A FREE WEEKLY E-ZINE OF MULTISPORT RELATED ARTICLES.
The Runner's and Triathlete's Web Digest is a weekly e-zine dealing with the
sports of running and triathlon and general fitness and
health issues. The opinions expressed in the articles referenced by the Digest
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Canadian Olympians.

1. Emilie's Run - The Emilie Mondor Memorial 5K Race for Women:
The RunnersWeb5K.com Race for Women has been renamed in memory of Canadian
Olympian Emilie Mondor who died in a car crash September
9th on her way to her high-school reunion. Emilie had just completed a 2 hour
plus run along the Ottawa River during which she
talked with her coach about the upcoming Philadelphia Half-Marathon (September
17th) and the New York City Marathon in November.
For a story on Emilie read Emilie Mondor: Life Cut Too Short at:
http://www.runnersweb.com/running/news/rw_news_20060913_LB_Mondor.html
The first RunnersWeb5K.com Race for Women was held on June 24th at Ottawa's
Aviation Museum. Canada's #2 ranked marathoner, Nicole
Stevenson, won the race in 16:28. Thirty-five women ran under 20 minutes. For a
race report and photos go to:
http://www.runnersweb.com/running/news/rw_news_20060624_RunnersWeb5K.html.
The 2007 race date will be Saturday, June 23, 2007. The prize money will be
increased from $3,000 to $5,000 for open and masters
runners. The team competition will be expanded to include Open, Club and
University Teams. A children's 912 and under) 1K run will
also be held.
More information will be posted at: http://www.emiliesrun.com and at
http://www.somersault.ca

3. Road Runner Sports, the world's largest running store at:
http://clickserve.cc-dt.com/link/click?lid=41000000010069822.
Check out their Perfect Fit Finder for running shoes.

4. Toronto Waterfront Marathon. September 30, 2007.
http://www.torontowaterfrontmarathon.com/

5. The Toronto Marathon, October 14, 2007
http://www.torontomarathon.com

6. Carmichael Training Systems
http://www.trainright.com/promos.asp?code=DSBYBFCSP


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THIS WEEK:
RunnersWebCoach
Runner's Web has partnered with Active.com to provide online training programs.
For more, read the write-up under Content Partners
below.

*Special Offer from Human Kinetics*
As an associate member Human Kinetics is offering an exclusive Online Christmas
Special ~ 25% off all purchases + Free Shipping on
orders of $50+. To place your order, click on the following
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Human Kinetics site. Enter marketing code K191 when placing your order to
receive the 25% off. If the Free Shipping applies the
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RUNNER'S AND TRIATHLETE'S WEB CONTENT PARTNERS

ACTIVE.COM
RunnersWeb.com has teamed up with Active Trainer coaches to offer training
programs that are a balance of aerobic, anaerobic and
cross-training workouts. These training programs are built to get people of all
levels across the finish line. From the first timer
to the seasoned veteran you will find the right training plan for you. Good luck
with your training and we will see you at the
finish line.
Training Log and Analysis:
Log your daily workouts and monitor your progress along the way.
Getting Started:
Set a realistic goal for training. Review the list of training programs
developed by Active Trainer Coaches. Select the program that
best matches your current training schedule. If you have been inactive, select a
conservative schedule to assure success and
decrease the risk of injury. Plug in the start date or the date of your target
race and go! The schedule will automatically be
entered into your log. It is as simple as that...
Training:
Select the daily email to receive your training by the day or log on to your
account and review the entire schedule. Use the
interactive log to enter in valuable training information. The more information
you enter in your personal log, the better. You will
be able to use this information in the future to evaluate performance, keep
track of what works and what doesn't and stay motivated
to see just how far you've come.
Sign up at: www.RunnersWebCoach.com OR
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* Sports Nutrition by Sheila Kealey.
Sheila is one of Ottawa's top multisport athletes and a member of the OAC Racing
Team and X-C Ottawa. She has a Masters in Public
Health and works in the field of nutritional epidemiology as a Research
Associate with the University of California, San Diego. Her
column index is available at:
http://www.runnersweb.com/running/SK_index.html

* Carmichael Training Systems
Carmichael Training Systems was founded in 1999 by Chris Carmichael.
From the beginning, the mission of the company has been to improve the lives of
individuals we work with through the application of
proper and effective fitness and competitive training techniques. Whether your
focus is recreational, advanced, or you are a
professional racer, the coaching methodology employed by CTS will make you a
better athlete. Check the latest monthly column from
CTS at: http://www.runnersweb.com/running/cts_columns.html.
Carmichael Training Systems at:
http://www.trainright.com/promos.asp?code=DSBYBFCSP

* Peak Performance Online
Peak Performance is a subscription-only newsletter for athletes, featuring the
latest research from the sports science world. We
cover the whole range of sports, from running and rowing to cycling and
swimming, and each issue is packed full of exclusive
information for anyone who's serious about sport. It's published 16 times a
year, including four special reports, by Electric Word
plc. Peak Performance is not available in the shops - only our subscribers are
able to access the valuable information we publish.
Check out our article archive from Peak Performance Online at:
http://www.runnersweb.com/running/PPO_index.html
Visit the PPO site at:
Peak Performance Online:
http://www.pponline.co.uk/cmd.php?af=517509

* Peak Running Performance
Peak Running Is The Nation's Most Advanced Running Newsletter. Rated as the #1
Running Publication by Road Runner Sports (Worlds
Largest Running Store) , Peak Running caters to the serious / dedicated runner.
Delivering world class running advice are some of
running's most recognizable athletes including Dr. Joe Vigil (US Olympic Coach),
Scott Tinley (2 Time Ironman Champ) Steve Scott (3 Time Olympian) and many more.
This bi-monthly newsletter has been around for over
13 years, and in the past two it has been awarded the "Golden Shoe Award" in
recognition of it's outstanding achievements.
http://www.clixGalore.com/Sale.aspx?BID=37234&AfID=103794&AdID=5075&LP=www.peakr\
unningperformance.com
Check out the Peak Running article index at:
http://www.runnersweb.com/running/PRP_index.html .

* WatsonLifeSport
Lance Watson is "Just The Winningest Coach in Triathlon". He has been coaching
triathlon and distance running since 1987. Over the
years, Lance has coached some of the most successful athletes in the sport of
triathlon and duathlon.
Check out the Lance Watson Online Article Index at:
http://www.runnersweb.com/running/LW_index.html

Running Research News:
RRN's free, weekly, training update provides subscribers with the most-current,
practical, scientifically based information about
training, sports nutrition, injury prevention, and injury rehabilitation. The
purpose of this weekly e-zine is to improve
subscribers' training quality and to help them train in an injury-free manner.
Running Research News also publishes a complete, 12-page, electronic newsletter
10 times a year (one-year subscriptions are $35); to
learn more about Running Research News, please see the Online Article Index and
"About Running Research News" sections below or go
to RRNews.com.
Check out the article index at:
http://www.runnersweb.com/running/RRN_index.html


THIS WEEK'S PERSONAL POSTINGS/RELEASES:
We have ONE personal posting this week.

ONE:
I have launched a website to make people aware of the TWRC/TEDCO plans to
develop the last remaining area of parkland on Toronto's
waterfront. Everyone I have spoken with except the developers thinks this area
should be preserved for us all as parkland. It is
used by thousands of cyclists on a regularly basis, the Toronto Triathlon is
held there, etc. etc.
Would you be willing to send a short text email to your members asking them to
visit the site www.savecherrybeach.ca and or province
a link on your site. We don't have much time, site preparation is scheduled to
begin at the end of November.
Thank you
Andrew Peck
Webmaster
www.savecherrybeach.ca
mailto:info@...


