. Montain, an exercise researcher at the United States Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine, thinks not. The effect is real, he said, but added, “Endurance competitors are better off just consuming the calories.” That way they get real fuel, instead of “sipping and then spitting out expensive, sticky spit.”
Dr. Jeukendrup and Dr. Bridge, though, say they use the mouth-rinsing trick themselves.
“You do notice a benefit,” Dr. Bridge said. But he noted that in a study, the athletes don’t know if they are getting carbohydrates or not. “If you know you are doing it,” he said, “then there’s a chance it’s a placebo effect.”
Monday, July 19, 2010
You might be a runner if.....
...your toenails are black.
...your shoes have more miles on them than your car does.
...you need a magnifying glass to see your name in the paper.
...you have chafing in strange places.
...people say, "You run three miles...at once?"
...all your socks are either stained or torn.
...your underwear covers more than your uniform shorts.
...you run farther in a week than your bus travels for meets.
...the dogs have to hurry to keep up.
...you find yourself running between classes just because.
...the most enjoyable time you've had all month is a day off from practice.
...your coach won't give you a ride home.
...the first day of practice you run 5 miles but your coach says you only ran 2.
...you can spit while running.
...you go to a golf course to run.
...your friends go on the elevator and you beat them on the stairs.
...you finish the race looking like you wrestled a bear and you don't care.
...your temper is shorter that the distance that you ran.
...you'd rather run to school than drive.
...you combine phrases like "10 mile run" and "Easy Run" in the same breath.
...you can eat your weight in spaghetti.
...your highest heels are your training shoes.
...you debate the advantages of anti-perspirent vs. deoderant.
...the paint from the bathroom walls peels when you leave.
...you start the race in shorts and finish in a G-string.
...your spit strings from you chin and you don't even care.
...a meal involves more than 3 servings!
...if you schedule dates around meets.
...you spend more on training clothes than school clothes.
...you wear those same training clothes to school regularly.
...your christmas list includes more than one pair of running shoes.
...you've been to a golf course in every city but not to play golf.
...your entire family goes to X-C meets because they have been or will be on the team.
...your chest is as flat as your back.
...you feel lost without your water-bottle.
...you have running withdrawl if you don't run everyday.
...you eat spaghetti three times a day.
...the mile in P.E. becomes your warm-up.
...you wake up every morning in pain.
...gatorade is your drug of choice.
...you give up homecoming to go to a Meet.
...your Saturdays for the next 4 years are ruined.
...you can see your ribs thru your shirt.
...you have to run around in the shower to get wet.
...you were asked to be an extra for Schindler's List II.
...you enjoy running hills.
...you start to crave Power Bars.
...your favorite food group is carbohydrates.
...your women's team has leg hair longer than the grass they ran on.
...you can strip and change in a bus seat in less than 2 minutes.
...you don't puke your first day of basketball practice.
...there are no flies by your gym locker.
...people think it's a winter sport.
...you have trouble benching the bar.
...when you do bad you get to play longer.
...you find yourself in the middle of a football player's joke.
...your dessert is brussel sprouts.
...you foam at the mouth.
...you are always hungry.
...your running in your dreams.
...you have no life besides running.
...your weekends are shot.
...you wake up with cotton mouth.
...your are as skinny as a twig and have a stupid knit cap for the head.
...you can sharpen an axe blade on your calves.
...the cafeteria ladies look good in the morning.
...you can maintain a 5:30 pace uphill while throwing up.
...you think track is for wussies.
...you try to impress girls by saying you're a fast finisher.
...you consider school as just a break between runs.
...you always stretch while waiting in the lunch line.
...your room smells like Icy-Hot and New-Skin.
...you are bankrolling your physical therapist's next vacation.
...your girlfriend can bench more than you.
...you can count all your ribs.
...you own spandex in more than 1 color.
...track is the other "sport".
...you foam at the mouth everytime you see a big hill.
..."Chariots of Fire" is actually entertaining to you.
...a 12 mile run is an easy day.
...pizza, pasta, pizza, & pasta are your four food groups.
...your watch is more expensive and complicated than your car.
...even your dress shoes have spikes.
...Runner's World provides more pin-ups than Playboy (YEAH SUZY HAMILTON!!!)
...Steve Prefontaine's Birthday is more important than yours.
...you aspire to pain.
...you know as many kinds of pain as eskimos have words for snow.
...you think spandex is a winter's passion statement.
...you never look behind you.
...you don't know what an "off-season" means.
...you have stress fractures.
...you find yourself saying, "it's not really a hill..."
...you hit targets with your snot rocket.
...your feet are comparable to rawhide.
...you're running and you don't know why.
...you see a hill on a putting green.
...your friends refer to you as "the masochist".
...your spit hits everything but the ground.
...you drink more water than Free Willy
...you can't get the "All you can eat" at spaghetti restaurants
...you get pulled over after practice, and can't walk straight because you're so tired
...you ran sub 5 on the P.E. mile run
...you wore spikes on the P.E. mile run
...you did a 30 minute warm up for the P.E. mile run
...you did all of the above for the P.E. mile run
...you routinely race dogs down the street...and win.
...dogs follow you everywhere you go
...you rabbit for the rabbit
...you have 3% or less body fat
...you laugh at sprinters while they run
...theres nothing like intervals to start the week off fresh!!
...you talk to your coaches more than your parents
...you'd rather run than watch T.V.
