His post can be read here.

By now you know I have a biased point of view that rigorous endurance training is antithetical to health. Yes, I competed and loved it for 20 years, so I get the appeal it has for so many, but these days my personal focus is on maintaining the highest level of fitness and health on the least amount of work and sacrifice. I want to play and have fun.

Still, I get asked a lot by endurance athletes whether there’s any chance they can continue to compete at a high level while eating andtraining Primally. I used to think it probably wasn’t feasible if you wanted to be world class, assuming as I did (erroneously) that you just couldn’t overcome the need for copious amounts of carbs on a daily basis without crashing and burning. However, recent research into the concept of “train low-race high” (vis a vis glycogen) and modified approaches to low level aerobic training that focus largely on reprogramming genes to more preferentially burn fat AS WELL AS the use of techniques like HIIT and barefoot training now all seem to show that training and eating Primalcould not only maximize performance, but extend your career.

If that’s your choice and if you approach it carefully (like Gold and Silver Olympic medalist Simon Whitfield). Since the bookcame out last June, I have heard from several elite athletes who have not only adopted Primal styles but have improved their performances (and reduced injury, and decreased body fat). Today I thought you might be interested in this “testimonial” from my good friend Jonas Colting (of last week’s Cocoa and Coconut Snacks), a long-time professional triathlete who has gradually incorporated Primal techniques into his training style.

Continue reading on Mark’s blog…

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We’ve all read John L. Parker Junior’s contribution to running culture, the quasi-fictional parable, Once a Runner – or inevitably you will. As far as running novels go, Parker set the benchmark with this story, so-much-so that the very long-awaited sequel, Again to Carthage, as good as it is, will forever exist in the shadow of the former Parker touchstone. Think in terms of Paul McCartney’s post-Beatle career, much longer and arguably more successful artistically-speaking than his career as one of the fab four, but the giant shadow looms and will forever cast its influence. Once a Runner is as significant to running culture as Sgt. Pepper is to popular music culture.

I just finished reading Hal Higdon’s novel, Marathon, not to be confused with his top selling how to book of the same name. Hal has published some 35 books on running; Marathon is his first attempt at a novel. I asked him if the story has been rattling around in his mind for long: “Maybe not this particular story, but I had wanted to write a novel on running for maybe a quarter century, and have several false starts to prove it. The story line for Marathon probably dates back 5-6 years. I had another false start there too”.

On his website, Hal Higdon refers to himself as ‘Extreme Senior’, at first I entertained visions of Higdon chillaxin’ while riding his snowboard backcountry, carving to the sounds of Jayzee – toe-edge, heel-edge, toe-edge back and forth to the beat. Hal, likely in self-deprecating fashion, just means to say he has been around the running community for a long time and has experienced much to do with running. He proves so by writing a very entertaining novel, which also happens to provide insight into the goings on of putting together a major running event – the 50, 000-strong Lake City Marathon, which the story is centered around.

During the first few chapters, I grappled with the notion that Hal, perhaps being an extreme senior of how to, could not fully morph into an author of novels – not able to leave the instructor within him behind. This stayed with me for sometime however, as the story unfolded and the closer Higdon brought me to race day, the more anxiety I began to feel in my own expectations of the end. I began to feel similar anxiousness to that of my own marathon tapers.

Hal weaves an intricate labyrinthine tale, which culminates towards a peak that happens during the actual marathon and shortly afterwards, while equipment is being boxed up and the final few runners are straggling their way in. There is a budding romance between race director, Peter McDonald and a new-in-town television reporter, Christine Ferrera. How Higdon manages to get an extremely busy race director and a reporter together in the final hours before the marathon is interesting. It is worth noting that Hal’s intimate knowledge of race organization helps to set the stage in a very realistic manner.

The story reverberates palpable fear of pending disaster which manifests itself with the rumor of the possible loss of the title sponsor – a bank that had just undergone an ownership change to a new foreign company from Ireland and the new executive have not indicated one way or the other what their intentions are with their expensive sponsorship. In serendipitous irony, an Irish elite female is set to take centre stage as the favorite female discovers at the last minute her inability to compete. The race director hopes that the new Irish bank owners will be impressed.

Since Oprah Winfrey apparently ruined the marathon by running the Marine Corps Marathon, many celebrities have followed suit running Boston and New York, amongst others. Higdon’s Marathon entertains a few celebrities, one of whom is not revealed until well into the story, until then, he is referred to as Celebrity X (more famous than Oprah). Maintaining Celebrity X’s anonymity is an all-consuming effort for Peter McDonald.