THIS WEEK'S DIGEST ARTICLE INDEX:

1. Science of Sport: Do You Really Need Three Sets Of Reps?
Science Has Given Runners a Confusing Message.
2. Multisport: Recovery for Endurance Sports
3. Drug Doubles Endurance, Study Says
4. Joe Henderson's Running Commentary - Filling the Great Gap
5. Hill Running - Just For The Hill Of It
6. Record-breaking predictions : What are the absolute limits to human
performance levels?
7. No, it's nothing Serious, honest...
Andrew Marr's body is paying the price for a lifetime of long-distance running –
one of his Achilles tendons has ruptured and the
other is not looking so hot. So, how is he coping?
8. Marathon Running May Pose Hidden Heart Risk for Middle-Age Men
9. Dr. Gabe Mirkin's Fitness and Health E-Zine
10. Endurance sports: When goals take a back seat to process
11. Winter Weight Training
Every Human Motion is Muscular.
12. Lactate: How to boost lactate threshold and why it will lift your
performances.
13. The wellness fight's home front
Dr. Kenneth Cooper's McKinney development aims to furnish the best health
insurance of all.
14. Less is Often Better
15. Gender Differences in Endurance Performance and Training
16. Triathlon Training - Base Mistakes
17. The Science of Carbohydrate Loading
18. Clogged Arteries Showing Up in Kids
Fatty diets, lack of exercise are boosting children's heart risks, study shows.
19. Natural chemical 'beats morphine'
The human body produces a natural painkiller several times more potent than
morphine, research suggests.
20. This Week in Running
21. Repetitive Strain Injury
Muscles & Pain - What Happens... Exactly.
22. Beeps of technology heard among marathon’s throngs
23. 30 Foods for Fitness, Pt. 2: Fruits
24. Testing Times
25. Digest Briefs


RUNNER'S WEB WEEKLY POLL:
"What is your gender and age?"

You can access the poll from our FrontPage ( http://www.runnersweb.com) as well
as checking the results of previous polls.
Post your views in our Forum at:
http://www.runnersweb.com/running/runnersweb_forum.html
[Free Registration Required]

LAST WEEK'S POLL RESULTS:
"What do you do in your off-season?"
Answers Percent
1. No training 16%
2. Reduced training 34%
3. Cross-training 19%


FIVE STAR SITE OF THE WEEK: the legendary Alfie Shrubb
Alfred Shrubb was one of the pioneers of running. In the early 1900s Alfred set
14 World Records, his 1 hour mark was not broken
till 1951. This web site is a site to recapture history of the past.
"the legendary Alfie Shrubb
Alfred Shrubb did not always yearn to be a great runner. His running career did
not begin until he was twenty years of age. His
father had been a farmer, but Alfred wanted to be a carpenter. He took jobs in
the building trade and it was while he was a
bricklayer on a hospital project in Stammerham, near his home village, that the
racing bug bit him. One night, at about 5:00pm,
Alfred met a man named F.J.Spence who was then the champion runner of the local
athletic club. Spence was on his way to a fire. It
looked as if all of the nearby town of Southwater was ablaze and Spence invited
Alfred to run over and see the fire with him. Alfred
responded that he could not run. Spence insisted and they both ran to the fire
scene. Alfred actually beat the fire wagon, and
Spence was so impressed he convinced Alfred to join the Horsham Blue Star
Harriers Running Club."
Visit the website at:
http://www.alfredshrubb.ca/

PHOTO SLIDESHOW:
Our Photo Slideshow is updated on a random basis. Check it out from our
FrontPage.


BOOK OF THE WEEK: The Tour de France 2006: Triumph and Turmoil for Floyd Landis
This exciting view of cycling’s great race covers every aspect of the grueling
three-week event, with maps, stage reports, and
intimate profiles of the top riders — including George Hincapie, Floyd Landis,
and Levi Leipheimer — in the peloton. Graham Watson’s
vivid photographs bring the action up close. More than an annual overview, this
book conveys the spirit of the Tour through engaging
stories of ambition and courage that pave the road to the Tour and the collision
of dedication and fate that await 21 teams and 189
of the sport's greatest athletes.
Buy the book from Amazon at:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1931382913/runnersweb/102-0182896-9006569\
?v=glance&s=books

For more publications on running and triathlon visit:
http://www.runnersweb.com/running/human_kinetics.html and
http://www.runnersweb.com/running/amazon.html


THIS WEEK'S FEATURES:

1. Science of Sport: Do You Really Need Three Sets Of Reps?
Science Has Given Runners a Confusing Message.
By Owen Anderson
It’s as straightforward as tying your shoes: When you go to the gym to improve
your strength for running and to add a few strips of
sinew to your upper body, you complete three sets of each of your chosen
strengthening exercises, not just one or two – and not as
many as four. Three is the magic number – the quantity of sets which will
optimize your gains in strength over time.
Or is it? It’s possible that the first set provides most of the physiological
stimulus for your muscles to get stronger, with the
second and third sets offering little more than glorified calorie-burning. In
fact, some research suggests that you might be able to
get by just as well with one set as with three. In an investigation carried out
in the Department of Exercise and Sports Sciences at
the
After 13 weeks, both groups significantly improved muscular endurance while
doing chest presses and leg extensions (muscular
endurance was defined as the number of repetitions to failure using 75% of the
pre-training one-repetition maximum for each
exercise). Both groups also significantly improved one-repetition-maximum
strength (the max weight which could be lifted one and
only one time)for several of the exercises, and the two collections of strength
trainers significantly upgraded lean body mass. The
key finding, however, was that the one-set lifters improved just as much in all
three characteristics (endurance, one-rep-max
strength, and body composition) as the individuals who toiled three times as
long with their trio of sets!
More...from the Runner's Web at:
http://www.runnersweb.com/running/news/rw_news_20061111_RRN_Three_Reps.html


2. Multisport: Recovery for Endurance Sports:
By Jason Karp
Recovery may be the most overlooked aspect of exercise. Everyone seems to focus
on how many minutes to bike or at what heart rate to
run. Improvements in fitness, however, occur during the recovery period between
exercise sessions and not during the exercise
itself. Positive physiological adaptations to exercise occur when there is a
correctly timed alternation between stress and
recovery. When your clients finish a cardio or weight training session, they are
weaker, not stronger. How much weaker depends on
the severity of the exercise stress. If the stress is too great and/or your
clients don’t recover before their next workout, their
ability to adapt to subsequent workouts declines. Therefore, what they do the
rest of the day when they are not exercising is just
as important as what they do when they are exercising. The faster and more
complete their recovery, the more they will get out of
their exercise programs and training sessions with you.
Refuel
Between working out over the lunch hour and picking up their kids from soccer
practice, it’s easy for your clients to not eat after
their workouts. But not refueling after they exercise, especially after long or
intense bouts, is possibly the single worst thing
they can do to thwart their recovery.
The most important aspect of optimal recovery from hard workouts is refueling
nutrient-depleted muscles. Refueling after workouts is
important for several reasons including the replenishment of fuel stores and the
repair of cellular damage. In regards to fuel,
carbohydrates are the most important nutrient to replenish. It has been known
since the late 1960s that exercise performance is
strongly influenced by the amount of pre-exercise muscle glycogen and that
intense endurance exercise decreases muscle glycogen
content.
More...from the Runner's Web at:
http://www.runnersweb.com/running/news/rw_news_20061111_PTontheNet_Recovery.html