...watching the New York Marathon on T.V. made you get up and go for a run
...you can say "I like to run" in over five different languages
...more than half the people you know don't know what X-C is
...you run the day after State
...off-season training starts a week after State
...you haven't had a pop in 6 months
...your calves are bigger than your biceps
...your cookie jar is filled with bagels
...there are more miles on your running shoes than the odeometer of your car
...you try to pick up a girl by telling her how fast your first mile is
...you're toe nails are fallen off
...a fatman with a gun says alright gentlemen take em off
...you can't go a day without some little brat saying run forest run
...some little kid wants to know why you're running in your underwear
...you can pronounce those funny Kenyan names
...you're proud that another team has quadrupled you're score
...the seniors assist the freshman into the lake
...you wear skimpier clothes than Madonna
...you refer to puke as a normal bodily function
...people always ask you what events you are running
...you can hallucinate and get high at the same time without taking anything
...you can say more names of your runs than names of your friends
...you spend more time thinking about the scoring system than you do about scoring with
the opposite sex
...you always win in your sleep but never in a real race
...you traded in your Gremlin
...you think Lisa Aguilera is hotter than Christina Aguilera.
...you wake up in the morning and find that you?re already running.
...the Ritz is your idol, and not a hotel in New York.
Read more: http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=9545#ixzz0u8uxNq88
...your shoes have more miles on them than your car does.
...you need a magnifying glass to see your name in the paper.
...you have chafing in strange places.
...people say, "You run three miles...at once?"
...all your socks are either stained or torn.
...your underwear covers more than your uniform shorts.
...you run farther in a week than your bus travels for meets.
...the dogs have to hurry to keep up.
...you find yourself running between classes just because.
...the most enjoyable time you've had all month is a day off from practice.
...your coach won't give you a ride home.
...the first day of practice you run 5 miles but your coach says you only ran 2.
...you can spit while running.
...you go to a golf course to run.
...your friends go on the elevator and you beat them on the stairs.
...you finish the race looking like you wrestled a bear and you don't care.
...your temper is shorter that the distance that you ran.
...you'd rather run to school than drive.
...you combine phrases like "10 mile run" and "Easy Run" in the same breath.
...you can eat your weight in spaghetti.
...your highest heels are your training shoes.
...you debate the advantages of anti-perspirent vs. deoderant.
...the paint from the bathroom walls peels when you leave.
...you start the race in shorts and finish in a G-string.
...your spit strings from you chin and you don't even care.
...a meal involves more than 3 servings!
...if you schedule dates around meets.
...you spend more on training clothes than school clothes.
...you wear those same training clothes to school regularly.
...your christmas list includes more than one pair of running shoes.
...you've been to a golf course in every city but not to play golf.
...your entire family goes to X-C meets because they have been or will be on the team.
...your chest is as flat as your back.
...you feel lost without your water-bottle.
...you have running withdrawl if you don't run everyday.
...you eat spaghetti three times a day.
...the mile in P.E. becomes your warm-up.
...you wake up every morning in pain.
...gatorade is your drug of choice.
...you give up homecoming to go to a Meet.
...your Saturdays for the next 4 years are ruined.
...you can see your ribs thru your shirt.
...you have to run around in the shower to get wet.
...you were asked to be an extra for Schindler's List II.
...you enjoy running hills.
...you start to crave Power Bars.
...your favorite food group is carbohydrates.
...your women's team has leg hair longer than the grass they ran on.
...you can strip and change in a bus seat in less than 2 minutes.
...you don't puke your first day of basketball practice.
...there are no flies by your gym locker.
...people think it's a winter sport.
...you have trouble benching the bar.
...when you do bad you get to play longer.
...you find yourself in the middle of a football player's joke.
...your dessert is brussel sprouts.
...you foam at the mouth.
...you are always hungry.
...your running in your dreams.
...you have no life besides running.
...your weekends are shot.
...you wake up with cotton mouth.
...your are as skinny as a twig and have a stupid knit cap for the head.
...you can sharpen an axe blade on your calves.
...the cafeteria ladies look good in the morning.
...you can maintain a 5:30 pace uphill while throwing up.
...you think track is for wussies.
...you try to impress girls by saying you're a fast finisher.
...you consider school as just a break between runs.
...you always stretch while waiting in the lunch line.
...your room smells like Icy-Hot and New-Skin.
...you are bankrolling your physical therapist's next vacation.
...your girlfriend can bench more than you.
...you can count all your ribs.
...you own spandex in more than 1 color.
...track is the other "sport".
...you foam at the mouth everytime you see a big hill.
..."Chariots of Fire" is actually entertaining to you.
...a 12 mile run is an easy day.
...pizza, pasta, pizza, & pasta are your four food groups.
...your watch is more expensive and complicated than your car.
...even your dress shoes have spikes.
...Runner's World provides more pin-ups than Playboy (YEAH SUZY HAMILTON!!!)
...Steve Prefontaine's Birthday is more important than yours.
...you aspire to pain.
...you know as many kinds of pain as eskimos have words for snow.
...you think spandex is a winter's passion statement.
...you never look behind you.
...you don't know what an "off-season" means.
...you have stress fractures.
...you find yourself saying, "it's not really a hill..."
...you hit targets with your snot rocket.
...your feet are comparable to rawhide.
...you're running and you don't know why.
...you see a hill on a putting green.
...your friends refer to you as "the masochist".
...your spit hits everything but the ground.
...you drink more water than Free Willy
...you can't get the "All you can eat" at spaghetti restaurants
...you get pulled over after practice, and can't walk straight because you're so tired
...you ran sub 5 on the P.E. mile run
...you wore spikes on the P.E. mile run
...you did a 30 minute warm up for the P.E. mile run
...you did all of the above for the P.E. mile run
...you routinely race dogs down the street...and win.