And what successful story exists without the requisite good-guy – bad-guy tension? Somewhere in Storytelling 101, a good-guy cannot exist without a bad-guy lurking in a story’s shadows, in this case a journalist, Jonathan Von Runyon who’d prefer to cover golf from the golf course (perhaps with a 6-pack of brew in his golf bag), has been assigned to cover the marathon. The good-guy turns out to be race director, Peter McDonald. McDonald’s protection of the identity of Celebrity X carves a major plot line through the heart of the book. Angst develops between the golf reporter and race director as editorial about the possibility of losing the major sponsor and talk of disastrous weather are not healthy news for the event and of course Celebrity X’s identity must remain hidden.

There are a few top-end athletes sprinkled in, set to race the event on Sunday, their own preparation makes their way onto the pages and into the plot lines. Higdon provides the typical front-runners, including a few Kenyans and a Swede. The men and women’s finish order remains a mystery well past the 20-mile mark.

Similar to Once a Runner, Hal works a few characters into the story under partially veiled disguises,  “there is a sprinkling of real people in many, if not most of the characters. Don Geoffrey, of course, is me walking through my own book, although with a much different back-story and with a name that combines Don Kardong and Jeff Galloway. With many of the characters, I would actually have to think, who is that one based on?”

Race weekend is set to either completely unravel on Peter and crash around him like a house of cards caught in a tornado or to finish with a heroic finale. What finally happens is anybody’s guess up to the start of the race, so give up any prognosticating now, you won’t figure it out. Marathon is a story that in terms of entertainment value rises above most other running novels and reaches for that special place in our minds we have reserved for our own personal Once a Runners.

Worried that getting around the city could be the toughest event of the 2010 Winter Games?  Thousands of athletes and visitors, along with road and parking restrictions, will all contribute to increased congestion in Metro Vancouver.  A UBC research team is encouraging people to use their bikes to get around, and they’ve designed a special web-based tool to help cyclists plan hassle-free trips.

The route planner, located at www.cyclevancouver.ubc.ca, was first launched in spring 2008 and has become popular with local cyclists (and pedestrians, who find it useful for planning walking routes).  Now, it is being updated to reflect all known Olympics-related road restrictions, so that cyclists can find efficient ways to get to their destination.  The Olympics edition of the route planner launches this month, and will be available throughout the Olympic and Paralympic Games.

“Besides being able to plan a route that isn’t affected by road restrictions, users can also choose routes that avoid hills, stick to designated cycle paths, or connect with public transit,” says UBC researcher Meghan Winters, who helped develop the planner.  The web-based tool, which uses the familiar Google Maps interface, also shows the location of covered bike storage facilities near Olympic venues.

Funding for the Olympics version of the route planner comes from the City of Vancouver and TransLink.  Michael Brauer, professor at the UBC School of Environmental Health and leader of the route planner project, says that choosing to cycle during the Olympics contributes to both personal and environmental health: “Active transportation provides health benefits for individuals, and also cuts down on the amount of traffic-related air pollution in our region.”

Take-off on Thunderbird Boulevard is made from car parts by Haida artist Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas and youth from the Urban Native Youth Association.

Made in partnership with UBC’s Museum of Anthropology, it is one of seven pieces of Aboriginal artwork at UBC’s Doug Mitchell Thunderbird Sports Centre, which will host Olympic hockey and Paralympic sledge hockey during the 2010 Winter Games.

The permanent installations are part of the Vancouver 2010 Venues’ Aboriginal Art Program, which features art from more than 90 Aboriginal artists. First Nations, Inuit and Métis artists involved in the program hail from every province and territory in Canada.

In fact, the latest science suggests that “extremely loose muscles and tendons are generally unnecessary (unless you aspire to join a gymnastics squad), may be undesirable and are, for the most part, unachievable, anyway.”

Do you agree or disagree? The full article can be read here.

November 1, 2009 – There is a stirring of athletes and involved personalities, gently rustling the jib of the Canadian cross-country scene. This is happening right now at a well-known Canadian running forum. The parties appear to be organizing, in their attempts to sway Athletics Canada (AC) brass to hand over management of the national cross-country team to them, at least for one year. The proposal? Well it is in the works as they say, swirling in virtual dialogue.

The athletes, coaches and interested parties appear to be developing their mission schematics in ad-hoc discussions; the ideology is mired in the early stages of development. This public discussion may cause AC to simply dig in their heels. They hold the purse strings and the policy to boot; it’s called being in the position of power.

