tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-45927993897897486562024-02-18T22:49:20.617-05:00Lion or Gazelle: Once (and Always) A RunnerLion or Gazelle: Once (and Always) A Runner"a brief compendium on nearly everything"http://www.blogger.com/profile/15684863895906892463noreply@blogger.comBlogger171125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4592799389789748656.post-71610064050429051532014-05-29T19:24:00.004-04:002014-05-30T06:19:47.016-04:00Walk Like a Man (FAI Hip Surgery Part 5)Mark this down: May 27, 2014: surgeon gives (wait for it) the "green light"!!<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">no, this is not me - this kid is faster & stronger </td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">this is also not me - but, I now can, "Walk Tall"</td></tr>
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So - this week, I saw my surgeon for the requisite 7 week follow up to find out when I can start "weight bearing" on my right leg; it has not escaped the more "vocal" [read "old man cantankerous"] that I may in fact reference my rather intense dislike of the death sticks a bit much.<br />
Tough. I hate them.<br />
Anyway...my (most excellent) surgeon Dr Iyeni indicated all is going swimmingly, and then directed me to "walk" - I actually asked him "what?" as he and I had talked about possibly weigh bearing after 6-8 weeks, but I wasn't ready for full on, no-crutches-to-lean-on, walking with no "transition" - he looked at me like I was an idiot [sadly a look I am all too familiar with from most people] and so he repeated it, this time more emphatically: "WALK".<br />
You would think it would be easy to just "walk", especially when you have been thinking of this moment for 7 weeks. 7. LONG. WEEKS. (*Dad - that was for you - hahaha).<br />
In fact, I was kinda nervous to put put weight on my right leg so I just stood there in the middle of the exam room [see, above: "idiot"] - and then tried to walk.<br />
It wan't pretty - but I took 1, then 2, baby steps before I had to grab the exam table as I was about to keel over.<br />
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(**this is how I felt walking, stumbling, then walking again. Then nearly falling. Then getting up and walking. 'cause that is how we roll.)<br />
<br />
Anyway - Dr I was pleased. Like a new father watching his first born walk for the first time, he smiled - no, he positively <i>beamed</i> - beautifically...ok, fine, that is wayyy too overly dramatic, but whatever - it was cool.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">yes, I am alive and walking</td></tr>
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Dr I said keep at and I should be able to walk <i>sans </i>death sticks in 1-2 weeks. Loose 1 in a week, then the other in 2, and maybe even skip the "cane phase". Booyaa.<br />
But - he scolded that I can't even think of running - and even then only 1 min max to start - until July at the earliest; no flip turns in the pool until mid July; and no hills on the bike until July either.<br />
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Whatever - I can walk...like a man, or as Kendi says, like a BOSS MAN.<br />
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See ya on the roads - in July<br />
Mellow Johnny<br />
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ps - go 'Hawks!!"a brief compendium on nearly everything"http://www.blogger.com/profile/15684863895906892463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4592799389789748656.post-91911537523453979722014-05-26T21:44:00.001-04:002014-05-29T19:28:49.000-04:00Race Report: Run for the Spring Wardrobe (FAI Hip Surgery Part 4)So, week 6 on the death sticks - and it is Spring (finally).<br />
One thing I have noticed since before my surgery in mid April, sadly, has been a massive loss of any sense of time: viz [which is Latin for "namely" - I have to justify my law degree on occasion], I went into the hospital on blustery rainy, winter day and suddenly it is late May - and sunny/warm/green and 28 degrees C.<br />
And so I never got to wear my "Spring wardrobe" [ya, that sounds kinda fey even to me]; I noticed last weekend that all my running gear is laid out for winter/spring training & racing: gloves, hats, buffs, tights, jackets, etc. And yet, if I was suddenly allowed to start running tomorrow, I could easily head out in shorts/singlet/and yes, my trusty visor - alas, I am not yet running, so the idea is somewhat academic.<br />
But, as usual, I digress.<br />
<br />
I have been hard at rehab/recovery since the (external) stitches came out last month - swimming 3-4 days a week, water running, rehab exercises in the deep end of the pool, physio, chillaxing...<br />
But the most fun [kidding] has been my twice daily spins on my(road) bike - on my indoor Computrainer.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">you should always ride with a helmet</td></tr>
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Let me begin by noting I have never had such a sore butt in my life, as unlike riding outside, on the trainer, you don't move much, especially when ordered by your surgeon too not "screw" up all his incredibly delicate surgical mastery; I was told, emphatically, "not to walk / run / put your right leg on the ground at all or on your bike pedals with any pressure (and while I have valiantly attempted to follow that edict, I have, on occasion, slipped into near-full-on pedalling) or you will tear out your anchors.Tear. Out. Your. Anchors."<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">one of six new anchors screwed into my hip</td></tr>
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And so when riding, all your weight is on your butt as it sits on one spot on a saddle that is 5/8" at its widest, for the entire ride - until you cry, like an aging boxer, "no mas" (shout out to Nurse Ratched in Barthelona!). Upon reflection, if I had been blessed with a more bountiful booty [<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reTx5sqvVJ4">I Like big Butts - not mine though...</a>] instead of the ratty bony ass I have, maybe this wouldn't be such an ordeal.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">not Johnny's butt</td></tr>
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So for the most part, my daily indoor trainer rides have been, pun intended, pedestrian: my wattage has crescendoed on most days at a massive 100 watts (to put this in perspective: <a href="http://www.teamsky.com/article/0,27290,30668_9319882,00.html">Team Sky's Ian Boswell: power readings from Tour of California (last week)</a> where Boswell cracked out <b>388 watts</b> on the last recorded stage. Ya, I realize I am, and remain, a punter.<br />
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<i>this is how I feel riding on my trainer</i><br />
<br />
Given that while I had entered but was forced to miss all the Spring road racing, like: the famous Sporting life 10km (with a major shout out to my friend and race director Cory F who put together a fantastic race this year!!); Goodlife Marathon, where I was to head out on the 5km; and John Salt's awesome <a href="http://www.multisportcanada.com/">Multisport Canada</a> triathlon series, with the season opener in Woodstock this past weekend - I was seriously bummed about not only not being able to race, but missing out on all the comradarie of seeing all the old boys/gals I race with every Spring/Summer.<br />
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However....and yes, there is a point to this blog today - I did want, in the recent tradition of all modern racers, to update you with a blog piece about the epic event I was able to take part in last weekend, here in Toronto: the <u>1st Annual Run for the Spring Wardrobe</u>.<br />
This heretofore previously unheralded event is actually a Spring Classic, one which many taken part in - without even possibly realizing it.<br />
So here is a recap of the 2 day, multi-stage event:<br />
DAY 1: The Hipster 3 Miler<br />
The day began with me laying out all my gear: Crutches? Check. Dark sunglasses to avoid the sun (and eye contact with any bearded urban hipsters)? Check. Water bottle rigged on crutches for continuos hydration - and safety spraying of said bearded urban hipsters when they get within my drafting zone of 7 meters? Check. Massively expensive hip brace? Check. Spare Oxy? Nope - what if I do well and there is drug testing after...? How do you spell "Lance".<br />