...dogs follow you everywhere you go
...you rabbit for the rabbit
...you have 3% or less body fat
...you laugh at sprinters while they run
...theres nothing like intervals to start the week off fresh!!
...you talk to your coaches more than your parents
...you'd rather run than watch T.V.
...watching the New York Marathon on T.V. made you get up and go for a run
...you can say "I like to run" in over five different languages
...more than half the people you know don't know what X-C is
...you run the day after State
...off-season training starts a week after State
...you haven't had a pop in 6 months
...your calves are bigger than your biceps
...your cookie jar is filled with bagels
...there are more miles on your running shoes than the odeometer of your car
...you try to pick up a girl by telling her how fast your first mile is
...you're toe nails are fallen off
...a fatman with a gun says alright gentlemen take em off
...you can't go a day without some little brat saying run forest run
...some little kid wants to know why you're running in your underwear
...you can pronounce those funny Kenyan names
...you're proud that another team has quadrupled you're score
...the seniors assist the freshman into the lake
...you wear skimpier clothes than Madonna
...you refer to puke as a normal bodily function
...people always ask you what events you are running
...you can hallucinate and get high at the same time without taking anything
...you can say more names of your runs than names of your friends
...you spend more time thinking about the scoring system than you do about scoring with
the opposite sex
...you always win in your sleep but never in a real race
...you traded in your Gremlin
...you think Lisa Aguilera is hotter than Christina Aguilera.
...you wake up in the morning and find that you?re already running.
...the Ritz is your idol, and not a hotel in New York.
Read more: http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=9545#ixzz0u8uxNq88
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Belly-buttons key to success in sport: study
Who could have guessed it?
By Karin Zeitvogel (AFP) – 2 days ago
WASHINGTON — Scientists have found the reason why blacks dominate on the running track and whites in the swimming pool: it's in their belly-buttons, a study published Monday shows.
What's important is not whether an athlete has an innie or an outie but where his or her navel is in relation to the rest of the body, says the study published in the International Journal of Design and Nature and Ecodynamics.
The navel is the center of gravity of the body, and given two runners or swimmers of the same height, one black and one white, "what matters is not total height but the position of the belly-button, or center of gravity," Duke University professor Andre Bejan, the lead author of the study, told AFP.
"It so happens that in the architecture of the human body of West African-origin runners, the center of gravity is significantly higher than in runners of European origin," which puts them at an advantage in sprints on the track, he said.
Individuals of West African-origin have longer legs than European-origin athletes, which means their belly-buttons are three centimeters (1.18 inches) higher than whites', said Bejan.
That means the black athletes have a "hidden height" that is three percent greater than whites', which gives them a significant speed advantage on the track.
"Locomotion is essentially a continual process of falling forward, and mass that falls from a higher altitude, falls faster," Bejan explained.
In the pool, meanwhile, whites have the advantage because they have longer torsos, making their belly-buttons lower in the general scheme of body architecture.
"Swimming is the art of surfing the wave created by the swimmer," said Bejan.
"The swimmer who makes the bigger wave is the faster swimmer, and a longer torso makes a bigger wave. Europeans have a three-percent longer torso than West Africans, which gives them a 1.5-percent speed advantage in the pool," he said.
Asians have the same long torsos as Europeans, giving them the same potential to be record-breakers in the pool.
But they often lose out to whites because whites are taller, said Bejan.
Many scientists have avoided studying why blacks make better sprinters and whites better swimmers because of what the study calls the "obvious" race angle.
But Bejan said the study he conducted with Edward Jones, a professor at Howard University in Washington, and Duke graduate Jordan Charles, focused on the athletes' geographic origins and biology, not race, which the authors of the study call a "social construct."
Bejan is white, originally from Romania, and Jones is black, from South Carolina.
They charted and analyzed nearly 100 years of records in men's and women's sprinting and 100-meters freestyle swimming for the study.
By Karin Zeitvogel (AFP) – 2 days ago
WASHINGTON — Scientists have found the reason why blacks dominate on the running track and whites in the swimming pool: it's in their belly-buttons, a study published Monday shows.
What's important is not whether an athlete has an innie or an outie but where his or her navel is in relation to the rest of the body, says the study published in the International Journal of Design and Nature and Ecodynamics.
The navel is the center of gravity of the body, and given two runners or swimmers of the same height, one black and one white, "what matters is not total height but the position of the belly-button, or center of gravity," Duke University professor Andre Bejan, the lead author of the study, told AFP.
"It so happens that in the architecture of the human body of West African-origin runners, the center of gravity is significantly higher than in runners of European origin," which puts them at an advantage in sprints on the track, he said.
Individuals of West African-origin have longer legs than European-origin athletes, which means their belly-buttons are three centimeters (1.18 inches) higher than whites', said Bejan.
That means the black athletes have a "hidden height" that is three percent greater than whites', which gives them a significant speed advantage on the track.
"Locomotion is essentially a continual process of falling forward, and mass that falls from a higher altitude, falls faster," Bejan explained.
In the pool, meanwhile, whites have the advantage because they have longer torsos, making their belly-buttons lower in the general scheme of body architecture.
"Swimming is the art of surfing the wave created by the swimmer," said Bejan.
"The swimmer who makes the bigger wave is the faster swimmer, and a longer torso makes a bigger wave. Europeans have a three-percent longer torso than West Africans, which gives them a 1.5-percent speed advantage in the pool," he said.
Asians have the same long torsos as Europeans, giving them the same potential to be record-breakers in the pool.
But they often lose out to whites because whites are taller, said Bejan.
Many scientists have avoided studying why blacks make better sprinters and whites better swimmers because of what the study calls the "obvious" race angle.