It is the athlete’s place it seems to fight their organizing body of sport, they who decide to or decide not to send an athlete or a team to international competition. Canadian athletes have attempted in the past to approach AC with a protest of sorts; they were firmly rebuffed. Subsequently wars of words continue to simmer on about such items as qualification standards, budgets, mandatory training camps, wording of legalese, grassroots development and required attendance to specific events.

AC indicate on their website that their purpose is “the pursuit of leadership, development and competition that ensures world-level performance in athletics. The association believes in physical health and fitness, individual excellence and personal growth, individual development beyond sport, as well as inclusiveness and integrity”.

It appears that although performance levels have improved in Canada recently, there is not enough of that world level caliber coming to fruition just yet; otherwise AC would be sending more athletes to international competition. At least that is how the wording appears.

To quote one particular oldster from this discussion:

“I think AC’s sharpest critics (of which I am one, it’s no secret) acknowledged a few pages ago (in this thread) that no group that actually wants to remain relevant can actually hope to usurp AC’s control over any program covered by its administrative mandate. What some of us were envisioning at one point is that it might be convinced to concede some of this control over the X-C program, since it doesn’t appear all that interested in it, apart from setting stricter standards and exhorting Canadian athletes to “be faster” (when, as a supposedly expert body in the sport, it should know that quality is a function of over all depth, not the isolated efforts of a handful of individuals who are probably already training really hard; but that’s another story). Since it probably never will cede this kind of control, some of us began envisioning a way to help fund this team FOR AC, on the model of the WC marathon project.”

In reply, one well-respected international athlete who serves a volunteer position with AC countered the above and other slung arrows with the following:

“It’s really easy to sit on the message boards and cry that the taxpayer paid administrators simply have a “basic instinct for institutional survival.” Those are some pretty harsh words directed at many of the leaders in AC who, prior to being paid by the taxpayer, have done the same hundreds and thousands of hours of free volunteer work that coaches such as yourself do. On top of the paid staff such as Martin, Alex, and Scott, there are countless others who volunteer in the committee structure or on the board of directors who, in addition, continue to volunteer in our sport outside of the board/committee rooms. So you’ll have to excuse the “tone” of those who also have a passion and love for the sport take to your complaints, when you start accusing them of having narrow visions, technocratic arrogance, and disdain for democracy.”

On performance

Canada’s athletics future, in terms of performance, looks a little rosier today than it has in a decade or more. The athletes coming up now are no less or more talented than those in the past, the difference is in the commitment to training and volume – what is old, is new again.

Throughout the US there is an upswing in performance at regional and national cross-country and on the track and roads, including the marathon. The low-mileage and high anaerobic intensity of the 1990s is falling away to aerobic development first – again. For example a NCAA Division 1 athlete from California told me that the first two weeks of school was spent running 10 to 15 miles every morning in the desert, with a second run in the afternoon: “20 miles-per-day, everyday to develop the aerobic system first.” This may be a small indication of better training practice, and results are indeed coming around. Canada’s trends often follows suit on the heels of our southern neighbours.

Reid Coolsaet has run 10, 000m in 27:56’92, Simon Bairu’s streak of National cross-country titles are a good showing. Even marathon performances are a little deeper; there certainly is a larger and younger group at this near-international level, headed by Dylan Wykes’ 2:15’16 marathon result from Rotterdam.

The Canadian athletes who are debating AC’s engagement are looking for a world stage to perform on, in order to expose this rising performance level to higher competition – to raise the bar, as it were. According to AC they need to witness this higher level before sending athletes forth. We can all assume if the athletes become capable of mixing it up on the world stage, AC would be remiss in not sending them to the highest level of competition. Will it happen?

The proverbial chicken and egg question comes up yet again. What comes first the performance or the exposure to a higher level of competition?

Steve Moneghetti, arguably Australia’s greatest marathon runner, was twice appointed to the Australian team to run the marathon. The first time he was selected was for the 1986 Edinburgh Commonwealth Games where he won a bronze medal. The second time was to run in the Seoul, Olympic Marathon. He had not even run a marathon before Edinburgh. Athletics Australia gave Moneghetti the green light based on his performance over shorter distances. The second time he was appointed he didn’t do so well having one of those inexplicable bad days we all run into eventually. Later that season he went on to break the world half-marathon record for the second time in Tokyo, Japan; so, he demonstrated he was capable regardless. Good decision by Athletics Australia.

A couple years ago I compared Switzerland’s Viktor Rothlin’s performances to Athletics Canada’s Osaka World Track and Field Championships selection criteria and although he went on to win bronze n Osaka, he would not have qualified for that marathon had he been Canadian. In fact, neither would Jon Brown, a man who had finished seconds from bronze in the previous two Olympic marathons and still holds the UK 10, 000m record today (27:18’14).