At 1pm my trusty driver took me to the race start at Bathurst and Queen, where we found a great spot to set up - race conditions, however, were dicey with the possibility of rain, but, what are we athletes if not tough and ready for anything? And before I knew it, Day 1 was on! We walked/crutched thru probably every single boutique/shoe store/designer store/purse store/shoe store/ on Queen West...EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. While this was not an Ironman distance event, it certainly felt like it could be a long, tough day.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlwInYRTXsPfYvV0BcRyO5-2Sqmn367EtnzOYrBBMVYTTQSs16WKWwhH2CSqjmFgM3P3Beq_eI_s85wbWQoboes-oANjrExO9_yjYZ1R6s6I5i26PxfLd1F4fG_wORdoVcDokpbn0i6wI/s1600/images.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlwInYRTXsPfYvV0BcRyO5-2Sqmn367EtnzOYrBBMVYTTQSs16WKWwhH2CSqjmFgM3P3Beq_eI_s85wbWQoboes-oANjrExO9_yjYZ1R6s6I5i26PxfLd1F4fG_wORdoVcDokpbn0i6wI/s1600/images.jpeg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I am a dead man</td></tr>
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Moving on crutches thru the (Saturday) crowds was remarkably similar to weaving thru the wave starts in an Ironman swim / bike - it required speed, dexterity, poise, patience and most of all, cunning strength. But I had brought my "A" game for Day 1, and aside from a few hiccups - stumbling on curbs, wicked sore hands from 3 hrs on the death sticks, and, being polite in the face of repeated "oh my God - what did you do???" I finished the day strong but a little weary - and Nurse Ratched was likewise thrilled with her results.<br />
DAY 2: The Suburban Mall Indoor Meet<br />
Like Bill Murray in "Groundhog Day", Day 2 was eerily similar to Day 1 - with the exception that today's event was an indoor meet, taking part in the august halls of that athletic colossus, "Yorkdale".<br />
Needless to say the day unfolded remarkably like Day 1 [reference: Groundhog Day"]. To be honest, I have little memory of what unfolded on Day 2, as I was fading hard after 3 hours - but I dug deep and managed to pull off, yet again, a really strong finish. Thankfully I kept an eye on nutrition and hydration and with a brief stop to take in a gel, and some 'tater tots I had in my pocket, we were good to go.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3MNbx3gLdD86QcN3asWQwTYUnRYF0dM7qN5FNfBDXCRH-V_yRVauTGjoXZLlSOsEd-ffNRUWYceHaFx9WwH3v1VqF1du9hDZg1acz_hAMBlkkQyfaDuhBo5bur0sh1Yj6UgkGtrHxPB0/s1600/bestbuys_lead_t658.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3MNbx3gLdD86QcN3asWQwTYUnRYF0dM7qN5FNfBDXCRH-V_yRVauTGjoXZLlSOsEd-ffNRUWYceHaFx9WwH3v1VqF1du9hDZg1acz_hAMBlkkQyfaDuhBo5bur0sh1Yj6UgkGtrHxPB0/s1600/bestbuys_lead_t658.jpg" height="174" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">race ready nutrition</td></tr>
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So, there it is: the Spring Classic "Run for the wardrobe" is sure to be an annual event, and yet surprisingly similar in scope and effort to those other seasonal Classics: the Summer, then Fall, then Winter "RFTSW".<br />
All Classics - all the time. Every year.<br />
And I wouldn't have it any other way.<br />
:)<br />
<br />
Can you tell I really, really need to get off these crutches?<br />
See ya out there shopping<br />
Mellow Johhny<br />
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"a brief compendium on nearly everything"http://www.blogger.com/profile/15684863895906892463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4592799389789748656.post-70142524926274285682014-05-01T18:42:00.001-04:002014-05-01T21:46:53.823-04:00FAI Hip Surgery - F.U. CrutchesPardon my little tirade this time around: I just want to put it out there - I truly dislike* using crutches.<br />
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*translation: I FREAKING HATE CRUTCHES.<br />
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I am not going to sugarcoat it: Week 2 and 3 post surgery, on crutches, has so far <u><b>sucked</b></u>.<br />
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No other way to describe it.</div>
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Your arms constantly hurt, you can't carry anything like a plate or bowl [wtf? no ice cream?! I thought the whole point of surgery recovery was to eat whatever the hell I wanted!]; don't even get me started on 4am trips to the bathroom to pee (it is like organizing a trip to Everest, all the pre planning you have to).</div>
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Stairs? F.U. stairs. Going up 2 flights of stairs on crutches is sysiphysian at best, and "cruel & unusual punishment" at worst. You make it half way and realize, "damn it, I still have 1 more flight". If this doesn't set me up for some wicked triceps, well, I don't know what will [and for those that have seen my "pre-surgery" bi/triceps, I need ALL the help I can get].</div>
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And going downstairs? Simply put - you have four options (well, there are in fact "5", if you count falling, but let's not go there):</div>
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1. use the crutches - doable, but on carpet, fraught with peril, not too mention awkward.</div>
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2. hop on good leg [in this case, my Left] - again, awkward, and puts a massive load on the L hip, which is also not good - and it is just generally stupid looking hopping down the stairs</div>
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3. finally, dropping with an extreme lack of elegance and grace onto your ass and "bumming" down the stairs.</div>
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4. there is an option "4" - wherein Nurse Ratchet stands behind you, kindly offering to "help" you down the stairs. Note to self: never, ever, ever allow this to happen (see "possibility 5" above).</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjD426oU4C_RVGjhVDLEwGs0gOcZfOm7IfJWDfmJGwet-jAdvWMBIOZ2YRw-wrUEUX1Wk0_rt66sCEz6mTDd24e32HG_RTKp7i9saO99OsU-tnbB6g_dTfefkcFdHTPlHnCAbXZDAvMcIE/s1600/1342619077924_478136.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjD426oU4C_RVGjhVDLEwGs0gOcZfOm7IfJWDfmJGwet-jAdvWMBIOZ2YRw-wrUEUX1Wk0_rt66sCEz6mTDd24e32HG_RTKp7i9saO99OsU-tnbB6g_dTfefkcFdHTPlHnCAbXZDAvMcIE/s1600/1342619077924_478136.png" height="224" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Nurse Ratched</td></tr>
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Then of course there is that phrase every man fears from his wife (worse than "do you want to go shoe shopping in Yorkville with me?")(or, "which shoes/scarf/necklace/earrings/ etc...go with this suit?"): "let's go for a walk". So after taking at least 15 minutes to get ready (me, not Nurse R), out you venture for 2 blocks, maybe 3, at which point I'm so friggin' tired - which, given my quasi athletic background, is not only humiliating but downright emabarrasing - especially because when you arrive at said destination of the walk, not only do you have to turn around and head <i>back</i> 2-3 blocks, but, you have more stairs. (And speaking of "stairs"...let's talk about the "stares" you get from people in the neighbourhood - the ones that say "Oh my, is that our neighbour from up (or down) the street? Well, it's his own fault; for goodness sake, all that man does is swim and ride his bike and run - what did he <i>expect </i>at <i>his age</i>. And his poor wife - she must have to <i>everything</i> for him". News flash - I want to punch those people in the face, but of course I can't, because I need both hands to hold my damned crutches. But I know who they are and I will remember, oh yes, I shall - and revenge is a dish best served off crutches).<br />