3. Drug Doubles Endurance, Study Says :
Given that some athletes will take almost anything to gain a one percent edge in
performance, what might they do for a 100 percent
improvement? That temptation is made somewhat more real by a report today in a
leading journal about a drug that doubles the
physical endurance of mice running on treadmills. And it could only be more
tempting, because the drug in question has also been
reported to extend the lifespan of mice.
An ordinary lab mouse will run about one kilometer — five-eights of a mile — on
a treadmill before collapsing from exhaustion. But
mice given resveratrol, a minor component of red wine and other foods, run twice
as far.
They also have a reduced heart rate and energy-charged muscles, just as trained
athletes do, according to an article published
online in Cell by Johan Auwerx and his colleagues at the Institute of Genetics
and Molecular and Cellular Biology in Illkirch,
France.
“Resveratrol makes you look like a trained athlete without the training,” Dr.
Auwerx (pronounced OH-wer-ix”) said in an interview.
He and his colleagues said the same mechanism seems likely to operate in humans,
based on their analysis, in a group of Finnish
subjects, of the gene that is influenced by the drug.
Their rationale for testing resveratrol was evidence obtained three years ago
that it could activate a genetic mechanism known to
protect mice against the degenerative diseases of aging and to prolong their
lifespan by 30 percent.
More...from the NY Times at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/16/science/17endurancecnd.html
Original Study:
http://images.cell.com/images/EdImages/cell/lagouge.pdf [PDF File]


4. Joe Henderson's Running Commentary - Filling the Great Gap:
One Sunday morning I watched a marathon start in Penticton, British Columbia,
then drove to the airport in nearby Kelowna. Passing
through that second town less than 50 miles later, I saw another marathon
getting underway.
A marathon was run that same day in the neighboring province of Alberta, and one
across the border in Washington state. Apparently
we have enough marathoners now to let this many races co-exist.
But in darker moments I think about how marathon mania has almost entirely
erased a set of perfectly fine events. The natural
stepping stones leading up to the marathon -- the 15- and 20-mile, 25K and 30K
races -- now stand nearly bare.
Road racing is polarizing as race distances move to very short or very long. The
fastest-growing events on the U.S. roads are 5K's
at the one pole and marathons at the other. Fives are logical starting points
for newbies and serve as speed tests for vets.
Marathons are glamorous survival tests for all.
Eight-, 10- and 12K's remain numerous and attractive. We can still find enough
races of 15K, 10-miles and half-marathon.
But between the half and the full marathon lies... well, not much. This 13-mile
gap is the black hole of running.
More...from Joe Henderson at:
http://www.joehenderson.com/archive/home.php?article=2082


5. Hill Running - Just For The Hill Of It:
This article focuses on how you can improve your running program after you've
made the commitment to begin running. I will describe
and show you how beneficial hill training can be for your strength and
endurance. In my books, there are three areas that you need
to think about:
* Starting out small
* Keeping good form uphill
* Setting up a hill running schedule
Certainly, you don't need to take the highest or steepest hill in your area to
start off with. However, even the most moderate hill
training can make your leg muscles stronger and inspire your enjoyment of
running. Because running up hills requires your heart to
work harder, it's also a perfect way to improve your endurance and you'll grow
mentally stronger as you go along. When you become
more confident and efficient on the hills, you may just prefer the ups and downs
to the "boring" flats!
Think small at the beginning
Introduce hill running to your exercise program in small steps, gradually adding
the ups and downs into your training. After you
feel confident that you can run 20 -30 minutes at a relaxed pace on a flat
course, then try a similar distance that includes two or
three very gradual inclines. I would suggest a small hill, which takes you 1 to
2 minutes to reach the top, at a steady but
comfortable pace. Because you are putting a new element into your training
regime, you may find yourself out of breath on the
incline, but not to worry you may need to take a walk break at the top of the
hill.
Your eventual goal is to focus your hard effort into the flat or descent. Have
one hill session per week to start off, and as you
improve you will run hilly courses effortlessly.
More... From Beat Your PB at:
http://www.beatyourpb.com/running/training/article/?i=4245


6. Record-breaking predictions : What are the absolute limits to human
performance levels?
Everything’s up to date in Kansas City – they’ve gone about as far as they can
go!
The song in question, in a musical set in the 1890s, was actually written a
hundred years later; the irony lay in the hindsight. In
each generation over the last century we have seen new records set, with
performances once regarded as superhuman becoming routine
and unremarkable, writes Bruce Tulloh.
In 1912, for example, there was a titanic track race over 5,000m between
Finland’s Hannes Kohlemainen and Jean Bouin of France,
which took the world record from 15:01 to what was regarded as an ‘ultimate’
14:36. In 1954 I can remember seeing Vladimir Kuts push
Chris Chataway to a world record of 13:51.6 for 5,000m, when Emil Zatopek and
Gunder Haegg were the only other men to have gone
under 14 minutes. Three years later, Kuts ran an amazing 13:35, and this was
regarded as an ultimate until the 1960s when Kip Keino
and Ron Clarke came along... and so on.
The pattern of record-breaking
In cycling, the criterion of individual performance has always been the one-hour
record. Although the sport has been largely
confined to Europeans, the immense rewards available to the world number one
have created a continuous pressure to improve, broken
only by the two world wars. As you can see from the panel on page 4, the record
improves very steeply at first – by 3k in the first
year and then a further 3k over the next 10 years.
Another 10 years brings a further 3k improvement, so the progression seems to be
linear, but after WWI it takes nearly 30 years for
the record to improve by just 1.5k. In spite of much better bikes, better tracks
and the use of altitude training, the record set in
1972 by Eddy Merckx, the Lance Armstrong of his day, was only 3.5k better than
that of Fausto Coppi 30 years before.
From then on, improved technology applied to wheels, helmets, tracks and riding
position have taken the record much further on;
nevertheless, Chris Boardman in 2000 and Ondrej Sosenka in 2005 managed to set
‘official’ records using conventional helmets and
wheels (see panel lower down). In the 33 years since Eddy Merckx’s record, they
have moved it up by all of 269m!
More...from Peak Performance Online at:
http://www.pponline.co.uk/encyc/record-breaking.htm


7. No, it's nothing Serious, honest...
Andrew Marr's body is paying the price for a lifetime of long-distance running –
one of his Achilles tendons has ruptured and the
other is not looking so hot. So, how is he coping?
There should be a name for that middle category of ailment which is neither
Serious nor entirely quite Trivial; all the sore,
embarrassing or merely inconvenient failures of flesh and sinew, which are not
life-threatening but… you know.
There's a whole butcher's window of torn muscles, malfunctioning organs, crocked
joints and viral oddities about which the British
sufferer is expected to be hearty and dismissive.
So it's "just a touch of back trouble" or "nothing much, slight problem with the
waterworks" or "they're just whipping it out and
sticking in some plastic gubbins, amazing really." And in this everyman's-land
between the Reaper and Aspirin, nothing provokes a
stifled guffaw like "sports injury".
Fair enough, really: the skier's plaster cast, tennis elbow and the rugby
player's cauliflower ear have been cartoonists' staples
for a century.
There are enough cancers, strokes and heart attacks around for us to keep our
sympathy focused there, and not on middle-aged people
who insist on doing a little more than their body feels is reasonable. I'm not
touting for sympathy. Medically, in the great run of
things I'm a lucky sod.
More...from the Telegraph at:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/main.jhtml?xml=/health/2006/11/09/hmarr09.xml