But Bejan said the study he conducted with Edward Jones, a professor at Howard University in Washington, and Duke graduate Jordan Charles, focused on the athletes' geographic origins and biology, not race, which the authors of the study call a "social construct."
Bejan is white, originally from Romania, and Jones is black, from South Carolina.
They charted and analyzed nearly 100 years of records in men's and women's sprinting and 100-meters freestyle swimming for the study.
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Saturday, July 10, 2010
Friday, July 9, 2010
Principles of Training -Nic Bideau Article
This article offers insights into proper training. Nic has coached Craig Mottram and Benita Willis to remarkable successes.
Click here
Click here
Sunday, July 4, 2010
The Tour Begins
I've always found it quite interesting to watch the drug related foibles of the tour. This is the cutting edge when it comes to drugs in sport, partly because it is such a grueling event.
Great article from the Wall Street Journal
Check out the Timeline too.
Great article from the Wall Street Journal
Check out the Timeline too.
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Friday, June 25, 2010
Thursday, June 24, 2010
New Beginning!
In honour of my incredible wife. Simply amazing!Clara Emily Simpson
Welcome to the World!
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
The Butterfly Effect
By John Bingham
Image by Kim Rosen
PUBLISHED 12/21/2009
Editor's Note: After nearly 14 years at Runner's World, John Bingham—perhaps better known as "the Penguin"—has decided to move on. We're grateful for all he's done for RW, and we salute him for inspiring countless runners. John personifies the idea that people can change their lives through running. We wish him the very best in his new endeavors. Below is the final "No Need For Speed" column John wrote for Runner's World.
I am not a physicist. I am a writer, runner, and recovering bass trombonist. But that doesn't stop me from thinking that I understand physics. I've read about a concept called "The Butterfly Effect." The definition goes something like this: Small variations of the initial condition of a dynamic system may produce large variations in the long-term behavior of the system. It suggests that a butterfly flapping its wings in Hong Kong can eventually affect the weather in Kansas. Cool, huh?
It got me thinking about how small variations or changes in our lives can have unexpected long-term effects. I used to be an overweight smoker who didn't exercise, but small decisions over the years—like going for that very first run—have produced large variations in my long-term behavior, helping me become the 45-time marathoner I am today.
That transformation didn't happen overnight. It didn't happen after one run, though many of us expect just that. We think that every run needs to produce some immediate benefit. Whether it's supposed to make us faster or build our endurance, the effects of today's run are supposed to take effect, well, today.
I think that's why many of us like to sprint the last quarter mile of our daily run. We like the feeling that comes from a hard effort. It feels like we're accomplishing something. (By the way, that final sprint at the end of a run is a good way to pull a hamstring. Trust me on this.)
What I didn't know then was that there is a Butterfly Effect in running. It isn't the grand gestures and epic achievements that make us runners. Sure, running for 30 minutes nonstop is great. Qualifying for Boston is great. But that's not ultimately what makes you a runner.
It's the little things we do every day adding up over time that matter. It's not just running one morning; it's getting up morning after morning and running. It's not just eating better at one meal; it's making better decisions at every meal. It's the small decisions we make almost without thinking that make us runners.
The lesson from today's run may not be important right away. Learning you're more comfortable wearing a long-sleeve shirt even when it's not that cold out may lead to the best race of your life years later. Learning that you shouldn't have eaten the Firebrand Salsa on your nachos the night before a long run may mean a marathon PR somewhere down the road.
It may be a function of aging, or it may be a function of maturing as a runner, but knowing I don't have to squeeze significance out of today's run has made running much more satisfying. Today's run might just be a run. I take it in as a point of data on an elaborate matrix. I don't try to assign a meaning to it. I have faith that somewhere, sometime, it will matter.
I run now with enormous confidence that I am doing something good for myself. I run understanding that I may never know where the winds of some running epiphany started. And I run understanding that not understanding is all right.
Image by Kim Rosen
PUBLISHED 12/21/2009
Editor's Note: After nearly 14 years at Runner's World, John Bingham—perhaps better known as "the Penguin"—has decided to move on. We're grateful for all he's done for RW, and we salute him for inspiring countless runners. John personifies the idea that people can change their lives through running. We wish him the very best in his new endeavors. Below is the final "No Need For Speed" column John wrote for Runner's World.
I am not a physicist. I am a writer, runner, and recovering bass trombonist. But that doesn't stop me from thinking that I understand physics. I've read about a concept called "The Butterfly Effect." The definition goes something like this: Small variations of the initial condition of a dynamic system may produce large variations in the long-term behavior of the system. It suggests that a butterfly flapping its wings in Hong Kong can eventually affect the weather in Kansas. Cool, huh?
It got me thinking about how small variations or changes in our lives can have unexpected long-term effects. I used to be an overweight smoker who didn't exercise, but small decisions over the years—like going for that very first run—have produced large variations in my long-term behavior, helping me become the 45-time marathoner I am today.
That transformation didn't happen overnight. It didn't happen after one run, though many of us expect just that. We think that every run needs to produce some immediate benefit. Whether it's supposed to make us faster or build our endurance, the effects of today's run are supposed to take effect, well, today.
I think that's why many of us like to sprint the last quarter mile of our daily run. We like the feeling that comes from a hard effort. It feels like we're accomplishing something. (By the way, that final sprint at the end of a run is a good way to pull a hamstring. Trust me on this.)
What I didn't know then was that there is a Butterfly Effect in running. It isn't the grand gestures and epic achievements that make us runners. Sure, running for 30 minutes nonstop is great. Qualifying for Boston is great. But that's not ultimately what makes you a runner.