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When I do take a break (pun intended) from the death sticks, I end up standing entirely on my Left leg - and while I have mastered the zen-like mastery of balance, it has become tiresome to say the least (laugh now, my friend: you try, for example, shaving and then showering and then towelling off - all one one leg. My left ass cheek is so ripped I look like a Brazilian stripper with a half butt implant). And if one more person calls me "Peg" - see above for retribution.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Rw4lmruTKFY/U2LvD5LBdgI/AAAAAAAABIE/WsO4rGG7uDg/s1600/images-5.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Rw4lmruTKFY/U2LvD5LBdgI/AAAAAAAABIE/WsO4rGG7uDg/s1600/images-5.jpeg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">what I<i> think </i>I look like</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhr1YG8WLgY-87EgJIdeZitt0BbK7y9D5ZZ2crBfj-WxhyphenhyphenoLJ9hmUTPqFcR9_QNx3HcWTnbaWCQojPtHmpr7jq1FwSOnc6rdK9AKJ88HmFeKQTT-rYm5mFhZGJwq0jpZCk5vYQbpf7B8SU/s1600/images-4.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhr1YG8WLgY-87EgJIdeZitt0BbK7y9D5ZZ2crBfj-WxhyphenhyphenoLJ9hmUTPqFcR9_QNx3HcWTnbaWCQojPtHmpr7jq1FwSOnc6rdK9AKJ88HmFeKQTT-rYm5mFhZGJwq0jpZCk5vYQbpf7B8SU/s1600/images-4.jpeg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">what I <i>actually </i>look like</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZkhd0amHcSOp6u86tuIqkNaQEyKK1j3WTEwzscqfCpQdx92wQIOU5RhLDmETMaXUF84BZGSWv2Ql-rp_R-ztU-OLLzCEOxXtirNLcz1HpB-VkMv6SM2ckDVgFT_gxH3XmdTdzZmpx2bU/s1600/sb10067692g-001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZkhd0amHcSOp6u86tuIqkNaQEyKK1j3WTEwzscqfCpQdx92wQIOU5RhLDmETMaXUF84BZGSWv2Ql-rp_R-ztU-OLLzCEOxXtirNLcz1HpB-VkMv6SM2ckDVgFT_gxH3XmdTdzZmpx2bU/s1600/sb10067692g-001.jpg" height="320" width="213" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">ok, fine:<i> this</i> is what I actually look like</td></tr>
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My last comment - for now: I had my first post op meeting with my surgeon this week. Good news: the new X-rays looked clean, so going forward looks promising. Bad news? 6 more weeks (6 -SIX - MORE. FREAKING. WEEKS!!!) on the crutches - no weight bearing on my leg at all, which means, in no particular order: no touching my foot down, no walking, no driving, no riding any bikes outside, no kicking ass of the neighbours who openly mock my poorly executed "crutch walk" etc. And of course that ultimately means no (quality) racing this summer. Hell, even Nurse Ratched will be faster. Merde.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSAxNSk2rDMYIT2JZpn-NRKEqmdiT9swgk7cdm8vVBSonzDITzKEBugVcaV0sONinAw0R1FhmgwtCRdjUJJ4srXDiPNVwQbQ93qALBYoyjDjCpF6bPgBx1H88pdF82hUdng_IaWKtWCM4/s1600/Unknown.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSAxNSk2rDMYIT2JZpn-NRKEqmdiT9swgk7cdm8vVBSonzDITzKEBugVcaV0sONinAw0R1FhmgwtCRdjUJJ4srXDiPNVwQbQ93qALBYoyjDjCpF6bPgBx1H88pdF82hUdng_IaWKtWCM4/s1600/Unknown.jpeg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small; text-align: start;">Oh well, could be worse. Wait, no, it couldn't.</span></td></tr>
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I can't wait for week 4.</div>
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see ya on the roads. Actually, I won't - but, whatever.</div>
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Mellow Johnny</div>
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"a brief compendium on nearly everything"http://www.blogger.com/profile/15684863895906892463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4592799389789748656.post-15699663988883470832014-04-15T08:38:00.001-04:002014-04-15T08:55:48.229-04:00FAI Hip Surgery - Day 1<div style="color: #37404e;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As Kurt Vonnegut once wrote, “so it goes”…</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">yesterday I had my (very long awaited and much needed) surgery on my Right hip for "FAI" [femoral acetubalur impingement] work:</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span><a href="http://bonepit.com/Lectures/Femoral%20Acetabular%20Impingement%20Darren%20Buono.pdf">great overview of FAI </a></span></div>
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<span style="color: #37404e; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">The nature of the injury/impingement etc is well chronicled in my previous Blog postings, and, there is a mass of information online (see link above) - so I won’t bore you with technical </span>sets<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">. A good start is here: <a href="http://www.bryankellymd.com/fai-movie.html">FAI movie - a blockbuster of hipster proportions!</a></span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Suffice it to say, I was finding my race performances really going downhill and even the every day routine aspects of life were becoming unbearable [don’t even ask about sitting - hated that the most] so I was thrilled - and anxious - when i got the confirmation of surgery scheduled for April 14. Having been on the wait list for over 1.5 years, I was more than ready for this.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhE8Hqn3JHzVDPBMiWpPs2Xgh8zK6vL3c64DdQrNoKLTOk00xkLParjw9vCHGz2edm2kOAkXNRaYvzMTrmxd2VbZu0PLSDeQOM4s93sr6VPb35w0u6CRX0ulAcxepAsMVXpMq1yigA1cNI/s1600/nurse-ratched-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhE8Hqn3JHzVDPBMiWpPs2Xgh8zK6vL3c64DdQrNoKLTOk00xkLParjw9vCHGz2edm2kOAkXNRaYvzMTrmxd2VbZu0PLSDeQOM4s93sr6VPb35w0u6CRX0ulAcxepAsMVXpMq1yigA1cNI/s1600/nurse-ratched-1.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Johnny's worst nightmare </span></td></tr>
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<span style="color: #37404e; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">*NB: Nurse Ratched and I just got home from McMaster Hospital, and as I am on major drugs (who knew how great Percs are? </span><span style="color: #37404e; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">hahaha) </span><span style="color: #37404e; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">, I can't be held accountable for anything I write here.</span><br />
<span style="color: #37404e; letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">However, in a moment of rare brevity, here is a quick post surgery update:</span></span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisANql-xc2aAGXzTeEPAzK3gvMkvzOcP86hGX4E93K-tJzPLF6adqjYQu-ii_KZfwbN1CfNldaxEz0GgSvBePGHK8mUFtNL41XW1hZE6RdKlxRfyBy_ljv9f5thnoNZONi0Q2OFSHt49Q/s1600/Photo+Feb+23,+2014,+4_35+PM.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisANql-xc2aAGXzTeEPAzK3gvMkvzOcP86hGX4E93K-tJzPLF6adqjYQu-ii_KZfwbN1CfNldaxEz0GgSvBePGHK8mUFtNL41XW1hZE6RdKlxRfyBy_ljv9f5thnoNZONi0Q2OFSHt49Q/s1600/Photo+Feb+23,+2014,+4_35+PM.jpg" height="179" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">my poor messed up hip</td></tr>
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<span style="color: #37404e; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">Overall, the surgery went well - I was scheduled 1st up at 8am; had to be there at 6am - </span><span style="color: #37404e; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">which was fine for me [got used to to those early morning swim practices]. </span><span style="color: #37404e; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">Nurse Ratched, however, did not dig that 5am drive!</span><br />
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<span style="color: #37404e; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">“Check in” was effortless - met with both my surgeon, Dr Ayeni [AWESOME o</span>rthopaedic<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> surgeon - can't recommend him enough] and the anesthesiologist - both took me thru the surgical protocol and expected procedure.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">My R hip was marked in marker - no surgical “oops - wrong leg” problems therefore!</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">Surgery time was just over 2.5 hours; however, the surgeon said my hip was wayyyyy more messed up then he was expecting to find; once he dislocated the femur head from the hip socket [NOT FUN!], he found 3 major issues he wasn't expecting:</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">1. Nearly 70 percent of my labrum was shredded - 2 yrs ago on the MRI It was only (“only” - hahaa!) 15 percent torn - I guess I sorta over did it the last year; at least that explains why racing all season on the indoor track hurt so much. I also had much more detached cartilage then expected as well.</span></span></div>