8. Marathon Running May Pose Hidden Heart Risk for Middle-Age Men:
Running 26 miles at a time at age 50 or older may sound a little crazy to some.
Now, a study suggests competing in marathons at that
age may, indeed, be dangerous.
Healthy men over age 50 who finished at least five marathons were more likely to
have major calcium deposits in their arteries than
healthy men who didn't run as much, said a study presented today at an American
Heart Association meeting in Chicago. Calcium
buildups indicate arteries may be hardening even without other symptoms.
Marathon runners aren't routinely screened for heart disease even though
atherosclerosis, or the slow buildup of artery-clogging
plaque, is the leading cause of exercise-related death in older athletes.
Testing calcium levels may help doctors predict risks
before runners begin training, researchers said.
``Even if you're healthy, the more disease you have, the more likely you will,
at some point later, develop a heart attack,'' said
Stefan Moehlenkamp, author of the study and a cardiologist at University Clinic
in Essen, Germany, in a Nov. 9 telephone interview.
Moehlenkamp said he got the idea for the study after hearing about healthy older
male runners who had heart attacks when running
marathons. As a man who runs about 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) a week,
Moehlenkamp said he was surprised by the possibility that
long-distance running may pose heart risks to older men.
More...from Bloomberg at:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=a3Hv5WwIJkj8&refer=us


9. Dr. Gabe Mirkin's Fitness and Health E-Zine:
* Lactic Acid is Good For You
Lactic acid is the most efficient fuel that your muscles can use, even more than
sugar. When you exercise as hard as you can, it
helps you to go harder. A paper from Auckland University in New Zealand reviews
the latest research showing that lactic acid is good
for you (Sports Medicine, Volume 36, 2006). Your muscles use carbohydrates, fats
and proteins for energy. Enzymes in muscles break
down carbohydrates in a series of reactions that release small amounts of energy
at a time. More than 80 percent of the energy used
to power muscles is lost as heat, so burning fuel instantly for energy would
produce so much heat that it would burn your muscles.
Enzymes require oxygen to turn food into energy. When you exercise so hard that
you can’t get all the oxygen you need to break down
food for energy, lactic acid accumulates in muscles and spills over into the
bloodstream. This makes muscles acidic and it is the
acidity that makes muscles burn and forces you to slow down. However, muscles
require very little oxygen to turn lactic acid into
energy. So when your muscles produce lots of lactic acid, they use this chemical
for energy and require less oxygen. As soon as you
slow down, you catch up on your oxygen debt and recover. So lactic acid is good
for you. It helps you to exercise with less
available oxygen
From Dr. Gabe Mirkin at:
http://www.drmirkin.com


10. Endurance sports: When goals take a back seat to process:
By Tom Rodgers, www.UltraFit.com
So much is published now about mental aspects of performance, especially in
endurance events, with sports psychology becoming the
new rage in coaching, training and racing.
We intuit that the mind leads and the body follows. What you may not know is
that many of the new-fangled concepts have been around
for thousands of years. The following quote from Patanjali's Raja Yoga Sutras on
meditation is dated at least as early as 150 BC.
"The mind is controlled through tireless endeavor and non-attachment." (Book I,
Sutra 12)
Most athletes have no trouble with the "tireless endeavor" part, which means
literally constant practice, ceaseless repetition and
the reiterated effort to impose new rhythm upon the old.
Our problem comes with the "non-attachment" clause. We are taught to set goals
and focus on achieving them. Our modern culture
stresses the bottom line, and we do indeed become attached to the results.
By their very nature, endurance athletes are goal-seeking and often obsessed
with "winning," be it against other athletes or in line
with their own time, distance or self-esteem goals. These are useful traits when
planning your race season, training objectives and
goals for the upcoming period.
Without some target to aim at, training and racing have no purpose. Yet one of
the key components to achieving these goals is an
ability to rightfully forget about them during the actual performance.
More...from the Sport Factory at:
http://www.thesportfactory.com/article_233.shtml


11. Winter Weight Training:
Every Human Motion is Muscular.
Every human motion is muscular. If your "cardio" is your motor, your muscles
make up your power train. Stronger muscles transfer
greater force to the ground, and reduce the amount of wasted energy. When you
watch the unfaltering rhythm of an elite runner, you
are watching gifts of genetics and dividends of training. But you are also
watching muscles hard at work.
How often have we said admiringly that elite runners "look like
they are hardly touching the ground." The compliment has considerable truth:
they are definitely touching the ground for a shorter
time than most of us. The shorter the ground contact time, the quicker the next
stride happens. Now multiply even a few hundredths
of a second per stride by every stride in a 10K!
During each stride, the weight of that elite athlete’s body is supported by
muscles that contract instantly to provide a solid
platform for the next forward drive. This is muscle strength, pure and simple.
The strength allows the twin actions of support and
drive to take place almost simultaneously.
The rest of us need more time to absorb the impact of each landing, and to
gather ourselves for the next push. We may have the lungs
of an elephant, and the mileage of a Greyhound bus, but when our present level
of strength can’t handle our "cardio," energy squirts
away on each stride. All runners perform much the same muscular actions;
stronger muscles perform them quicker.
More...from Running Times at:
http://www.runningtimes.com/rt/articles/?id=5456


12. Lactate: How to boost lactate threshold and why it will lift your
performances:
Interestingly enough, research has also indicated that strength training (in the
form of 'circuits' of various exercises) might have
a positive impact on LT. In research carried out at the University of Maryland,
10 individuals participated in a 12-week
strength-training programme, while a control group of eight subjects avoided
strengthening activities. The strength trainees carried
out their fortifying workouts three times a week, and their circuits of 10
different exercises were completed three times per
workout, making a total of nine circuits per week. The 10 exertions in a circuit
included hip flexions, knee extensions, knee
flexions, leg presses, parallel squats, bent-knee sit-ups, bench presses,
push-ups, lat pull-downs, and arm curls, and 15 to 20 reps
of each exercise were completed per circuit (45 to 60 per workout).
After 12 weeks, there was no change at all in VO2max, but the resistance
exercisers did improve quadriceps and hamstring strength
dramatically and bolstered endurance time during an intense exercise test by
about 33 per cent (from 26 to 35 minutes). Most
impressively, LT advanced by a full 12 per cent ('Effects of Strength Training
on Lactate Threshold and Endurance Performance,'
Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, vol. 23(6), pp. 739-743, 1991).
Why did the circuits hoist LT upward? The key researcher involved in the study,
Ben Hurley, PhD, theorized that 'resistance training
improved the power of individual muscle cells, so not as many powerful
'fast-twitch' fibres needed to be recruited during exercise'.
Since fast-twitch cells are notorious for producing lactate, their reduced
activation should lead to lower lactate outputs during
exertion and thus a potentially higher lactate threshold.
More...from Peak Performance Online at:
http://www.pponline.co.uk/encyc/0179.htm