It's the little things we do every day adding up over time that matter. It's not just running one morning; it's getting up morning after morning and running. It's not just eating better at one meal; it's making better decisions at every meal. It's the small decisions we make almost without thinking that make us runners.
The lesson from today's run may not be important right away. Learning you're more comfortable wearing a long-sleeve shirt even when it's not that cold out may lead to the best race of your life years later. Learning that you shouldn't have eaten the Firebrand Salsa on your nachos the night before a long run may mean a marathon PR somewhere down the road.
It may be a function of aging, or it may be a function of maturing as a runner, but knowing I don't have to squeeze significance out of today's run has made running much more satisfying. Today's run might just be a run. I take it in as a point of data on an elaborate matrix. I don't try to assign a meaning to it. I have faith that somewhere, sometime, it will matter.
I run now with enormous confidence that I am doing something good for myself. I run understanding that I may never know where the winds of some running epiphany started. And I run understanding that not understanding is all right.
Friday, June 18, 2010
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Inspire
"QUIT! GIVE UP! YOU'RE BEATEN!" They shout and plead,
There's just too much against you now, this time you can't succeed.
And as I start to hang my head in front of failure's face,
My downward fall is broken by the memory of a race.
And hope refills my weakened will as I recall that scene.
For just the thought of that short race rejuvenates my being.
A children's race, young boys, young men; now I remember well.
Excitement, sure, but also fear; it wasn't hard to tell.
They all lined up so full of hope. Each thought to win that race.
Or tie for first, or if not that, at least take second place.
And fathers watched from off the side, each cheering for his son.
And each boy hoped to show his dad that he would be the one.
The whistle blew and off they went, young hearts and hopes of fire.
To win, to be the hero there, was each young boy's desire.
And one boy in particular, his dad was in the crowd,
Was running near the lead and thought, "My dad will be so proud."
But as he speeded down the field across a shallow dip,
The little boy who thought to win, lost his step and slipped.
Trying hard to catch himself, his hands flew out to brace,
And mid the laughter of the crowd, he fell flat on his face.
So down he fell and with him hope. He couldn't win it now.
Embarrassed, sad, he only wished to disappear somehow.
But as he fell, his dad stood up and showed his anxious face,
Which to the boy so clearly said, "Get up and win that race!"
He quickly rose, no damage done - behind a bit, that's all,
And ran with all his mind and might to make up for his fall.
So anxious to restore himself to catch up and to win,
His mind went faster than his legs. He slipped and fell again.
He wished that he had quite before with only one disgrace.
I'm hopeless as a runner now, I shouldn't try to race.
But, in the laughing crowd he searched and found his father's face
That steady look that said again, "Get up and win the race."
So, he jumped up to try again. Ten yards behind the last.
If I'm to gain those yards, he thought, I've got to run real fast.
Exceeding everything he had, he regained eight or ten,
But trying so hard to catch the lead, he slipped and fell again.
Defeat! He lay there silently, a tear dropped from his eye.
There's no sense running anymore - three strikes and I'm out - why try?
The will to rise had disappeared, all hope had flew away.
So far behind, so error prone, closer all the way.
I've lost, so what's the use, he thought, I'll live with my disgrace.
But then he thought about his dad, who soon he'd have to face.
"Get up," an echo sounded low. "Get up and take your place.
You were not meant for failure here, get up and win the race."
With borrowed will, "Get up," it said, "You haven't lost at all,
For winning is not more than this, to rise each time you fall."
So up he rose to win once more. And with a new commit,
He resolved that win or lose, at least he wouldn't quit.
So far behind the others now, the most he'd ever been.
Still he gave it all he had and ran as though to win.
Three times he'd fallen stumbling, three times he'd rose again.
Too far behind to hope to win, he still ran to the end.
They cheered the winning runner as he crossed first place.
Head high and proud and happy; no falling, no disgrace.
But when the fallen youngster crossed the line, last place,
The crowd gave him the greater cheer for finishing the race.
And even though he came in last, with head bowed low, unproud;
You would have thought he'd won the race, to listen to the crowd.
And to his Dad he sadly said, "I didn't do so well."
"To me you won," his father said, "You rose each time you fell."
And when things seemed dark and hard and difficult to face,
The memory of that little boy - helps me in my race.
For all of life is like that race, with ups and down and all,
And all you have to do to win - is rise each time you fall.
"Quit!" "GIVE UP, YOU'RE BEATEN." They still shout in my face.
But another voice within me says, "GET UP AND WIN THE RACE!"
Dee Groberg
There's just too much against you now, this time you can't succeed.
And as I start to hang my head in front of failure's face,
My downward fall is broken by the memory of a race.
And hope refills my weakened will as I recall that scene.
For just the thought of that short race rejuvenates my being.
A children's race, young boys, young men; now I remember well.
Excitement, sure, but also fear; it wasn't hard to tell.
They all lined up so full of hope. Each thought to win that race.
Or tie for first, or if not that, at least take second place.
And fathers watched from off the side, each cheering for his son.
And each boy hoped to show his dad that he would be the one.
The whistle blew and off they went, young hearts and hopes of fire.
To win, to be the hero there, was each young boy's desire.
And one boy in particular, his dad was in the crowd,
Was running near the lead and thought, "My dad will be so proud."
But as he speeded down the field across a shallow dip,
The little boy who thought to win, lost his step and slipped.
Trying hard to catch himself, his hands flew out to brace,
And mid the laughter of the crowd, he fell flat on his face.
So down he fell and with him hope. He couldn't win it now.
Embarrassed, sad, he only wished to disappear somehow.
But as he fell, his dad stood up and showed his anxious face,
Which to the boy so clearly said, "Get up and win that race!"