<span style="color: #37404e; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">2. Dr A also had to do a “</span>micro fracture<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">” <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microfracture_surgery">[overview of Microfracture surgery]</a></span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">in the acetabulum (as the cartilage was so thin, he could see some bone = arthritis) which basically involved drilling several holes into the acetabulum, letting it bleed into the socket; the blood clots and forms a scab that is made up of similar cartilage material as acetabulum = regrowth of cartilage. ta da!! In order for full recovery and stability, Dr A set 3 (4? can't recall) internal "anchors" which are screws holding my acetabulum together. Nice new hardware.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">3. the "cam" and "pincer" impingements were pretty pronounced as well - requiring some significant shaving of the femoral head.</span></span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-CZNUTGnXtMi0abxhFl3lfCbWNAdZFJ7-9jH1gHu6MRAOZTZ9TcvoxoeE28SGII7zdSyzOHugDaxpcaTPlu6i6crMA0rILK5qI2-pWuzpJ6VM-A43pP1_4NoAj8AFW5oiwOU1lOk_tlE/s1600/fais.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-CZNUTGnXtMi0abxhFl3lfCbWNAdZFJ7-9jH1gHu6MRAOZTZ9TcvoxoeE28SGII7zdSyzOHugDaxpcaTPlu6i6crMA0rILK5qI2-pWuzpJ6VM-A43pP1_4NoAj8AFW5oiwOU1lOk_tlE/s1600/fais.jpg" height="247" width="320" /></span></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #37404e; letter-spacing: 0px;">(Dr A told me after the surgery that with my hip the way he found it, he couldn't believe I had been racing tris etc, let alone at the competitive level, for the last year - he just shook his head and muttered "</span><span style="color: #37404e;">athletes". Nurse Ratched just rolled her eyes and gave me the "look", the one all husband's fear).</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After my close shave, I was popped over to post op recovery, drugged up, and then the nurses noticed significant bleeding thru my bandages/surgical dressing. So, they called the surgeon who sent his resident - and they had to redo my post op dressings as I continued to bleed like a stuffed pig. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Fun times today.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Overall, I have a lot of stitches and the 3 or 4 internal "anchors" which are holding my acetabulum together - they have to stay in for 2 yrs. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And so now instead a few days "non weight bearing" (not putting my right foot down on the ground) - it was at first indication going to be 2-3 weeks.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Now, however, much to my major disappointment, it looks like recovery from FAI surgery which, like mine, involves the “micro fracture” procedure, I likely have to be non weight bearing for [wait for it…] 8 weeks or more.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Damn. So much for a quick return to racing this summer.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The one upside of all this is…wait, there is no upside, at least not today.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">My hip and adductors etc feel like they have been dislocated and shaved down and screws imbedded into my femoral head [which is sorta exactly what happened]. But, and this is the last cliche for today, “that which does not kill you, makes you stronger”.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">However: just so we're clear: I'm still gonna kick ass at the Tri World's in Edmonton this August!! (ok, probably not, but I can dream, right?).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">still a hipster</span></span></div>
<span style="color: #37404e; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">Mellow Johnny</span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">ps: a truly special thanks to Nurse Ratched - couldn't have done this without here. I owe you one.</span></div>
"a brief compendium on nearly everything"http://www.blogger.com/profile/15684863895906892463noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4592799389789748656.post-11509268215954216572014-02-05T20:45:00.000-05:002014-02-05T21:01:44.944-05:0012 Dreadmill Myths... Busted!<h1 class="title" id="page-title" itemprop="headline" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 32px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 34px; margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px;">As it turns out, the "1% incline rule" isn't the only one that's baloney.</span></h1>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 14.999999046325684px;">Do you adjust your treadmill's incline to 1% or 2%, to better mimic the effects of road running? If so, stop it <u>immediately</u>, because that whole notion is bunk and you're only making yourself look foolish. Honestly, I'm sort of embarrassed for you.</span></div>
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This is the takeaway from a blog post published recently by a notable biomechanist named Casey Kerrigan. Basically, the "1% incline rule is BUNK, which means <span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 14.999999046325684px;">you're probably feeling pretty dumb right about now. Nobody likes to learn that he's been following a bogus rule for years: Go read this: </span><a href="http://www.runnersworld.com/treadmills/biomechanics-expert-debunks-treadmill-running-myths?cm_mmc=Facebook-_-RunnersWorld-_-Content-News-_-DebunkingMillMyths" style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 14.999999046325684px;">No need to raise the treadmill to 1% unles you run fast...</a></div>
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So, I hope you're sitting down. Because there's more where that came from. I have done some further investigating, and it turns out that we've all been buying into lots of “treadmill truths” that are, to borrow a word from Ms. Kerrigan, "garbage."</div>
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Here are 12 of the most shocking.</div>
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<span style="font-weight: 700;">1. If you have sex on a moving treadmill, you can’t get pregnant: MYTH.</span> You can, and probably will. Trust me on this one. </div>
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<span style="font-weight: 700;">2. The “Calories Burned” figure is accurate: MYTH.</span> Your treadmill is lying to you. It also doesn’t really think you look “terrific” in that outfit. You should hear what it says to the other treadmills, after you’ve gone.</div>
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<span style="font-weight: 700;">3. The Eskimos have 100 words for “treadmill”: MYTH.</span> They have one word. It’s “treadmill.”</div>
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<span style="font-weight: 700;">4. Calling the treadmill the “dreadmill” is clever: MYTH.</span> It’s not. Stop it.</div>
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<span style="font-weight: 700;">5. The guy next to you doesn’t know that you're looking at his treadmill’s display, because you’re doing it all cool-like: MYTH.</span> He knows, and honestly he's sort of embarrassed for you.</div>
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<span style="font-weight: 700;">6. Grasping the bar on the front of your treadmill, making a “revving” motion with your right hand, and saying “Vroom! Vroom!” isn’t cool: MYTH.</span> It’s the coolest.</div>
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<span style="font-weight: 700;">7. In the southern hemisphere, treadmills run in the opposite direction: MYTH.</span> Treadmills run counterclockwise no matter where they are.</div>
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<span style="font-weight: 700;">8. By law, treadmills must be a dull gray or black color: MYTH.</span>There’s no reason your treadmill can’t be a brilliant yellow, blue, or pink. Just be sure to paint it when the trainers aren’t looking.</div>
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<span style="font-weight: 700;">9. Falling on a treadmill is dangerous: MYTH.</span> Falling on a treadmill is <em>hilarious</em>, as <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRyrcpe74Yg" style="color: #202f5b;" target="_blank">George Jetson</a> and any number of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMgdRJhlx7c" style="color: #202f5b;" target="_blank">YouTube videos</a> demonstrate.</div>
