Written by Hayley Mick and originally published in the October 29, 2009 edition of the Globe and Mail;

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.

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Following is an excerpt from Mark Sisson’s blog (The Daily Apple) where he argues, contrary to the recent emerging popular belief, that humans have NOT evolved to be long distance runners…

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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…

Here’s a great recipe for a homemade sports drink (taken from Nancy Clark’s Sport Nutrition Guidebook):

1/4 cup sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup hot water
1/4 cup orange juice (not concentrate) plus 2 tablespoons lemon juice
3 1/2 cups cold water

1.  In bottom of a pitcher, dissolve the sugar and salt in the hot water.
2  Add the juice and the remaining water; chill

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The recent peanut scare has left few consumers unaffected, including athletes. A list of recalled food products containing peanuts include a number of ‘energy bars’ favored by endurance athletes. Some of these include:

• Clif Bars
• Detour
• Supreme Protein
• Genisoy
• Luna
• Lärabar

For a complete list click here.

The Healthy Bride , a fitness and lifestyles advocate and trainer from Washington State, offers tips for maintaining health and fitness during the holiday season in one of her recent blog postings…

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Here we are again, ready to begin another holiday season. The holiday season is a marathon of activity, and maintaining your exercise habits can prove difficult.

Outside commitments at this time of year often interfere with scheduling workouts. Missing workouts can be discouraging and you might even feel like you are failing in your effort to become fit and healthy. Some people give up and stop exercising entirely. Don’t do it!  There IS a solution. Here are some suggestions to help you maintain your sanity and your exercise program during this hectic time of year.

Continue reading …

We hear a lot about how much mileage our cars get – but have you ever thought about how much mileage our bodies get? Assuming you consumed 1 gallon of liquid food mixed with water, this short survey will tell you approximately how far you could walk before you ran out of gas (a.k.a passed out).

http://www.thecarconnection.com/mpg-quiz/index.html

Victoria athlete packs pill that’s said to ease stress and boost endurance

Paul Luke, The Province

Olympic athletes groaning under the weight of overstuffed suitcases may envy Victoria’s Lauren Groves when she arrives in Beijing this week for the triathlon.

Groves will be lighter on her feet than rival triathletes who have crammed dozens of bottles of vitamins and minerals in their bags to see them through their gruelling event.

Groves, 26, avoided supplement angst by finding pretty much everything she wants in a new product called 7systems.

Aspire Sports Supplements, the company behind 7systems, has promoted the endurance sports supplement as a way to blunt the impact of Beijing smog by goosing athletes’ immune systems.

But 7systems’ long-term mainstream appeal may lie less in any smog-easing properties and more in its stress-busting simplicity.

"When we started, we targeted the endurance sports market but it’s really for anybody whose life involves excess amounts of stress," says Aspire co-founder Jasper Blake, also of Victoria.

"It’s a potent multi-vitamin, multi-mineral, multi-nutrient product designed to cover all your bases."

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An article from the Men’s Journal on North Vancouver’s Brendan Brazier, a “raw” triathlete. Written by Gwen Kilvert.

Once just for hippies and Hollywood personal chefs, the raw food diet is becoming the latest adventure performance fuel.

As a competitive runner and a hardcore vegan, Brendan Brazier had a pretty good idea what was behind his lethargy and chronic muscle soreness. So he took a radical step: He stopped cooking. Two years later, fueled by a 90 percent uncooked, plant-based diet, the 30-year-old from Vancouver, British Columbia, not only feels great, but is also a top-tier Ironman and blistering 2:29 marathoner. In the process, he’s become one of the leaders pushing the boundaries of the raw (or “living”) food movement beyond the crunchy realm of hippie communes and into the sweaty world of timed splits, intervals, and anaerobic thresholds. “I haven’t used my stove in over a year,” says Brazier. “In fact, I’m thinking of selling it.” Not ready to give up your microwave just yet? Don’t worry. Most of the athletes similarly learning to turn off the heat aren’t anywhere near as extreme as Brazier. These guys — including seven-time Western States 100 ultramarathon champ Scott Jurek and members of the Norwegian national cycling team — simply try to work more uncooked vegetables, nuts, and seeds into their diets in the same way other jocks might pile on the grilled chicken breasts. “I know plenty of guys who are incorporating aspects of it,” says Jurek. “It’s a lot easier than you think.”

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And the bad: From fatty restaurant meals to failing school cafeterias and poor Western diets, 2007 made us think about how we eat

Written by LESLIE BECK, published in the Globe and Mail, December 26, 2007

The past 12 months brought a mix of nutrition stories to the forefront. It’s fair to say it was a bad year for deli meats, alcoholic beverages and the provinces’ school nutrition policies. Even restaurant meals were exposed for their shockingly high calorie and sodium counts.