So is it the money?

Approximately sixty percent of participants in road races are over the age of 45. They are the boomer generation. Depending on whose boomer theory you subscribe to they are born in 1964 or 1966 and earlier. Canada’s David K. Foot, PhD and author of Boom Bust and Echo goes by the latter (Canada’s boom was slightly different than Europe’s and the US).

Although you will find 10, 000 people on the downtown streets of the cities of Ottawa, Vancouver, Victoria or Toronto engaging in those city’s respective marathons and 50, 000 participating in the Vancouver Sun Run 10k, what is fascinating is not only how many people pay to run, but how much money the average destination marathon runner spends to toil in their hobby.

Jerry Agrusa, PhD. Professor of Travel Industry Management at Hawaii Pacific University conducted some math wizardry and found that 28,635 runners, walkers, and family and friends who came specifically for the 2006 Honolulu Marathon accounted for $101,590,000 in visitor spending and generated $4.6 million in state taxes, an increase in visitor spending as well as taxes generated for both the city of Honolulu and the state of Hawaii, this, from one marathon. There is no doubt that the boomer generation is also the consumer generation.

According to Ahotu Marathon dot com in any given year there are at least 46 marathons in Canada. There are many more road races of various distances. By smartly attracting the boomer hordes to register, the shoe companies, travel agencies and supplement suppliers have found a rich market to tap. Why hasn’t Athletics Canada?

The dubious effort of knocking on AC’s door with a proposal to alleviate them of the apparent albatross – in having to handle elite cross-country runners pining to go to international competition on the public’s dime – may just be a wasted effort, as while the performances are now coming up, athletes in theory will earn pass to the world stage, one would think.

Let’s do some arbitrary math:

Let’s sample a rough estimate of paid registrations from a handful of well-known Canadian road races. Vancouver Sun Run, Victoria Times Colonist 10k, the Toronto Marathons (there are two), Ottawa Marathon, Vancouver International Marathon, Marathon des Deux Rives, and the Royal Victoria Marathon together total approximately 130, 000 entrants. If AC asks for $1 from every sanctioned road race registration in the country, this would bolster the coffers enough, I assume, to send a full compliment of athletes to the IAAF World Cross-Country Championships plus a little may be left over for grassroots development.

Grassroots development is paramount to the continued success of any sport. In my opinion, it should be incumbent upon AC to make sure junior development is funded and qualified athletes are given every opportunity to perform at the best possible level. They are the future of running and better performances should yield greater opportunity.

I’d pay an extra $1 on each of my race entries to help send athletes to IAAF World Cross-Country Championships or any other international competition and to help fund junior development.

Maybe, just maybe, the vocal few who aim to organize collectively for the benefit of this country’s racing future will approach AC with a well thought out plan and to that, AC should listen.

Competitive distance runners, unlike hockey or rugby players, are better known as boy scouts than party boys, but some say that’s just a stereotype.

Jim Finlayson, one of Canada’s elite distance runners, gathered with 75 racers on the track, feeling confident after his normal pre-race routine: a nice sleep, oatmeal for breakfast, plenty of water.

When the start gun blasted, however, he did something he never would have attempted in international competition: He chugged a bottle of Granville Island Winter Ale. Then he bolted.

They call it the Beer Mile. Four laps of the track. One beer per lap. No puking, on pain of a penalty lap. Hundreds of people around the world have posted their times, and beer of choice, on www.beermile.com.

Three years after that race on a chilly winter day in Victoria, Mr. Finlayson remains the world record holder with a time of 5 minutes, 9 seconds.

More impressive, perhaps, is that the 37-year-old has represented Canada three times at the World Cross Country Championships, where beer played no part in the festivities. Competitive distance runners, unlike hockey or rugby players, are better known as boy scouts than party boys, but Mr. Finlayson says that’s just a stereotype.

He belongs to a generation of runners whose carefree attitudes have fuelled the popularity of running clubs that prove, according to Canadian Running magazine editor Michal Kapral, “we’re not a bunch of prudes.”

“ [Non-runners] usually assume that I live like a monk, shun alcohol, dine on tofu burgers and boiled yams and go to bed every night at 9 p.m. ” — Elite runner Michal Kapral

They include beer milers, who claim a fair number of frat boys but also serious runners. There are groups of friends, such as the Longboat Roadrunners in Toronto, who meet weekly for a training run before knocking back a pint and wings.

But the granddaddy of them all is the Hash House Harriers, which calls itself a “drinking club with a running problem.” The club originated with a group of expats living in Malaysia in 1938, and has since expanded all over the world, including to Canada.