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<span style="font-weight: 700;">10. If you enter your PIN in reverse, a treadmill will summon the police: MYTH. </span>That’s for ATMs, not treadmills. And even for ATMs <a href="http://www.snopes.com/business/bank/pinalert.asp" style="color: #202f5b;" target="_blank">it’s a myth</a>.</div>
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<span style="font-weight: 700;">11. The young woman on the adjacent treadmill is totally into you: MYTH.</span> Not. As if.</div>
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<span style="font-weight: 700;">12. People smile while using treadmills: MYTH. </span>That happens only <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=treadmill+stock+photo&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=HpzxUq6wLYTMsQTo14H4Bw&ved=0CAkQ_AUoAQ&biw=1152&bih=558" style="color: #202f5b;" target="_blank">in stock photos</a>.</div>
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see ya on the roads -<br />
ok, I'm lying: this freakin' "polar vortex" and all this snow lately has ruined running outside. so see ya on the dreadmill. oh, wait, see #4 above. darn.</div>
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"a brief compendium on nearly everything"http://www.blogger.com/profile/15684863895906892463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4592799389789748656.post-87329224472445792252014-01-29T13:37:00.000-05:002014-01-29T14:11:02.256-05:00Do Asthma Inhalers Make You Faster?<br />
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A<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">s most of you may - or may not? - know, I race with asthma, and am also part of "Team Asthma" here in Toronto: <a href="http://www.asthma.ca/teamasthma/blog/"><span class="s1">TEAM ASTHMA BLOG</span></a>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">I admit I am not very diligent at using my inhalers properly, but lately, especially with the epic cold spell ["f u, polar vortex"], I have been had to use them in order to stay healthy. I actually need the bloody thing - just last week, in the middle of a heinously difficult swim set at the pool, I ended up on the side of the pool barely able to get a breath down, and without the puffer I carry with me, that could have been ugly..</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Anyway, last week before my 3000m race on the indoor track, I took a couple of puffs as per my doctor's directions - only to have a guy beside comment "hey - isn't that cheating...?".</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">My first reaction was:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"> But, all I said was "Ya, 'cause I really feel the need to suck back meds in order to take the massive - MASSIVE! - cash prize at the end of the race". Oh, wait - there is NOTHING awarded at these races (and for what it is worth, regardless of what is on the line at each race, aside from hoping to race my best...I WOULD NEVER USE A PED!! Maybe a little blue pill when I am old and grey but that is a different blog - haha). </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">But his comment did get me thinking about whether people actually understand what an "asthma puffer" does, or, does not do. So, to that end, I write this blog for the guy whose snarky aside left me, pardon the pun, huffing and puffing:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Q: Will using an asthma inhaler make you a better athlete? Some athletes believe the answer is yes — but science says no.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">The asthma medications of interest in terms of performance are the bronchodilators (such as salbutamol, albuterol and formoterol), which open closed airways and relieve the symptoms of asthma, including shortness of breath and wheezing. However, some athletes obtain bronchodilators for off-label use, believing the medications will further relax the muscle linings of their healthy lungs and provide an advantage over other competitors.Such logic is fallible, says Dr. Michael Koehle, a sports medicine researcher with the University of British Columbia. In a <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24100289"><span class="s2">2012 study</span></a> performed by Koehle’s team, cyclists were given either salbutamol or a placebo inhaler before performing two 10-kilometer time trials. Though lung function did improve in the salbutamol group, it did not have any effect on time trial performance.“Numerous studies from a variety of research groups (including ours) can show no definite advantage for these medications,” says Koehle. A <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21142283"><span class="s2">2011 review</span></a> of 26 studies on asthma inhalers found that the medications did not improve “endurance, strength or sprint performance in healthy athletes.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">sucking air after the Binbrook triathlon 2013</span></div>
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<tr><td class="td2" valign="middle"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; line-height: 16.363636016845703px;">What’s more, the off-label use of bronchodilators can come as a cost — side effects such as tremor, palpitations, and jitteriness can derail an athlete’s training or racing efforts. Overuse of these medications in asthmatics may also, under certain circumstances, render them less effective when they are needed. As inhalers are a delivery system that can be used for the administration of a variety of drugs, it is important for asthmatics utilizing an inhaler to check the status of their medication on the WADA Prohibited List. Some medications administered by inhaler are prohibited, some are not, and some are considered threshold medications on the WADA Prohibited list, which means they are allowed in certain quantities, but prohibited in excess of that quantity. If an athlete has a legitimate medical need to take a prohibited medication, a Therapeutic Use Exemption (TUE) may be requested, which, if granted, allows them to take the medication in a therapeutic dose.“A substance or method will be considered for the WADA Prohibited list if it meets at least two of three criteria: It has the potential to enhance or enhances sport performance, it represents an actual or potential health risk to the athlete, and/or it violates the spirit of sport,” according to the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA). The independent organization is responsible for managing the anti-doping program including testing, results management, education and scientific initiatives, for all U.S. athletes in Olympic, Paralympic, Pan American and ParaPan American sports, including USA Triathlon.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">So - bottom line? If an athlete has asthma, see your doctor and don't worry about a puffer giving you an unfair advantage; in fact, to the contrary, it may even save your life. And to the fellow athlete who questions your use of meds (and thus, implicitly, your integrity)? Just take them down hard at the line.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">see ya on the track</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Mellow Johnny</span></div>
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"a brief compendium on nearly everything"http://www.blogger.com/profile/15684863895906892463noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4592799389789748656.post-17766741559014593162014-01-25T18:35:00.002-05:002014-01-25T18:35:33.187-05:00Old Runners and Great Knees<div class="p1">
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So, I have run a couple of indoor track meets so far this year - racing 3000m on the boards is like returning to an old, but fierce, friend - and while I am definitely not dropping down times like I used to a few years back, I am still having a blast.</div>
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And yet when "non jock" peers (as in like 99% of those I work with) hear about our crazy exploits, one of the first things I tend to be asked, aside from "are you nuts?" is: doesn't running wreck your knees?</div>