13. The wellness fight's home front:
Dr. Kenneth Cooper's McKinney development aims to furnish the best health
insurance of all.
McKINNEY – The statistics cascade from the lips of Dr. Kenneth Cooper: Americans
spent more on health care than any other country, a
staggering $2.04 trillion, or 16 percent of the gross domestic product, in 2005.
Yet life expectancy in the United States is only 24th in the world, at 77.8
years. Ninety percent of American health care dollars
are spent by 30 percent of the population, the elderly.
Too much, too late, says Dr. Cooper. Too much on desperate measures that prolong
dying rather than a healthy life. Dr.. Cooper, the
father of aerobics, believes it's best to spend money up front on disease
prevention and wellness programs and live longer, live
better and, he believes, ultimately spend less on health care.
Dr. Cooper, 75, has been preaching that message all his professional life, and
now he and his son, Tyler, 35, and some business
partners are building a community around the message: Cooper Life, a 57-acre,
700-home development at McKinney's Craig Ranch. The
first home in Cooper Life will be completed next October.
Cooper Life, north of State Highway 121 at Alma, will be almost a theme park for
healthy living. Fitness Town, you could call it, a
community with walking and biking trails leading to the newly opened Cooper
Aerobics Center. The 75,000-square-foot aerobics
facility includes high-tech exercise machines, a gymnasium, a spa, an
Olympic-size swimming pool, studios for spin and Pilates
classes, and a room just for kids where even the video games require that they
exercise.
There are other communities around the United States linked to spas or health
clubs. But what will set Cooper Life apart is its link
to wellness programs and health care.
More...from the Dallas Morning News at:
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/fea/lifetravel/stories/111406DNLIVCO\
OPER.196aae7.html


14. Less is Often Better:
by Kirt West
In the Winter issue of FootNotes, I laid out the case for why most runners will
benefit from doing most of their runs at an easy
pace in the range of 60-75% of maximum heart rate (MHR). This time, I want to
pass on my thoughts regarding other benefits of a
moderate training approach. Many runners are frustrated at their inability to
meet what seem to be reasonable goals, such as
qualifying for the Boston Marathon, breaking 4 hours in the marathon, or running
an 8:00/mi 10K race. They find they cannot match
their training pace at race time. I got into coaching because for years I could
never figure out why my race times were so slow in
comparison to my training times. After I ran into Coach Roy Benson at an RRCA
Convention and learned about his principles of
effort-based training (easier is often better), I began to train smart, with the
result that I then, in my late 40s, achieved all my
personal race record times
The runners who come to me for coaching assistance are often committing at least
one of the following three training errors: 1)
failure to take enough time off; 2) working out too hard and too fast; and 3)
participating in too many marathons I know these
mistakes all too well because I once made them myself.
Fear of Taking Time Off
Many runners operate under the assumption that the harder they work, the faster
they will get. This is true up to a point. As I
pointed out in my last column, running all your workouts above 75% of MHR
actually has diminishing returns and may lead to your
getting slower, not faster. Many runners don't want to back off or even miss a
day, fearing they will lose their fitness level. This
mindset even leads some to try to train through injuries, often resulting in an
aggravation of the injury and, in the end, a much
longer layoff.
Two suggestions may improve your overall training. First, take at least 1 day
off a week from running and all forms of cross
training. As I get older (50+), I find that I need to take a couple of days off
each week. Those days off will give your body a
chance to recover from training and will reduce the likelihood of injury.
Second, at least once a year, cut back on your training for a couple of weeks or
even take the entire 2 weeks off. With only minimal
loss in conditioning, this layoff will not only aid in physical recovery, but
perhaps more importantly, it will provide a mental
break from rigorous training. You can do this even during marathon training. A
couple of years ago, a longtime client ran a marathon
in which he achieved a 10-minute PR in his middle fifties, and qualified for
Boston for the first time. After suffering a minor foot
injury in the summer, he had taken 2 weeks off only 2 ½ months before the
marathon. In all previous marathon training, he had
trained religiously for months with no time off. We both believe that this
forced break in the middle of training was the major
reason for his PR.
Run Your Hard Workouts with Moderation
A common misconception is that interval workouts should be really stressful. In
the same way that many run too hard on their easy
days, many runners also make their speed-work sessions too hard and too long.
Many runners believe that a speed session is not
successful unless you are literally ready to throw up on the track. The truth
is, a more moderate approach lessens a runner's
likelihood of injury
A typical speed session consists of 3x1 mile at 80-85% effort (slightly faster
than 10-mile race pace) with a 400-meter recovery.
This means a 40-minute 10K runner (6:26/mi) would be running a 6:40 mile while a
50-minute 10K runner (8:00) would be running an
8:25 mile. The 20-minute anaerobic threshold run is also undertaken at 80-85%
effort. I limit speed work to approximately 15% of
weekly mileage. This relatively conservative approach means that the runner is
likely to come to the starting line of a race
refreshed and recovered.
The Pitfalls of Too Many Marathons
To my fellow marathoners who run many marathons and want to get faster: I
observe a recurring pattern among folks running two or
three marathons a year combined with many 15- to 20-mile runs between marathons.
Their marathon times do not get faster; on the
contrary they often are slower because they never give their bodies a chance to
recover from one marathon before running the next
one. Moreover, they don't set aside speed-training time because their legs are
too weary from running so many marathons and long
runs. All they accomplish is to teach their bodies to run long and slow.
Experience shows that marathoners actually benefit from taking one or two
seasons off from running marathons in order to concentrate
on anaerobic threshold training and 10K racing to improve their speed. There is
a direct correlation between bringing down your 10K
time and improving your marathon time. I also recommend limiting the long weekly
run to 12-13 miles to avoid the risk of injury from
being leg-weary. Running a 10K requires developing a completely different
mindset from running a marathon. This new mindset helps
marathoners to run their next marathon at a higher level.
Kirt West began as a club coach for the Montgomery County Road Runners Club
(MCRRC) in Maryland, where he served as Vice President,
and is now a private coach for motivated adult runners. Questions for him can be
sent to mailto: mailto:kirtwest@....
Posted with the permission of the Road Runner's Club of America -
http://RRCA.org


15. Gender Differences in Endurance Performance and Training:
This article is long overdue and I apologize to those who were interested in the
topic. To bring up the issue of gender differences
in physical performance may suggest sexism, but that is not my intention.
Historically, there is no doubt that sport has been a
center of faulty assumptions and sexism where female athletes are concerned.
Social issues, and misunderstanding about female
physical and medical limitations (or the presumption of limitations) conspired
to slow the development of female performance for
many years (the marathon for women was only added to the Olympic schedule in
1984! ), but those times are gone, at least among young
athletes. Among master's athletes, we still see greatly reduced participation by
the older female age groups. This participation
difference will no doubt diminish over the next couple of decades. As a result,
performances by the oldest females will probably
improve more rapidly than those of the oldest males, as this new generation of
well trained young female athletes moves into
age-group competition, and are joined by more and more talented "late bloomers."
"Old" Social norms and habits are still having negative consequences on
participation and performance by older (50 +) females.
Modern female athletes have repeatedly demonstrated these norms ("women are not
built to run long distances" blah- blah-blah) are
totally bogus. Currently, teenage daughters are encouraging their formally
sedentary mothers and even grandmothers to take up
exercise. This transfer of knowledge and norms UPSTREAM is the reverse of what
we traditionally see in males (Dad teaching his boy
all he knows). However, this is a transitional period for women in sport, so the
knowledge transfer across generations is helping to
speed the development of women's masters sport.
Having said all that, there ARE some physiological differences between the sexes
that impact performance in females independent of
age. Some years ago, when the marathon was first becoming a competitive event
for women, the rapid improvement in female times led
some to predict that female performances would soon equal those of men in the
marathon. This has not happened, and it won't. The
current world record for women is 2:21, compared to 2:06:50 for the men, a
difference in speed of about 10%. This same 10% gap is
present across the distance running performance spectrum The reason for the
performance gap is not that women don't train as hard as
men. There are some important physiological differences between the sexes that
can't be overlooked or overcome. I want to point out
the most important. Where relevant, I will try to do so in terms of the BIG
THREE Performance adaptations that I have discussed on
the MAPP.
The Maximal Oxygen Consumption
The "typical" young untrained male will have an absolute VO2 max of 3.5
liters/min, while the typical same-age female will be about
2 liters/min. This is a 43% difference! Where does it come from? Well first,
much of the difference is due to the fact that males
are bigger, on average, than females. Us humans are all (sort of) geometrically
similar, so heart size scales in proportion to lean
body size . If we divide VO2 by bodyweight, the difference is diminished (45
ml/min/kg vs 38 ml/min/kg) to 15 to 20%, but not
eliminated. What is the source of this remaining difference?
If we compare average bodyfat in males and females, we find part of the answer.
Young untrained women average about 25% bodyfat
compared to 15% in young men. So, if we factor out body composition differences
by dividing VO2 by lean body mass (Bodyweight minus
estimated fat weight)) the difference in maximal O2 consumption decreases to
perhaps 7-10%. Keep in mind though that this is only a
meaningful exercise on paper. A female athlete cannot expect to improve her
performance by reducing her bodyfat down to the sub 7%
levels that are often observed in elite males. The health consequences for the
female are too severe!
More...from Exercise Physiology for the MAPP at:
http://home.hia.no/~stephens/exphys.htm