Hashers usually meet once a week, and follow a mystery route laid out by a club member called the “hare.” Everyone else follows like hounds. Routes vary between five and eight kilometres, but the final destination is always a pub.

The groups have spread across the country since the first run in Calgary, in 1983, and have become a magnet for people like Mike Babulic. He resisted at first, considering himself a serious runner, but when he was dragged out to a hash almost two decades ago, he was hooked by the group’s carefree mantra.

He calls hashing the slo-pitch of running. “We have our silly little rituals, and rugby-type songs,” he says.

Competition is banned, and hashers are serious about that. Mention the “r” word (race) or the “m” word (marathon), and you have to chug a beer. “It’s non-competitive and we like to keep it that way,” Mr. Babulic says.

Sometimes that’s not easy. Over the years, a few newcomers have appeared at Calgary hashes only to quit once they learned what they were all about. There are those whose conversations are dominated by questions like “Did you PB? Did you BQ?” (Translation: “Did you run a personal best? Did you qualify for the Boston Marathon?”)

Others turn up their noses at those who’ve never run a marathon, says Douglas Gray of Barrie, Ont.

“Many runners have an air of self-righteousness about them,” he says.

Hence those old stereotypes, Mr. Kapral points out. When he mentions he’s a competitive marathoner, the reaction from non-runners is almost always the same.

“They usually assume that I live like a monk, shun alcohol, dine on tofu burgers and boiled yams and go to bed every night at 9 p.m.”

Mr. Kapral says runners who are the most rigid about their training tend to be the ones who are newest to the sport. Those folks are understandably nervous about doing things properly, he says. He was once pretty uptight himself.

“I followed a training program like a robot and calculated all of the paces and distances of my training runs like a scientific researcher,” he says.

The more he learned about running, however, the more relaxed he became. While he used to tease his wife for having a drink the night before a big run, now he will have a couple himself and not worry about it.

Ironically, Mr. Kapral says, the relaxed attitude has translated into better race times. He won the Toronto Marathon in 2002. And he holds the world record for “joggling” – running while juggling at the same time – for both the 10-kilometre distance and in the marathon, with a time of 2:50:12.

Mr. Finlayson in Victoria agrees. Drinking can benefit your running, he says, but “it’s not the alcohol content.”

“You have to be able to enjoy it,” he says. “If you let yourself get too wrapped up in the details, and tense up about all the particulars, then you’re not going to get the most out of your body.”

And while enduring a mile at top speed with all that fizzy, alcoholic liquid in his stomach wasn’t exactly a thrill, the beer mile certainly was fun at the end, he says. “It’s more of a giddy feeling.”

Party hard, run harder

While it would be a stretch to say alcohol improves athletic performance, a recent study in the American Journal of Health Promotion found that people who drink regularly seem to exercise more often than abstainers.

Compared with people who never drink, those considered heavy drinkers – at least 46 drinks a month for women, and 76 or more for men – got 10 extra minutes of exercise each week. Meanwhile, moderate drinkers –women who had 15 to 45 drinks a month, and men who had 30 to 75 – got 20 more minutes a week than abstainers.

Both moderate and heavy drinkers were also more likely to report vigorous exercise, such as jogging, than either light drinkers or abstainers.

The Miami researchers said heavier drinkers may be the types who tend toward more adventurous outdoor activities, such as snowboarding or rock climbing. Others may play team sports, where you wind up at the bar after a game.

• Shop the perimeter. Don’t buy processed/branded food items.
• Don’t buy things just because they are cheap. If you don’t end up using it no matter how cheap it was it’s lost money.
• Don’t shop hungry.
• Shop alone.
• Do all your grocery shopping on one day of the week, and don’t spend money on food the rest of the week, no matter what.
• Prepare your own food. Clean and chop your own greens instead of buying pre-packaged. Grate your own cheese. Dice your own veggies. Make your own ice. Food manufacturers charge a premium for convenience.
• Avoid Starbucks at all costs.
• Eat the entire animal.
• Stock up on free condiments from fast food joints, truck stops, cafeterias, and yes, churches.
• Go to funerals. There’s always food at funerals.
• Want cheap eggs? Buy a chicken. You’ll be surprised at how many they can pop out.
• Make like Ghandi and fast for a cause.

And our favorite?

• 1 Beer at an L.A. Bar = 24 beers from the Liquormart = 48 generic cans of vegetables. Just stand around with a glass of water in your hand and pretend to be drunk.