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I hate that question - and this is generally what I hear when "over the hill desk jockey's" start blathering about the horror and evil of running, doing Ironman, etc:</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small; text-align: start;"> </span><i style="font-size: medium; text-align: start;">blah blah blah blah </i></td></tr>
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However, in the interests of continuing on my Zen like path to enlightenment, I will answer their query as best I can:to wit [more law jargon - it always adds to the general high brow tone of The Blog]: Is there any scientific study to substantiate the claim that older people (over 45) should limit high impact exercises such as jogging, sprinting, etc.?</div>
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Much of the recent science about high-impact exercise by “older people” like me — I prefer the term “seasoned,” by the way — reaches the opposite conclusion, suggesting that in many cases high-impact exercise can be beneficial for those middle aged and beyond. A <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12974656"><span class="s1">seminal 2003 study</span></a> of people aged 30 to past 70, for instance, found that while sedentary adults lost about 10 percent of their maximal endurance capacity every decade, young and middle-aged athletes who regularly engaged in intense and high-impact exercise, such as running intervals, experienced a much slower decline, losing only about 5 percent of their capacity per decade until age 70, when the loss of capacity accelerated for everyone.</div>
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There is also little evidence to support the widespread belief that high-impact exercise speeds the onset of arthritis. In <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23377837"><span class="s1">a 2013 study</span></a>, adult runners, including many aged 45 or older, had a lower incidence of knee osteoarthritis and hip replacement than age-matched walkers, with the adults who accumulated the most mileage over the course of seven years having the lowest risk, possibly, the study’s author speculated, because running improved the health of joint cartilage and kept them lean as they aged. Similarly, a <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16790540"><span class="s1">2006 review of studies</span></a> about jogging and joints concluded that “long-distance running does not increase the risk of osteoarthritis of the knees and hips for healthy people who have no other counter-indications for this kind of physical activity,” and “might even have a protective effect against joint degeneration.”</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXiNXvH4Avlzs-n-MyPWJPDwl3vvFJFGLVg441XwzUep3sE6zEkbgPh-maqKrVdVXysCWMZrJw0oSWdZjLs2p9Q9oyln2stv0l3MKi5mh1yTwRM2pgylg09PsxFFBH-HhbqG_4_HezTog/s1600/fa6a052141aa83032126e253f731.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXiNXvH4Avlzs-n-MyPWJPDwl3vvFJFGLVg441XwzUep3sE6zEkbgPh-maqKrVdVXysCWMZrJw0oSWdZjLs2p9Q9oyln2stv0l3MKi5mh1yTwRM2pgylg09PsxFFBH-HhbqG_4_HezTog/s1600/fa6a052141aa83032126e253f731.jpeg" height="320" width="224" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i style="font-size: medium; text-align: start;">my home running turf</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="p4">
Running and similar high-impact activities likewise have a salutary effect on bone density, wrote Dr. Michael Joyner, an exercise physiologist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., and an expert on aging athletes, of whom he is one. Over all, he concluded, he is “skeptical” of the idea that older people should avoid high-impact activities. “A lot of concerns about age-appropriate exercise modalities have turned out to be more speculative than real over the years,” he said, adding that during his research and personal workouts, he’s seen many seasoned adults pounding the pavement without ill effects.</div>
<div class="p4">
So, no excuses; as the dreaded corporate hydra Nike once sagely adverted: Just Do It.</div>
<div class="p4">
<br /></div>
<div class="p4">
see ya on the boards,</div>
<div class="p4">
Mellow Johnny</div>
"a brief compendium on nearly everything"http://www.blogger.com/profile/15684863895906892463noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4592799389789748656.post-79295301136306777392014-01-23T08:36:00.001-05:002014-01-23T08:38:02.420-05:00the Death of a Running Legend: Chris Chataway<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNuqAJ59fiwtgdpux-4lfKSrKOj0EnaaiTIuDJAPX2OMxVuzCzJAg_sTr1gNy9VqCMnRTbpS58Y_-IZXR9pDippwqH7hdZWZSU61Td4UlIIdEOcItA1HNVZT56DalJt0g2z3CbVzjktU4/s1600/Christopher-Chataway-in-1-009.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNuqAJ59fiwtgdpux-4lfKSrKOj0EnaaiTIuDJAPX2OMxVuzCzJAg_sTr1gNy9VqCMnRTbpS58Y_-IZXR9pDippwqH7hdZWZSU61Td4UlIIdEOcItA1HNVZT56DalJt0g2z3CbVzjktU4/s1600/Christopher-Chataway-in-1-009.jpg" height="192" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="p1">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
Chris Chataway, the British runner who helped Roger Bannister achieve </div>
<div class="p1">
the first sub-four-minute mile, then broke world records himself and </div>
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became a member of Parliament and a cabinet minister, died last</div>
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Sunday in London. He was 82.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Chataway was best known for helping Bannister, </div>
<div class="p2">
his fellow Oxford graduate and good friend, </div>
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break the supposedly unbreakable barrier in the mile. </div>
<div class="p2">
For months, Bannister, Chataway and<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/01/sports/chris-brasher-74-pacer-for-bannister-mile.html"><span class="s1"> Chris Brasher</span></a> </div>
<div class="p2">
trained together to prepare for the attempt.</div>
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It came on May 6, 1954, at the Iffley Road track in Oxford, </div>
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an hour outside London. According to plan, Brasher, </div>
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a steeplechaser, led for the first two of the four laps. </div>
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Chataway, primarily a 5,000-meter runner, led for the third </div>
<div class="p2">
lap and a little beyond. With 300 yards to go, Bannister </div>
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raced past and finished in 3 minutes 59.4 seconds, </div>
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an achievement that made the front pages of newspapers</div>
<div class="p2">
around the world.</div>
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The three ran a victory lap together, and Bannister </div>
<div class="p2">
subsequently said many times, “We had done it, the three of us.”</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjQfJ-UtWPNo5VwWlPWwjjCdu5nA_adVFHCu1rPiV-cZQ3PHGJux1eRWvA2_YotSDLlFc4Z36T3f4j0M5AUohCnZxQG97Ebo88dwOiYDEsymYq3NFaVh3AZ6jRafrflYXffMjfymW7BrM/s1600/chataway-obit-master675.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjQfJ-UtWPNo5VwWlPWwjjCdu5nA_adVFHCu1rPiV-cZQ3PHGJux1eRWvA2_YotSDLlFc4Z36T3f4j0M5AUohCnZxQG97Ebo88dwOiYDEsymYq3NFaVh3AZ6jRafrflYXffMjfymW7BrM/s1600/chataway-obit-master675.jpg" height="236" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="p2">
<i> Chataway congratulating Bannister on the 1st sub 4 min mile</i></div>
<div class="p2">
While Bannister’s record was monumental, it was also fragile. </div>
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In June that year, John Landy of Australia lowered it to 3:58.0 </div>
<div class="p2">
in Turku, Finland. He gave much credit to the runner who </div>
<div class="p2">
pressed him for most of the race — Chris Chataway.</div>
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That summer, Chataway set a world record of 13:51.6 for </div>
<div class="p2">
the 5,000 meters. In a 10-day period a year later, he set </div>
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world records of 13:27.2 and 13:23.2 for three miles. He also</div>