But the year’s news wasn’t all bad. Vitamin D supplements and dark chocolate grabbed positive headlines. We also welcomed a new and improved food guide to help us eat better.

In keeping with tradition, my last column of the year looks back at 2007’s nutrition headlines. Here’s a recap.

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By Neil L. Cook, BS, MS, Med

Marathons are the “ultimate” goal for many runners. But there’s a core group of runners that believe the marathon isn’t long enough; not enough of a challenge. They feel the need to go longer, sometimes A LOT LONGER! These are different runners, not your average 10 K weekend racer. And although they are fiercely competitive, the camaraderie of ultra-marathoners is legendary. The support for fellow runners during an ultra extends further than any other running event.

What Is An Ultra Marathon?
A marathon is 26 miles 385 yards long. An ultra-marathon is any event longer. Typically, 30 miles, 50 miles, and 100 miles. There are other distances, but those are the most popular. There are also timed events: 12 hours, 24 hours, 48 hours, and even multi day-races. Some are run on roads, some on trails, and some (mainly timed events) on a track.

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If there is one thing every runner dreads for its devastating potential to reduces winners to also rans and silver medals to bronze, it’s cramp. So everybody has their favourite cramp theory and their favoured remedy but lets consider some facts first.

• Cramp is more common in males than in females.
• Cramp is associated both with the duration and intensity of exercise – the further and the faster the more likely cramp is to occur.
• Onset of cramp is usually after 30km in a distance race, regardless of running speed.
• Cramp during exercise is almost always in the large muscles that span two joints – the hamstrings, quadriceps and calf (gastrocnemius) muscles.
• Cramps are often initiated by a change in speed, gradient or running surface. A classic example is cresting a hill and then accelerating downhill or running on to grass after hours on the tar.
• Some people are simply more cramp-prone than others.

The most widely held belief is that cramp is due to dehydration and the loss of minerals such as sodium, potassium and magnesium. These minerals play a critical role in muscle contraction, so any imbalance would affect muscle function. However, if a runner were to become sufficiently electrolyte depleted while running, it is unlikely that only one or two muscles would cramp – surely the electrolyte loss would affect all muscles equally ? As it is, the muscles most likely to cramp are the comparatively large calf, hamstring and thigh muscles.

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A great article from the New York Times, published October 22, 2007

Switching to organic is tough for many families who don’t want to pay higher prices or give up their favorite foods. But by choosing organic versions of just a few foods that you eat often, you can increase the percentage of organic food in your diet without big changes to your shopping cart or your spending.

The key is to be strategic in your organic purchases. Opting for organic produce, for instance, doesn’t necessarily have a big impact, depending on what you eat. According to the Environmental Working Group, commercially-farmed fruits and vegetables vary in their levels of pesticide residue. Some vegetables, like broccoli, asparagus and onions, as well as foods with peels, such as avocados, bananas and oranges, have relatively low levels compared to other fruits and vegetables.

So how do you make your organic choices count? Pediatrician Dr. Alan Greene, whose new book “Raising Baby Green” explains how to raise a child in an environmentally-friendly way, has identified a few “strategic” organic foods that he says can make the biggest impact on the family diet.

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Taken from the Daily Mail, written by David Derbyshire on 2nd November 2007

Yesterday we were warned of the health dangers associated with alcohol – not to mention bacon, ham and sausages.

Today there is more cheering news from a different set of scientists.

They have come up with the perfect excuse for heading to the pub after a game of football or rugby.

Their research has shown that a glass of beer is far better at rehydrating the body after exercise than water.

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A steady caloric intake is very important in running ultras, even more so as events get longer (100 miles and beyond). Over the period of a few months you should be able to find a number of foods and/or beverages that you handle well (no or little stomach discomfort), that taste good to you, and that are “packable” while doing your long training runs.

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By Joyce Nelson
Yahoo! Canada Lifestyle

The poster bean for the vegetarian movement is under scrutiny these days. It turns those virtuous tofu hotdogs and skinny soya latte are not exactly blessed with an aura of health.

Organic vs. GM
There are two crucial distinctions to be made about soy when considering using it as a food source First, is it organic soy or genetically modified soy?

In North America between 75 percent to 89 percent of the soy beans grown are genetically modified (GM) soy. The whole debate over GMO foods is becoming controversial as more scientists report their findings of toxicity and cancer-promoting properties in GM food products on the market.

In autumn of 2005, the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation held an international symposium featuring scientists whose research had raised concerns about the health dangers of genetically modified foods. There is enough concern that many European countries are looking at a ban and even Africa has started refusing GMO products.

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