For the full list click here…

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THE talk, at the Expo Center at the Boston Marathon this year, had an intriguing title: Using Biomechanics to Predict Running Injuries. And the lecturer, Dr. Thomas W. Vorderer, a podiatrist at the division of sports medicine at Children’s Hospital, one of the Harvard hospitals, spoke with great conviction.

You can prevent injuries, Dr. Vorderer said, or, if you get them, can make them heal if you learn the right way to stretch and if you stretch regularly. And you should also learn the right way to run; in general, he said, runners should strike the ground with their heels first. If they strike with their midfoot or forefoot, he said, they are just asking for injuries.

Dr. Vorderer speaks from experience: he was a competitive runner for years and said he trained with fantastic coaches. And he says he has helped countless runners rid themselves of chronic injuries by figuring out why they were getting injured and teaching them, for example, the right way to stretch. He has e-mail messages from grateful patients, thanking him for solving problems that threatened to end their running altogether.

But exercise physiologists say none of what he espouses has been established by rigorous studies. Stretching evidence is so inconclusive that two large studies are now under way that randomize people to stretch or not and ask whether it prevents injuries, does nothing or increases injury rates. No one knows what the answer will be.

As for running styles, a credible study in 2007 showed that running form often depended on running speed. The slower people run, the study found, the more likely they are to strike the ground with their heel first. The same runners, going more slowly, run differently from when they run fast.

There is no right or wrong way to run, said Peter R. Cavanagh, a professor in the department of orthopedics and sports medicine at the University of Washington. And even if there is, he said, it is not clear that people can permanently change their natural stride.

Dr. Vorderer says that he knows experts often disagree but that the art of sports medicine is to understand individuals.

“It’s hard,” he said. “Anyone can put out a shingle and say, ‘I’m a sports medicine doctor.’ You basically want to go where you have to wait an hour in the office. Then you know it’s a busy office.” And, he adds, while it is easy to diagnose a problem like an Achilles tendon injury, what you really want to know is, “Why do I have this? What mechanical or structural or shoe problem gave it to me?”

So how are athletes supposed to know whom or what to believe? It’s a huge problem, researchers say. They have some tips, but their overall message is: Be wary and be careful. Look for credentials and rigorous science. And check the Web sites of reputable organizations, like the American College of Sports Medicine, which publishes position papers on exercise science. The papers are compiled by committees of experts and provide references and evidence to support their statements.

Yet bad advice is so ubiquitous that almost everyone, even experts themselves, has been foiled.

That happened, for example, to Dr. Paul Thompson of Hartford Hospital, a heart researcher and marathon runner. He warns that people should “be careful of advice that has a price tag.” The best example, he said, are orthotics, those shoe inserts that are supposed to prevent injuries.

“Podiatrists make money making them, and more power to them,” Dr. Thompson said. “But some podiatrists think they cure everything.”

“I once needed orthotics,” he continued. “The podiatrist wanted me to run with them. It completely changed my foot plant and produced lateral knee pain, which resolved when I used them only with my walking shoes.”

Something similar happened to me. After I got a stress fracture in a small bone in my foot last year, my orthopedist prescribed orthotics. For weeks I tried to run with them but felt slow, like I was running through sand. Then I pulled my hamstring. My coach watched me run with and without the orthotics and said he could see why I was having problems: the orthotics changed my foot plant so I was braking with every step. Now, like Dr. Thompson, I wear them only when I walk around.

Those of us who are not experts can be especially vulnerable to bad advice. After my stress fracture, I had a biomechanical analysis by an exercise physiologist at a commercial studio in New York. Among other things, I was told to change the way I run. My heels never hit the ground; I had to learn to run so my heels struck first.

I knew I couldn’t do that, so I ignored the advice and never returned to those experts. But my friend Birgit Unfried tried to listen to a sports medicine doctor in New Jersey who analyzed her running stride. She had a painful iliotibial band, which stabilizes the knee, and was plagued with shin splints. The reason, she was told, was that her stride was wrong. She was a heel striker; she needed to learn to strike first with her midfoot.

BIRGIT tried and did so well that her doctor put before and after videos of her running on his Web site. But she never felt comfortable running that new way. As for her injuries, the new gait was no panacea. At first, Birgit said, her problems seemed to go away. But soon she pulled her quadriceps muscle and, despite her changed gait, her shin splints came back worse than ever.

“I haven’t been running at all,” Birgit said. “At times I think I’m getting better but then I touch my shin in certain areas, like down near the ankle, and it hurts like a bruise.”

Orthotics and running styles are the easier cases. All too often, there are no studies or scientific evidence to guide anyone, even the experts. When studies are done, they tend to be inadequate.