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ran a mile in 3:59.8.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Chataway was not as successful in the Olympics. In 1952 </div>
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in Helsinki, Finland, he was leading on the last lap of the </div>
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5,000 meters, fell back to second, tripped on a curb alongside </div>
<div class="p2">
the track and fell and finished fifth. In 1956 in Melbourne, </div>
<div class="p2">
Australia, he finished 11th. After that, he retired as a runner.</div>
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For years, Chataway was unhappy with the path the Olympics </div>
<div class="p2">
had taken, and what he saw as a shift from the Olympic ideals. </div>
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In 1959, he wrote in The New York Times Magazine:</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<i>“Are the Olympic Games a force for good or ill in international </i></div>
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<i>relations? The answer is probably that they are not much of </i></div>
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<i>a force at all. They are worthwhile for what they are: </i></div>
<div class="p2">
<i>the best sports meetings in the world.”</i></div>
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<i><br /></i></div>
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“In my experience,” he added, “the average athlete does not run, </div>
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jump or throw for the greater glory of his country. He does </div>
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it to satisfy himself, to meet his own competitive urges, to prove </div>
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something to nobody but himself. My motive force was purely </div>
<div class="p2">
personal, never patriotic.”</div>
<div class="p2">
Chataway started running again in his late 50s. At 64, he ran a 5:48 </div>
<div class="p2">
mile on the Iffley Road track, his first race there since Bannister’s </div>
<div class="p2">
sub-four-minute mile. John Hartley, Chataway’s television </div>
<div class="p2">
colleague, said Chataway had told him that as he stood on </div>
<div class="p2">
the starting line this time, he calculated that in the 41 years </div>
<div class="p2">
between those two miles, he had absorbed 400 pounds </div>
<div class="p2">
of tobacco and 7,000-plus liters of wine.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p2">
Chataway, Bannister and Brasher remained close until </div>
<div class="p2">
Brasher died in 2003. In 2004, at age 73, Chataway ran a </div>
<div class="p2">
10-kilometer race in 49:08. The race was the Chris Brasher Memorial.<br />
The starter was Bannister.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p2">
January 19th: a sad for running...</div>
<div class="p2">
see ya on the roads, Chris.</div>
<div class="p4">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<br /></div>
"a brief compendium on nearly everything"http://www.blogger.com/profile/15684863895906892463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4592799389789748656.post-89374841162777417702014-01-20T20:30:00.000-05:002014-01-20T20:30:20.838-05:00<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 25px;"></span><br />
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Can Rotating Running Shoes Reduce Injury Risk? – New Study Suggests Yes!</h1>
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<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 25px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none;">
<a href="http://runblogger.wpengine.com/images/2013/12/Shoe-Pile.jpg" sl-processed="1" style="color: #0000cc; text-decoration: none;"><img alt="Shoe Pile" class="alignleft size-full wp-image-2496" src="http://runblogger.wpengine.com/images/2013/12/Shoe-Pile.jpg" height="231" style="border-bottom-style: none; border-color: initial; border-left-style: none; border-right-style: none; border-top-style: none; border-width: initial; display: inline; float: left; height: auto; margin-bottom: 5px; margin-left: 5px; margin-right: 10px; margin-top: 5px; max-width: 100%;" width="300" /></a>Shoe geeks rejoice! If you’ve been looking for a good reason to convince your spouse or significant other that you need a new pair of running shoes, look no further than <a data-ls-seen="1" href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24286345" sl-processed="1" style="color: #0000cc; text-decoration: none;">a new study</a>that suggests that runners who rotate among more than one pair of running shoes are significantly less likely to get injured than those who wear the same model of shoe on every run.</div>
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The abstract of the study arrived in my inbox a few days ago, and I do not yet have access to the full text, but <a data-ls-seen="1" href="http://www.runresearchjunkie.com/can-mixing-up-the-running-shoes-prevent-overuse-running-injury/" sl-processed="1" style="color: #0000cc; text-decoration: none;">Craig Payne at Running Research Junkie</a> and <a data-ls-seen="1" href="http://www.runnersworld.com/injury-prevention-recovery/study-backs-rotating-shoes-to-lower-injury-risk" sl-processed="1" style="color: #0000cc; text-decoration: none;">Scott Douglas at Runner’s World</a> have both covered it in some depth.</div>
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Here’s the abstract:</div>
<blockquote style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: whitesmoke; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(221, 221, 221); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-left-color: rgb(221, 221, 221); border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-color: rgb(221, 221, 221); border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-color: rgb(221, 221, 221); border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 1px; margin-bottom: 20px; margin-left: 30px; margin-right: 5px; margin-top: 5px; padding-bottom: 5px; padding-left: 30px; padding-right: 30px; padding-top: 25px;">
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Scand J Med Sci Sports. 2013 Nov 28. [Epub ahead of print]</div>
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<a data-ls-seen="1" href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24286345" sl-processed="1" style="color: #335577; text-decoration: none;">Can parallel use of different running shoes decrease running-related injury risk?</a></div>
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Malisoux L, Ramesh J, Mann R, Seil R, Urhausen A, Theisen D.</div>
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<strong>Abstract</strong><br />
The aim of this study was to determine if runners who use concomitantly different pairs of running shoes are at a lower risk of running-related injury (RRI). Recreational runners (n = 264) participated in this 22-week prospective follow-up and reported all information about their running session characteristics, other sport participation and injuries on a dedicated Internet platform. A RRI was defined as a physical pain or complaint located at the lower limbs or lower back region, sustained during or as a result of running practice and impeding planned running activity for at least 1 day. One-third of the participants (n = 87) experienced at least one RRI during the observation period. The adjusted Cox regression analysis revealed that the parallel use of more than one pair of running shoes was a protective factor [hazard ratio (HR) = 0.614; 95% confidence interval (CI) = 0.389-0.969], while previous injury was a risk factor (HR = 1.722; 95%CI = 1.114-2.661). Additionally, increased mean session distance (km; HR = 0.795; 95%CI = 0.725-0.872) and increased weekly volume of other sports (h/week; HR = 0.848; 95%CI = 0.732-0.982) were associated with lower RRI risk. Multiple shoe use and participation in other sports are strategies potentially leading to a variation of the load applied to the musculoskeletal system. They could be advised to recreational runners to prevent RRI.</div>
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© 2013 John Wiley & Sons A/S. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.</div>