He quickly rose, no damage done - behind a bit, that's all,
And ran with all his mind and might to make up for his fall.
So anxious to restore himself to catch up and to win,
His mind went faster than his legs. He slipped and fell again.
He wished that he had quite before with only one disgrace.
I'm hopeless as a runner now, I shouldn't try to race.
But, in the laughing crowd he searched and found his father's face
That steady look that said again, "Get up and win the race."
So, he jumped up to try again. Ten yards behind the last.
If I'm to gain those yards, he thought, I've got to run real fast.
Exceeding everything he had, he regained eight or ten,
But trying so hard to catch the lead, he slipped and fell again.
Defeat! He lay there silently, a tear dropped from his eye.
There's no sense running anymore - three strikes and I'm out - why try?
The will to rise had disappeared, all hope had flew away.
So far behind, so error prone, closer all the way.
I've lost, so what's the use, he thought, I'll live with my disgrace.
But then he thought about his dad, who soon he'd have to face.
"Get up," an echo sounded low. "Get up and take your place.
You were not meant for failure here, get up and win the race."
With borrowed will, "Get up," it said, "You haven't lost at all,
For winning is not more than this, to rise each time you fall."
So up he rose to win once more. And with a new commit,
He resolved that win or lose, at least he wouldn't quit.
So far behind the others now, the most he'd ever been.
Still he gave it all he had and ran as though to win.
Three times he'd fallen stumbling, three times he'd rose again.
Too far behind to hope to win, he still ran to the end.
They cheered the winning runner as he crossed first place.
Head high and proud and happy; no falling, no disgrace.
But when the fallen youngster crossed the line, last place,
The crowd gave him the greater cheer for finishing the race.
And even though he came in last, with head bowed low, unproud;
You would have thought he'd won the race, to listen to the crowd.
And to his Dad he sadly said, "I didn't do so well."
"To me you won," his father said, "You rose each time you fell."
And when things seemed dark and hard and difficult to face,
The memory of that little boy - helps me in my race.
For all of life is like that race, with ups and down and all,
And all you have to do to win - is rise each time you fall.
"Quit!" "GIVE UP, YOU'RE BEATEN." They still shout in my face.
But another voice within me says, "GET UP AND WIN THE RACE!"
Dee Groberg
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Wow.. this would be interesting...
Here is someone who could answer a lot of questions when comparing pure runners and triathletes
Check it out
Check it out
Monday, May 31, 2010
Barefoot running pt 2
Click here for a great post by sportsscientists.com
Please check out some out the comments too. Food for thought.
Please check out some out the comments too. Food for thought.
Saturday, May 29, 2010
Friday, May 28, 2010
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Quote of the day
So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable.
Christopher Reeve
Christopher Reeve
Monday, May 24, 2010
Quote of the Day
I've run a lot of miles over the years, some fast and some not so fast. I've won some big races and I've had some big disappointments, but I enjoy the freedom of running and the challenge of training and competition as much now as when I first started back in high school.
Alberto Salazar
Alberto Salazar
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Saturday, May 15, 2010
Saucony Kinvara
Over the last few years I have been in touch with my friends at Saucony in search of lightweight running shoes. This is a cool shoe.
Saucony ProGrid Kinvara from Saucony on Vimeo.
Thursday, May 13, 2010
TC 10k and Sun Run
Firstly, let me thank all of you who have supported this running endeavour. It has been amazing how many people have sent congratulatory notes, etc. We are enjoying this ride together.
The TC10k kicked off the racing season. It was quite a good field and going in I was given race number 10- surely I can finish ahead of this I thought – but it is definitely nice to be an underdog. The lead pack quickly separated from the rest of the field and five of us ran together for roughly the first six kilometers. The pace was perhaps a little too slow as I always find that the best 10ks are the ones where you feel like dropping out numerous times. At 6k, cheered on by the crowd I made a move to separate the field. It worked, but perhaps not ideally. The Kenyans soon pulled away and the second placed Canadian fell off the pace. This is a tricky time in a race as it is easy to lose focus, so although I realised it was not going to be an outstanding performance, I thought I might as well finish strong. The running community here in Victoria has given me so much, so giving my best always feels necessary. Finished behind the Kenyans - 1st Canadian in exactly 30 minutes (30:00).
The Sun Run over in Vancouver is a big race. In fact, with 55000 people it is the largest 10k race in North America. While this is quite amazing, consider this: if the same amount of Vancouverites per capita participated in the Sun Run as do Victorians in the TC there would be a field of around 130,000. This highlights how remarkable the attendance is in the TC10k.
The race itself attracted a stronger field than the TC10k with numerous National Team athletes and former National Champions in attendance. I was ranked 12th. The race always goes out at a fast pace and typically one by one runners start falling back off the pace. Things started to get interesting upon ascending to the Burrard st bridge. It's a quick, hard uphill and quite soon it was whittled down to a pack of 10 runners. I fell back probably 20m behind the lead pack going up the up the bridge but closed it up on the downhill. It was a now or never point- either make sure I'm in there with a fighting chance or find myself gapped to the point of no return. Soon a couple of the runners dropped back off the pace and I found myself in a group of 3. On the uphill onto the Cambie St bridge I pushed the pace, and finding little resistance, ran the last 800m solo. Was closing in on the 3rd place Kenyan but ran out of road. Finished in 4th again, this time a little faster than in the TC10k- 29:33.
In hard efforts like this it is easy to want to slow down, but the pain is transient an the memories last forever. I'm always telling patients that sometimes they must feel some short term pain for long term gain- the least I can do is practice what I preach. Thanks again for all the support. Now back to my day job!