“Good experiments need tight experimental design, and they need control groups,” Dr. Cavanagh said. Without them, results are pretty much useless. And many exercise studies lack one or both of those crucial elements.

That may not matter to many who dispense advice. Often, they rely on a hunch or personal experience or on what they think makes a great athlete great.

Take pedal speed in cycling, said Michael J. Berry, a serious road cyclist and chairman of the department of health and exercise science at Wake Forest University. The studies, such as they are, say the best pedal speed is 60 to 80 revolutions a minute. But that is based on experiments with untrained subjects riding stationary bikes in an exercise lab. Those results may have no relevance for experienced cyclists riding on roads.

So, ignoring those lab studies, many experts counsel cyclists to pedal much faster. Their evidence? It’s Lance Armstrong, who pedals extraordinarily fast — 95, 100, 110 r.p.m.’s.

In the 2003 Tour de France, Armstrong consistently beat his rival, Jan Ullrich, and commentators, Dr. Berry noted, said it was in part because he could pedal so fast. Ullrich pedals slower but uses bigger gears. “What if Lance had never been there and Jan had won?” Dr. Berry said. “Would people say that the reason he is so good is that he pushes a big gear?”

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Running events are myriad in this country and even in a period of recession they seem to be flourishing. The Vancouver Sun 10-kilometre race boasted 55,000 entrants in April. Early this month, 12,000 folks ran or shuffled in Sporting Life’s annual dash down one of the busiest streets in Canada’s largest city. From the Bridge City Boogie in Saskatoon, to the Blue Nose International Marathon in Halifax, people are still running, in literally thousands of races spanning the country and in record numbers.

Continue reading…

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IF anyone ever wondered whether it was talent or sustained systematic training that makes athletes so good, they need only look at Joshua Gordon, a professional mediator in Boston.

Mr. Gordon ran cross-country in college before stopping completely to take up baseball. Six years later, in 1999, he decided, almost as a lark, to run the Boston Marathon. He joined a program to learn how to run longer distances, a process that involved gradually increasing the length of his runs and focusing only on distance, not speed.

He finished the marathon in a little over four hours, not especially fast for a man of 24, but he did meet his goal. “I was thrilled,” he said.

And so he found himself edging back into running, entering shorter races, 5 and 10 kilometers. He tried to train on his own, but he never did particularly well until he decided to start serious, rigorous marathon training with the Boston Athletic Association. He received coached track workouts once a week, four to six coached runs of 18 to 23 miles along the marathon course, and he had a group of skilled and talented athletes to run with.

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Thanks to the several readers who have pointed out this recent article in SEED Magazine which once again dredges up the tired argument that humans evolved to be long-distance runners. Most of you know by now that I totally disagree with that theory. I say humans evolved to be excellent slow movers (walk, jog, migrate, forage, crawl, scramble, etc) burning mostly fat. We also developed into pretty decent short sprinters, but we did NOT evolve to run long distances. Sure, early humans were all-around fit enough and capable of the occasional long easy jaunt after an animal, but to think that natural selection redesigned our simian shapes to run the Boston Marathon is, in my opinion, ludicrous.

Continue reading on Mark’s blog…

Race Website

The GutBuster website can be found at www.gutbustertrailrun.com

Date/Time

GB001::Mt Tzouhalem (May 17th, 2009)

GB002::Colliery Dam (May 31st, 2009)

GB003::Royal Roads (July 12th, 2009)

GB004::Mt Doug (July 26th, 2009)

GB005:Mt Washington (August 8th, 2009)

About the Races

The FRONTRUNNERS GutBuster Trail Running Series is Vancouver Island’s Premiere Trail Running Series that takes runners off the road and onto the some of the most amazing trail networks in Western Canada. We are offering five exciting races for the 2009 season. Each race offers a short course (5-8km) and Long Course (10-21km) option and the last race of the season at Mt Washington is and ascent race which climbs 505m to the top of Mt Washington Ski Resort.

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Building muscle and strength doesn’t require a gym membership, or even weights, according to a new study from the University of Texas-El Paso. In a new test of manual resistance exercises, where a training partner provided the resistance, researchers found the strength training to be just as effective as using weights.

During a 14-week period, the scientists monitored 84 college students who were assigned to either a traditional program of weights-based exercises, or manual resistance workouts. Both groups were given six exercises and performed eight to 12-rep sets two to four times. By the end of the study, the two groups showed no significant differences in strength development.