16. Triathlon Training - Base Mistakes:
by Coach Matt Russ
A well-designed base training phase is crucial for annual progress, but it is
often taken for granted as the “easy” time of year.
Base is, in fact, the time to address aerobic level fitness, strength, and
technique. To make the most of your base phase, you may
need to dispose of a few myths and rationalizations.
I need a month off. Coming off a peak or an Iron Man race, a good rest is in
order, but total rest is not. Fitness atrophies very
quickly, and 4 weeks off may require up to 8 to 12 weeks to regain the lost
fitness. A transition phase is a much better plan.
This is a time for your body to recover physically and mentally while
maintaining a level of fitness. Some studies have shown
training volume can be reduced by as much as 80%, yet a level of fitness will be
maintained with a well-designed transition phase.
Base=Miles. Training for a distance event such as a marathon or triathlon over
several hours requires a lot of aerobic level miles.
Base training for these events should mean a reduction from peak miles and more
focus on strength, power, and form. Save the long
workouts for the general preparation and race specific phases of training for
these events.
Everyone is in base. Base training is a type of training, not a season.
Although most athletes perform their base training in the
fall and winter, it is not written in stone. In fact, you can return to a
shorter base period later in the season depending on the
structure of your annual training plan. Let your race prioritization dictate
the placement and duration of your base season. Some
athletes do not race well in hot weather and may choose a fall or winter peak.
More...from the Sport Factory at:
http://www.thesportfactory.com/basemistakes.shtml


17. The Science of Carbohydrate Loading:
By David Peterson
A valid connection between hypoglycemia, fatigue and premature termination of
exercise been firmly established and therefore
carbohydrate loading is a proven form of boosting running endurance in prolonged
events lasting more than two hours in duration.
While there are various methods of carbo-loading, the process basically involves
consuming large quantities of carbohydrate-rich
food in order to saturate the body’s carbohydrate stores. It is proposed that
with these increased energy stores, the competitor
will be able to avoid exercise-induced hypoglycemia and continue exercising
longer than if this saturation process had not occurred.
This article aims to further explain how to perform carbohydrate loading and the
reasoning behind its practice.
The human body is able to store carbohydrates for energy use in the liver and
the muscles in the form of a substance known as
glycogen. This carbohydrate store is basically human "starch" and is able to be
quickly broken down to fuel the muscles during high
intensity exercise (muscle glycogen) and to maintain blood glucose levels (liver
glycogen). In the unloaded/non-carbohydrate
saturated state, an untrained individual consuming an average diet (45%
carbohydrate) is able to store approximately 100 grams (g)
of glycogen in the liver, whereas muscle is able to store about 280g.
Remember also that muscle glycogen is committed to be used by muscle and cannot
assist in maintaining blood sugar levels. Therefore
should no additional carbohydrate be ingested during prolonged exercise, the
task of maintaining blood glucose levels rests firmly
on the liver’s glycogen stores and gluconeogenesis (the manufacturing of glucose
from plasma amino acids). Oxidation of blood
glucose at 70-80% VO2 max is about 1.0 g/min or about 60 g/hour. Therefore it
can be predicted that even with full glycogen stores,
a less conditioned athlete’s liver will be depleted of its carbohydrate within
and hour and three quarters of continuous moderate
intensity exercise. (Interestingly, the daily carbohydrate requirements of the
brain and nervous system alone are enough to deplete
the liver glycogen stores within 24 hours.) Once liver glycogen levels begin to
drop and exercise continues the body becomes
increasingly hypoglycemic (low blood sugar) mainly because blood glucose is
depleted faster than it is replaced by gluconeogenesis.
Professor Tim Noakes considers liver glycogen depletion and subsequent
hypoglycemia to be the primary factors affecting fatigue and
performance during extended duration races and especially in instances where
muscle glycogen levels are low as well.
More...from Marathon Training, State of the Art at:
http://www.marathontraining.com/articles/art_39th.htm


18. Clogged Arteries Showing Up in Kids:
Fatty diets, lack of exercise are boosting children's heart risks, study shows.
Children with heart disease risk factors -- obesity, high blood pressure,
diabetes and high cholesterol -- already show indications
of fatty build-up in their arteries that could cause heart attacks when they're
adults, Canadian researchers report.
"Primary prevention of heart disease must start in childhood. We need to start
looking at and treating risk factors for heart
disease in children," researcher Dr. Sanaz Piran, an internal medicine resident
at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ont., said in a
prepared statement.
Piran and her colleagues reviewed data on 3,630 children, ages 5 to 18, who took
part in 26 studies in Australia, Finland, Italy,
the Netherlands, Norway and the United States. Those studies used noninvasive
methods to measure arterial blood flow and the
thickness of artery walls in children with and without heart disease risk
factors.
In many cases, children with heart disease risk factors showed early signs of
atherosclerosis.
The review was expected to presented Sunday at the annual meeting of the
American Heart Association, in Chicago. The findings
highlight the need for parents and doctors to prevent and treat cardiovascular
risk factors in children, the authors said.
"Diet and exercise are especially important to curb the escalating problem of
childhood obesity," Piran said.
More...from Health Scout at:
http://www.healthscout.com/news/1/535980/main.html


19. Natural chemical 'beats morphine' :
The human body produces a natural painkiller several times more potent than
morphine, research suggests.
When given to rats, the chemical, called opiorphin, was able to curb pain at
much lower concentration than the powerful painkiller
morphine.
The French team said their findings could be lead to new pain treatments.
But other scientists were unsure of the significance of the work, which is
published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences.
The researchers isolated the chemical in human saliva, although they believe it
may also be present in other parts of the body.
To study its pain-beating effects, they injected opiorphin into rats, who had
either chemically-induced chronic pain or
mechanically-induced acute pain.
The researchers found injections of one milligram per kilogram (mg/kg) of
opiorphin could suppress the rats' pain to the same extent
as injections of 6mg/kg of morphine, which is used to manage severe pain.
The researchers are not yet certain of the exact mechanism, but they believe
opiorphin may be stopping enkephalins, chemicals found
in the central nervous system that modify the body's response to pain, from
being destroyed.
Possible mechanisms
The researchers now hope to identify the conditions that trigger the release of
the chemical, and lead researcher Professor
Catherine Rougeot, of the Institut Pasteur in Paris, France, said their findings
could potentially lead to new treatments for
treating pain.
More...from the BBC at:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6142842.stm


20. This Week in Running:
10 Years Ago- David Samoei (KEN) defeated an international field at the Hauts
de Seine
(FRA) Marathon, clocking 2:13:35 with three more runners
finishers in the
next six seconds. Igor Sidorenko (UKR) was 2nd in 2:13:38,
Andrey Tarasov
(RUS) placed 3rd in 2:13:40, and Dale Rixon (WAL) was 4th in
2:13:41.
Lidia Panciu (ROM) had a slightly wider lead in winning the
women's race,
her 2:33:22 defeated Valentina Enaki (MDA) with 2:33:35 and
Luminita Talpos
(ROM) at 2:33:52.