The TC10k kicked off the racing season. It was quite a good field and going in I was given race number 10- surely I can finish ahead of this I thought – but it is definitely nice to be an underdog. The lead pack quickly separated from the rest of the field and five of us ran together for roughly the first six kilometers. The pace was perhaps a little too slow as I always find that the best 10ks are the ones where you feel like dropping out numerous times. At 6k, cheered on by the crowd I made a move to separate the field. It worked, but perhaps not ideally. The Kenyans soon pulled away and the second placed Canadian fell off the pace. This is a tricky time in a race as it is easy to lose focus, so although I realised it was not going to be an outstanding performance, I thought I might as well finish strong. The running community here in Victoria has given me so much, so giving my best always feels necessary. Finished behind the Kenyans - 1st Canadian in exactly 30 minutes (30:00).
The Sun Run over in Vancouver is a big race. In fact, with 55000 people it is the largest 10k race in North America. While this is quite amazing, consider this: if the same amount of Vancouverites per capita participated in the Sun Run as do Victorians in the TC there would be a field of around 130,000. This highlights how remarkable the attendance is in the TC10k.
The race itself attracted a stronger field than the TC10k with numerous National Team athletes and former National Champions in attendance. I was ranked 12th. The race always goes out at a fast pace and typically one by one runners start falling back off the pace. Things started to get interesting upon ascending to the Burrard st bridge. It's a quick, hard uphill and quite soon it was whittled down to a pack of 10 runners. I fell back probably 20m behind the lead pack going up the up the bridge but closed it up on the downhill. It was a now or never point- either make sure I'm in there with a fighting chance or find myself gapped to the point of no return. Soon a couple of the runners dropped back off the pace and I found myself in a group of 3. On the uphill onto the Cambie St bridge I pushed the pace, and finding little resistance, ran the last 800m solo. Was closing in on the 3rd place Kenyan but ran out of road. Finished in 4th again, this time a little faster than in the TC10k- 29:33.
In hard efforts like this it is easy to want to slow down, but the pain is transient an the memories last forever. I'm always telling patients that sometimes they must feel some short term pain for long term gain- the least I can do is practice what I preach. Thanks again for all the support. Now back to my day job!
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Technique Article written for Times-Colonist
Forward we go!
We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we're curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths. Walt Disney
Running is a simple sport, but it's clearly not easy- this is what makes it such a great challenge. I'm a strong believer in doing preventative independent exercises as a means building a strong foundation. They are free, relatively easy and specific to the task of running. In my opinion this is the best way to fine tune your body for success. Lets break these foundations down a little- so we can build them up!
Firstly, we want to harness as much of our energy as possible in the forward direction. Energy that is spent on vertical, lateral or torsional movement slows us down and makes us more susceptible to injury. With this in mind, we all have unique running styles, but when running, we want to move forward efficiently. Secondly, we want to ensure that all of the joints in the body have adequate range of motion, strength and stability. Most injuries that occur while running are repetitive strains and do not typically happen in isolation. In other words we can't simply treat an injury, to a knee for example, we have to treat the individual's movement pattern, because it might well be that something happening through the foot or hip, the knee problem.
Let me give you an example. How about I ask you to stand on one foot. Now close your eyes to take away all those visual cues. My guess is that you will feel vertical, lateral and torsional movement through your foot and ankle. This exercise would be considered a stability exercise. Since we know that these forces predispose us to injury, and that these stresses are magnified when we run, this is a very good exercise to practice. In fact, studies have shown that practicing standing on one foot with your eyes closed can help prevent ankle sprains. It all happens because there is that split second when your foot hits the ground and either you roll your ankle, or you catch it. By doing these exercises you train your body to reflexively know where your foot is relative to the ground, and thus stand a better chance of preventing the ankle sprain.
Now lets move further up the chain and visualise the knee. Anatomically, the knee is classified as a hinge joint. In other words, we are only supposed to bend it in one plane of movement- in fact we have a slew of structures that prevent it from moving in any other direction. If these structures have to work too hard they get upset. Essentially, we want our knee to track over our second toe providing movement exclusively in a forward direction. Torsion and lateral movement are the knees biggest enemies, and can lead to problems like runners knee, patellar tendonitis or IT band syndrome. So here is a good strengthening exercise to reinforce this movement pattern. Stand on one leg and try to bend your knee over your second toe. It's not as easy as it sounds! You will feel those force enemies in action. A lot of you will feel your knee twist inwards towards your midline- this typically demonstrates a lack of strength in both the thigh and hip musculature, making us more susceptible to the aforementioned problems.
My third example would be to consider the effects of too much range of motion. For this one we will look at our mid section. I'm quite sure you will agree with me that when we run we move our lower extremity and opposite upper extremity in unison.It's called the reciprocal gait pattern. With this in mind, we have a counterbalance system with the mid section being the zone where forces are transferred. If we have excessive movement through our upper extremity there will be an equal yet opposite force through your lower extremity. Try this, stand with your arms at your side, elbows out. Try an exaggerated wide arm swing. How does it feel on your back, hips, knees, ankles, even your feet? This is excessive motion that can lead to injury. Now try this - keep your elbows tight to your body and have your thumbs up. Move your forearms on forward plane. How does this feel on all those areas I mentioned before? Big difference eh. What's one of the biggest causes of back pain? Twisting or torsion. It's a lot better to prevent back pain through proper exercise, becoming self sufficient, rather than becoming dependent on treatment.