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Being an evil marketer I am constantly segmenting people by demo/socio/value-graphic methods. I may get in trouble for this for not including people in various categories but I’m going to attempt to create a classification system for ultrarunners. (I have been in the bottom 3 categories, myself) Anyway, here goes:

• Super-elite (a.k.a. ghosts) – Pre-race: Smiling at the start line. Wearing tank top/no-shirt and shorts, possibly Moeben sleeves even when it’s 5 below (least amount of clothing because there is no chance they will get cold during the race from running slow). Wearing shades or sun visor on a cloudy day.

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1. The Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race
2. World Bog Snorkeling Championships
3. Furnace Creek 508
4. Arrowhead 135-mile Winter Ultramarathon
5. Manhattan Island Marathon Swim
6. Barkley Marathon
7. Extreme Winter Ultra Marathon
8. Marathon des Sables
9. Race Across America
10. *** (we don’t want to spoil the surprise….to find out read the full article on the National Geographic website)

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WELDON JOHNSON first tried caffeine as a performance enhancer in 1998. He was not a coffee drinker but had heard that caffeine could make him run faster. So he went to a convenience store before a race and drank a cup of coffee.

For the first time in his life, he ran 10 kilometers in less than 30 minutes.

“I remember being really wired before the race,” he said in an e-mail message. “My body was shaking.”

From then on, he was a convert.

Mr. Johnson, a founder of LetsRun.com, would avoid caffeine, even in soft drinks, for a few weeks before he competed in a race, wanting to have the full stimulant effect.

“It may have been a huge placebo effect, but I swore by it,” Mr. Johnson said. “Having a cup of coffee exactly one hour before the race was part of my routine.”

Or maybe it was not a placebo effect.

Caffeine, it turns out, actually works. And it is legal, one of the few performance enhancers that is not banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency.

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VICTORIA – Brent Fougner, race manager for the inaugural Times Colonist 10K, recalls thinking how impressive it was that 1,700 runners showed up in 1990.

On April 26, a throbbing ribbon of humanity comprising more than 12,000 participants is expected to snake its way through city streets for the 20th annual Times Colonist 10K.

It is the second largest 10-kilometre race in Canada after the Vancouver Sun Run.

“It boggles my mind . . . per capita, it’s the largest running event in Canada,” said Fougner, of the event’s growth over two decades.

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• Pyrenees Traverse, France
• Cape Wrath Trail, Scotland
• Zillertal Alps, Austria
• Tongariro Northern Circuit and Heaphy Track, New Zealand
• Cordillera Apolobamba, Bolivia
• Overland Track, Australia
• Sarek National Park, Sweden
• Rolwaling and Khumbu Valleys, Nepal
• Polar Route, Greenland
• Simien Mountains National Park, Ethiopia

1. Run tall. Running, especially uphill, can be exhausting, but if you bend under the effort it’s more difficult for the lungs to do their thing. On the uphill, keep an eye at the crest or a few yards ahead, not at your feet. If you’re gasping, slow down and pump your arms a little, or if you need to, walk, while keeping your posture tall. Even elite runners will walk a steep hill.

2. Shorten your stride on the way up. And plant your entire foot; climbing on your toes kills your calf muscles. Jump over obstacles. Stepping up on unsteady rocks and roots is not only tiring, it can be hazardous.

3. Be loose on the downhill. Stop braking and allow yourself to fly a little, throwing your arms to the side. But don’t flail. If you lose control, slalom from side to side like a skier. Don’t lean back or dig in your heels to brake (a guaranteed butt slide). Instead, land quickly and lightly.

4. Plot your moves. View the trail like a chessboard. Plan your steps around bumps, dips, soft sand and fallen trees yards before you reach them.

5. Focus on time, not distance. Don’t expect to match your road PR.

6. Diminish your risks. Run in pairs or let someone know where you’re going and when you’ll be back. Take plenty of fuel and fluid, a lightweight jacket and a cell phone, which won’t always get a signal in the mountains, but might. Uphill runners yield to downhill runners. Yell “trail” well in advance of passing another runner or hiker.

7. Find your balance. Slippery downhills let you know what your legs are made of. Build them up between trail runs with weighted squats and lunges, and build your balance using wobble boards.

8. Keep your bearings. Things look different coming back than going. Pause to look around when two or more paths diverge from the one you’re on. Look at trail signs and identify rocks, trees or landmarks on the horizon.

9. Leave no trace. Even in races, trail runners stow empty wrappers and wouldn’t dream of dropping cups like road racers. Stay on marked trails, don’t cut switchbacks and go through, not around, puddles to prevent erosion.

10. Feel like a kid again. Crank it on the downhill, hoot and holler, jump into a stream.

Have FUN!