20 Years Ago- The IAAF Women's World Road Championships (POR) 15K gold and
silver medals
were won by Aurora Cunha (POR) and Rosa Mota (POR), clocking
48:31 and
48:35 respectively. Cala Beurskens (NED) collected the bronze
medal with
a 48:36. Marty Cooksey (USA) was 4th in 48:41 and Tatyana
Kazankina (RUS)
was 5th in 49:12. Still standing best times for places 4 and 6
thru 9 were
set. Eleven women broke 50 minutes.

30 Years Ago- The International Peace Race (OH/USA) 25K was won by Frank
Shorter (USA)
in 1:17:56 with John Vitale (USA) just one second back. Tom
Fleming (USA)
and Carl Hatfield (USA) followed in 1:18:08 and 1:18:34
respectively.
A 10K companion race was started in 1979 and the 25K was dropped
after the
1988 race. The 10K is still being held.

40 Years Ago- Jim Holden (IRL) lowered the world 30,000m (outdoor track) by 9.2
seconds,
clocking a 1:32:25.4. Graham Taylor (ENG) was 2nd in 1:34:23.6
with Barry
Watson (ENG) 3rd in 1:37:45.2. This record was lowered three
more times by
1982 where it remains today at 1:29:18.8.

50 Years Ago- Nothing of note in the ARRS database.
From The Analytical Distance Runner, the newsletter for the Association of Road
Racing Statisticians with a focus on races, 3000m
and longer, including road, track, and cross-country events.
The ARRS has a website at http://www.arrs.net.


21. Repetitive Strain Injury:
Muscles & Pain - What Happens... Exactly.
Muscles and Joint Pain
Muscles originate on a fixed bone in our body, cross over a joint, and insert
onto a moving bone. It is important to understand that
all muscles move from the insertion point going toward the origination point. It
is because of the placement of the muscles that we
can move, but when a muscle is in spasm, or is contracted we cannot move the
joint it affects without pain.
Just as pulling on the end of your hair will cause you pain in your scalp, so
too will a muscle pulling on the tendon cause pain at
the insertion point on the bone. You can't stop the scalp pain until you let go
of your hair, and you can't stop the joint pain
until you let go of the tension in the muscle.
More...from Julstro at:
http://julstro.com/what_happens_exactly.html


22. Beeps of technology heard among marathon’s throngs:
Once upon a time, pacers were not allowed in the marathon. The winner not only
ran faster than everyone else, he managed his time
better than they did, too.
That’s changed. When Lance Armstrong ran the New York Marathon on Nov. 5, not
one but two human pacers helped him stay on track to
his 2: 59: 36 finish: world-class runners Joan Benoit Samuelson and Alberto
Salazar.
Armstrong also wore Nike + shoes, with sensors made to send data about his pace
to his iPod Nano.
He was hardly the only one in the crowd running with help.
For Conrad Kiffin, running a marathon is like starring in his own personal video
game. Every mile, he sneaks a look at the global
positioning system on his wrist to see whether he’s keeping up with an imaginary
rabbit going at his target pace.
“If I see the pacer running shoes. away from me, I know I have to go harder,”
said Kiffin, 41, a photographer in Manhattan. “It’s
very video-gamey. You are competing against a guy who is not even out there.”
Staying on pace is a hard-won skill for marathoners. Only the best are able to
estimate their speed with nothing more than a
head-to-toe check of how they feel. For those who haven’t honed this sixth
sense, GPS units and heart-rate monitors help them avoid
the 18 th-mile meltdowns that commonly follow too-fast starts.
This is only a glimpse of the electronic gadgets used by marathoners, who not
long ago shunned such devices as a distraction or
somehow impure. At the New York City Marathon on Nov. 5, many of the 37, 000
participants were wired and, in some cases, wireless,
including Paul Kaye, from Cape Town, South Africa, who ran with a cell phone
strapped to an arm; it used software that plays music
and beeps to let him know if he’s on pace.
More... From the Arkansas Democrat Gazette at:
http://www.nwanews.com/adg/Style/172948/


23. 30 Foods for Fitness, Pt. 2: Fruits:
By Molly Krause, Sports Dietitian, and Kyle du Ford.
Last week we started part one of our five-part series 30 Foods for Fitness, a
look at 30 foods that should be on your weekly
shopping list. In part 2, let’s take a look at the best fruits for fitness. That
is, the ones that will give you the most complete
nutrition for your daily demands.
Bananas
Bananas are easy to carry, easy to eat, and are a great fruit to turn to for
energy on a run, bike, or post-workout--their 450+ mg
of potassium helps to stave off muscle cramping. The FDA has approved the claim
that foods high in potassium, which includes the
banana, may reduce the risk of high blood pressure and stroke since this
important electrolyte, along with sodium and chloride from
other sources, keeps the heart functioning smoothly. Furthermore, potassium
decreases the excretion of urinary calcium and can help
protect bones from osteoporosis. In other words it keeps your bones in good
shape.
Serving Size: 1 banana
105 calories, 0.5g. fat, 27g carbohydrate, 1.2g protein
Berries
Berries of all types are some of the best fruits you can eat. The source of
their goodness? Their skin. The anthocyanins
(antioxidant flavanoids) that make raspberries and blueberries their trademark
deep and rich color also help keep blood pressure low
and our eyes in tip-top shape. Berries are also a good source of fiber for a
healthy gastrointestinal system So grab them by the
handful each day or throw some in some cereal for an overall body boost.
Serving size (blueberries): ½ pint
83 calories, <1g fat, 21g carbohydrate, 1g protein
Serving size (strawberries): 1 cup
45 calories, 0.6g fat, 11g carbohydrate, 1g protein
More...from Carmichael Training Systems at:
http://www.trainright.com/info.asp?action=display&uid=4239


24. Testing Times:
Fitness testing is just for the elite, I hear you say. It is certainly the
popular view that only if you’re good enough to make a
living from the sport it is worth paying to find out your true VO2 max and
lactate threshold. However, anyone who is serious about
improving their times should benefit from a visit to a sport scientist to put
their body to the test. For just the price of a pair
of shoes, max test will help you train smarter and run faster...
Put more technically, blood lactate profile testing, as it is often referred to,
will tell you accurately your lactate and anaerobic
threshold levels and your VO2 max. Many know that doing a certain amount of your
training at just or below your anaerobic threshold
can do wonders. Most also know about training at certain heart rate levels.
Whereas most will base these on speeds on the pace from
their last race, fitness testing takes the guesswork out or working out what
your speeds for these various zones are.
What happens during a typical max test?
It is recommended you don’t do any hard training the day before because, as the
term “max test” implies, you’ll be pushing yourself
to the limit. A blood test – via painless pinprick in the ear – is taken before
the start. Then you’ll run on a treadmill for about
four to six three-minute intervals at very sedate levels at fist. During each
30-second period of recovery, a blood sample is taken.
The speed is increased with each interval until you reach a level that is
something like your 5km race pace. Then the recovery is
dispatched with and you run until you feel you can’t go any further, with the
incline on the treadmill increased every minute.
More...from Beat Your PB at:
http://www.beatyourpb.com/running/physiology/article/?i=1031