So to sum all of this up- we always want to think about the direction of movement. I've never been in a race that is measured in a vertical distance, or sideways, or twisting for that matter. You want to harness as much of your energy as possible in a forward direction. Above I have emphasized exercises that promote proper stability, strength and range of motion. Of course, considering we all have different running styles, there are many other specific complementary exercises that can be performed for specific weaknesses. If you can master these concepts however, you will be much less likely to get injured and you will also be able to move more quickly in the right direction. Henry Ford once said “If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself”
Enjoy finding your path to success.
We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we're curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths. Walt Disney
Running is a simple sport, but it's clearly not easy- this is what makes it such a great challenge. I'm a strong believer in doing preventative independent exercises as a means building a strong foundation. They are free, relatively easy and specific to the task of running. In my opinion this is the best way to fine tune your body for success. Lets break these foundations down a little- so we can build them up!
Firstly, we want to harness as much of our energy as possible in the forward direction. Energy that is spent on vertical, lateral or torsional movement slows us down and makes us more susceptible to injury. With this in mind, we all have unique running styles, but when running, we want to move forward efficiently. Secondly, we want to ensure that all of the joints in the body have adequate range of motion, strength and stability. Most injuries that occur while running are repetitive strains and do not typically happen in isolation. In other words we can't simply treat an injury, to a knee for example, we have to treat the individual's movement pattern, because it might well be that something happening through the foot or hip, the knee problem.
Let me give you an example. How about I ask you to stand on one foot. Now close your eyes to take away all those visual cues. My guess is that you will feel vertical, lateral and torsional movement through your foot and ankle. This exercise would be considered a stability exercise. Since we know that these forces predispose us to injury, and that these stresses are magnified when we run, this is a very good exercise to practice. In fact, studies have shown that practicing standing on one foot with your eyes closed can help prevent ankle sprains. It all happens because there is that split second when your foot hits the ground and either you roll your ankle, or you catch it. By doing these exercises you train your body to reflexively know where your foot is relative to the ground, and thus stand a better chance of preventing the ankle sprain.
Now lets move further up the chain and visualise the knee. Anatomically, the knee is classified as a hinge joint. In other words, we are only supposed to bend it in one plane of movement- in fact we have a slew of structures that prevent it from moving in any other direction. If these structures have to work too hard they get upset. Essentially, we want our knee to track over our second toe providing movement exclusively in a forward direction. Torsion and lateral movement are the knees biggest enemies, and can lead to problems like runners knee, patellar tendonitis or IT band syndrome. So here is a good strengthening exercise to reinforce this movement pattern. Stand on one leg and try to bend your knee over your second toe. It's not as easy as it sounds! You will feel those force enemies in action. A lot of you will feel your knee twist inwards towards your midline- this typically demonstrates a lack of strength in both the thigh and hip musculature, making us more susceptible to the aforementioned problems.
My third example would be to consider the effects of too much range of motion. For this one we will look at our mid section. I'm quite sure you will agree with me that when we run we move our lower extremity and opposite upper extremity in unison.It's called the reciprocal gait pattern. With this in mind, we have a counterbalance system with the mid section being the zone where forces are transferred. If we have excessive movement through our upper extremity there will be an equal yet opposite force through your lower extremity. Try this, stand with your arms at your side, elbows out. Try an exaggerated wide arm swing. How does it feel on your back, hips, knees, ankles, even your feet? This is excessive motion that can lead to injury. Now try this - keep your elbows tight to your body and have your thumbs up. Move your forearms on forward plane. How does this feel on all those areas I mentioned before? Big difference eh. What's one of the biggest causes of back pain? Twisting or torsion. It's a lot better to prevent back pain through proper exercise, becoming self sufficient, rather than becoming dependent on treatment.
So to sum all of this up- we always want to think about the direction of movement. I've never been in a race that is measured in a vertical distance, or sideways, or twisting for that matter. You want to harness as much of your energy as possible in a forward direction. Above I have emphasized exercises that promote proper stability, strength and range of motion. Of course, considering we all have different running styles, there are many other specific complementary exercises that can be performed for specific weaknesses. If you can master these concepts however, you will be much less likely to get injured and you will also be able to move more quickly in the right direction. Henry Ford once said “If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself”
Enjoy finding your path to success.
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Why do we run?
Running is beautiful. Like a fine piece of art, a thoughtful collection of words, or music that touches the soul. Sometimes I wonder why I find it so attractive. Perhaps it is the simplicity of it; the ability to put on our shoes, open the door, begin a daily adventure- and return refreshed.
Maybe it has something to do with the fact that despite it's simplicity, training for a particular event is clearly not easy. It requires perseverence, discipline and intelligence. It enables us to make goals and take little progressive steps towards acheiving them. It requires us to find a common bond between our bodies, our hearts and our minds.
Perhaps I run because I find that the human machine is an incredible piece of engineering. We think of putting one foot in front of the other, but in reality it is a complex sequence of events. The integration of muscles, tendons and all of the unique specific cells that must work in unison, is truly remarkable.
Maybe it is the inherent desire to try to reach my potential. If we do something, we might as well do it well. Taking part in a race provides both the ability to compete against ourselves, but also against others. It is a peaceful, healthy battle, after which we look back and share the experience. Some races are unforgettable, some are easy to forget, but all are part of the journey.
During long 2 hour runs I often ponder why I run. Perhaps the best things in life are simple, but not easy to understand. Running has filled my life with many experiences. Now I would like to share the adventure and give back to the community. I believe I can give insights into the pitfalls of training, the ups and downs, the simple joys that are universal. Ideas are free, but their impact can often be too valuable not to share. We are all in this journey together and I would like to help people enjoy the sport as I do. I may be a competitor, but deep down it is the simple beauty of the sport that propels me forward.
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