25. Digest Briefs:
* Gear Review- Cateye Double Wireless
Reviewed by Coach Matt Russ
I have a box full of cycle computers. Granted I may not be the easiest on my
equipment, but I also am willing to make the investment
if I see a new technology I like. The Cateye Double Wireless has a host of
features and is one of the more well thought out cycle
computer designs I have come across. For starters it has a single sensor for
both speed and cadence that is mounted unobtrusively on
the rear chain stay. If you have struggled with duel wireless sensors, as I
have, this in itself is a major improvement. No more
cadence sensors to get knocked around or bulky speed sensors zip tied to the
front fork. It makes you wonder why this design was not
implemented years ago.
The computer unit has three screens and four lines of data. Resetting the
computer can be a real pain until you get the hang of it;
you must push three buttons simultaneously. You can program two bikes into the
computer which is nice since the Cateye costs
substantially more than most cycle computers. The computer can be disconnected
from the cradle easy enough, but you would have to
purchase another sensor unit for easy, two bike use. It mounts relatively
painlessly and has functioned in all weather conditions
(so far). I have not had any problems with interference or weak signals, but I
understand the battery life is not that long. Cateye
should include a variety of spoke magnets though, especially for bladed spokes.
If you use a heart rate monitor to train, this represents another piece of
training equipment you must mount or wear. Cateye does
make a cycle computer / heart rate monitor, but it does not have a cadence
sensor. I am sure it is forthcoming, but a reliable cycle
computer that combines speed, cadence, heart rate data in one unit, and is
uploadable to popular coaching software, will the one I
fully endorse.
From...The Sport Factory at:
http://www.sportfactory.com/
More...from Cateye at:
http://www.cateye.com/en/product_detail/251?PHPSESSID=a9fda9b47737f1271a9ee3e117\
589f43

* Q: Why do my muscles shake involuntarily during certain exercises, especially
abdominal ones? Is this a bad sign (perhaps of
fatigue, weakness in specific muscle groups or poor nutrition)? Or does this
indicate that the muscles are being worked and
strengthened?
A: Good news: That shaking means you're working and strengthening your muscles.
But it's also a sign that the muscle is not
accustomed to the demands you're putting on it, says Dr. Daniel Vigil, director
of sports medicine at Kaiser Permanente Medical
Center in Los Angeles. The trembling indicates "how the muscles grab and release
one other as they lengthen and shorten" during the
exercise, he says. But that action will become smoother, and the shaking will
stop, once the muscles become more used to the
activities you're doing.
Although the shaking isn't dangerous, the fact that you're putting extra demand
on the muscles could result in some soreness the
next day. "The soreness reflects the fact that there's some muscle damage,"
Vigil says, "but when the body repairs it, you come back
fitter and stronger in the end, so it's a good thing."
You may want to drop the intensity a bit until the muscles strengthen, Vigil
says. When doing abdominals, accomplish this by bending
your knees.
Do you have a question about health- or fitness-related topics for the reporters
at The Times? Here's your chance. Questions must be
general in nature, and not all submissions can be answered. Go to
www.latimes.com/healthqa.

* Cramping seemed worse during 'hot' marathon
Q. I just ran the SunTrust Richmond Marathon in probably the worst weather
conditions I have experienced. Usually, warm weather does
not bother me, but that day caused more cramping in my legs than anytime ever.
How could I have prevented this? Also, the day after
the marathon was cold, rainy and windy. Which day would have been worse for
running?
A. Muscle cramping during exercise may have two causes. One is an electrolyte
imbalance caused by sweating. However, blood tests and
studies of marathon runners who were in "full body" cramps did not reveal
significant change from normal in most test subjects. The
other cause of cramping is related to muscle fatigue at the neuro-muscular
junction (the signal to the muscle from the nerves seems
to tire and it results in the cramp).
In your case, like many others that day, I believe both factors played a part in
muscle cramps. The heat, humidity and effort/time
of racing probably played major roles in this common problem of marathon
running. To help prevent cramping, try to train in the
conditions expected on race day (not likely that day unless you had been living
in Florida for a month) and get proper nutrition and
hydration before the race.
I believe the day after the marathon would have been a much worse day to run, at
least from a medical standpoint. The cold, wet and
windy conditions could have caused significant hypothermia (low body
temperature) in many runners. The amount of heat lost in those
conditions is tremendous. Care for those runners with hypothermia can be more of
a challenge than for those with hyperthermia. The
extremes of both problems can be life-threatening. The opposite weather patterns
seen this past weekend would have been a test for
any runner and, luckily, the vast majority were successful in the heat Saturday.
Dr. Doug Cutter is director of the Sports Medicine Center at CJW Medical Center
(Chippenham). Look for his column on the third
Wednesday of each month. Contact him at mailto:douglas.cutter@...
or c/o Balance, Richmond Times-Dispatch, P.O. Box
85333, Richmond, VA 23293.


THIS WEEK'S FEATURED EVENTS:
*Please verify event dates with the event websites*
Check the Runner's Web FrontPage for links to the race sites.

November 18, 2006:
JFK 50 Miler - Washington County, Maryland

November 18 - 19, 2006:
American National 24 Hour Championships, Grapevine, TX

November 19, 2006:
ITU Long Distance Triathlon World Championships - Canberra, AUS

Philadelphia Marathon - PA

Tokyo International Marathon - Japan

Tulsa World Route 66 Marathon - Tulsa, OK

November 23, 2006:
Manchester Road Race - CT

EVENT PREVIEW:
2007:

January 19-21, 2007:
Mark Allen Triathlon Clinic

June 23, 2007:
Emilie's Run - The Emilie Mondor Memorial 5K Race for Women - Ottawa, ON
http://www.emiliesrun.com


For more complete race listings check out our Upcoming Races, and Calendars.
Check the Runner's Web on Sunday and Monday for race reports on these events at:
http://www.runnersweb.com/

For Triathlon Coverage check out The Sports Network at:
http://www2.sportsnet.ca/tvschedule/tvsked_sport.php?region=ONTARIO&schedule_id=\
25

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Have a good week of training and/or racing.

Ken Parker
Runner's Web
mailto: webmaster@...
http://www.runnersweb.com/running.html
A running and triathlon resource portal
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RUNNER'S WEB AFFILIATE PROGRAMS:
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All revenue from advertisers and affiliate programs goes into the support of
running and triathlon through sponsorship of events,
teams, clinics and fund raising programs for Canada's Olympic athletes.

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TrainingPeaks.com by Wes Hobson.
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Triathlon Meetup
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If you have an accident while running or cycling, do you want your family to be
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If so, make this cool item part of your gear -- for safety and peace of mind.
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The Stretching Handbook:
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The Stretching Video in a DVD version. With the DVD version you're able to use
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* Go directly to a specific stretch;
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Buy the DVD at:
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.htm


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