</blockquote>
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I’ve long advocated rotating running shoes since I think that one of the major causes of repetitive overuse injury in runners is that many of us run on the same type of uniform surface (road/sidewalk) in the same model of shoe on every single run. In other words, we hammer ourselves in the same way every time we head out the door (trail runners excluded).</div>
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I believe that wearing shoes that vary in sole geometry and the amount of cushioning and support provided results in forces being applied to the body in different ways and thus reduces the overall repetitive load to individual tissues. This, in turn, reduces injury risk. I’ve employed a shoe rotation myself for several years now, though mine may be a bit larger than necessary given that I review them (perhaps to the point of actually being <a data-ls-seen="1" href="http://runblogger.com/2013/10/time-for-new-shoe-rack.html" sl-processed="1" style="color: #0000cc; text-decoration: none;">too big a rotation</a>!). My thoughts on the benefits of rotating shoes until now were just a hunch based on knowledge of how footwear can alter mechanics and force application, but the study reported above seems to lend some scientific support to the practice.</div>
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In <a data-ls-seen="1" href="http://www.runnersworld.com/injury-prevention-recovery/study-backs-rotating-shoes-to-lower-injury-risk" sl-processed="1" style="color: #0000cc; text-decoration: none;">his article on the study</a>, Scott Douglas reports the following regarding the researcher’s explanation for the mechanism behind the benefits of a shoe rotation:</div>
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“The researchers wrote that this could well be because different shoes distribute the impact forces of running differently, thereby lessening the strain on any given tissue. Previous research has shown, and runners have long intuitively felt, that factors such as midsole height and midsole firmness create differences in gait components such as stride length and ground reaction time.</div>
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As the researchers put it, ‘the concomitant use of different pairs of running shoes will provide alternation in the running pattern and vary external and active forces on the lower legs during running activity. Whether the reduced [injury] risk can be ascribed to alternation of different shoe characteristics, such as midsole densities, structures or geometries cannot be determined from these results and warrants future research.’”</div>
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This hypothesis is thus right in line with my own belief that mixing up force application is a plausible explanation for why a shoe rotation might reduce injury risk. However, we can’t confirm the mechanism for certain yet.</div>
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In any event, it’s nice when science supports a practice that I and many people I know have long advocated. It’s OK to experiment with footwear, and in fact it may be a good thing.</div>
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"a brief compendium on nearly everything"http://www.blogger.com/profile/15684863895906892463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4592799389789748656.post-33834480158148431292013-12-28T07:50:00.001-05:002013-12-28T08:35:08.389-05:00400's and Good BooksSo Coach Tommy sent me out yesterday with my first truly "hard" track set - which included some nasty 800's, 1200's and 1600's.<br />
I could have run outside, as it is a little less boring, but, as you know (unless you live in a cave in the South Pacific) our weather here in the Big Smoke has been a wee bit challenging for runner's the past week - although that sounds pretty lame when you consider over 300,000 didn't have heat or power while my biggest complaint was how the roads sucked to run on...), so, here was my choice:<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYyNbSuV780DK6NaBhKZI4OWrFormnJHhlArev3sgyspglWNKpeMgGzDOHYc3KTu0NqXogmNi_BxafB1pLdKE5hdHxcozdV5jIni4bh7F83UnLix5wgh7yVVp0Slac50xBQ-SHgtZrHsQ/s1600/UBGSBBYBWGKJLZT.20101208220030.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYyNbSuV780DK6NaBhKZI4OWrFormnJHhlArev3sgyspglWNKpeMgGzDOHYc3KTu0NqXogmNi_BxafB1pLdKE5hdHxcozdV5jIni4bh7F83UnLix5wgh7yVVp0Slac50xBQ-SHgtZrHsQ/s320/UBGSBBYBWGKJLZT.20101208220030.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Warm</td></tr>
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or<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh61PExXotaYu4s7GK6O3gocNHj55Xy6m0nSflhxyi1s1p7rryGKD6RStAOIsa-VhQGLQR2lYhuJB_SLJLlInt5ukhrprL7fpk0SOsHQCgVBrukNEnq6W6h6faleRDdV-giBPCbnGrPKIY/s1600/BcHDNWqCUAAvJoQ.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh61PExXotaYu4s7GK6O3gocNHj55Xy6m0nSflhxyi1s1p7rryGKD6RStAOIsa-VhQGLQR2lYhuJB_SLJLlInt5ukhrprL7fpk0SOsHQCgVBrukNEnq6W6h6faleRDdV-giBPCbnGrPKIY/s320/BcHDNWqCUAAvJoQ.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Not Warm</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMvyj8B1_Qybno3iNkfSUz6WGpUNpKjUiiFpbALyIw9I09sW-EdcksEy8y_mqiEiuPPso6JFQwy5cE_eOZ2WJlyF_iE_BKJKV_xGqQ_dO5kFAjRFVNcud-3Z6OdnhYbAkwWxaRGSsu3Qs/s1600/resize.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="132" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMvyj8B1_Qybno3iNkfSUz6WGpUNpKjUiiFpbALyIw9I09sW-EdcksEy8y_mqiEiuPPso6JFQwy5cE_eOZ2WJlyF_iE_BKJKV_xGqQ_dO5kFAjRFVNcud-3Z6OdnhYbAkwWxaRGSsu3Qs/s200/resize.jpeg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">kids actually skating down the road - just the road I want to run on. Not.</td></tr>
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I chose warm.<br />
And while I was in the Dome, running solo and feeling sorry for myself - especially as for some reason the track was, judging by my 400 splits, quite long (as it couldn't be that I am simply wayyyy slower - hahaa), I got to thinking about 400's (ya, pretty random but what else do you think about when running than, well, running? I do also think a lot about food, especially desserts; I often drift off thinking about how I would rather be swimming that running intervals - which is ironic, as when I swam yesterday morning all I could think about was running intervals on the track (this must be some undiagnosed medical condition); sometimes I even think about all the unfinished house chores I have been tasked by AM, but surprisingly, those thoughts are extremely fleeting. So, ya, I tend to think about running when I am running [note how there is absolutely no intention to intrude on any copyright issues herein: <a href="http://www.amazon.ca/What-Talk-About-When-Running/dp/0307397378">What I Talk About When I Talk About Running</a> [this is a really great book by the way - while I personally don't think it rises quite to the literary status of the your humble author's pedestrian (pun intended) writings herein, it has been a NY Times bestseller for quite some time: <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/10/books/review/Dyer-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0">NY Times Book review</a>- well worth adding to your quiver of running books, although I would personally start with John L Parker's classic, <a href="http://www.amazon.ca/Once-Runner-John-Parker-Jr/dp/1416597891">Once A Runner</a>, one of my favourite books out there (64 x 400m's? really? WTF??); or, if you just want pure a "endurance", switch it up and read what is likely my single favourite, "the one book I would bring to the desert island": <a href="http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/books/the-road/9780307387899-item.html">The Road</a> by Cormac McCarthy - epic and sparse and beautiful and haunting).<br />
Anyway - I digress: on the track yesterday while thinking of running and having each 400 split called out by the George Brown track coach (I had jumped into their varsity workout) - I wondered if there was any 400's harder than the ones I was doing...<br />
turns out there are:<br />
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And now I fear what could be harder than next week's 800's...<br />
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see ya on the roads,<br />
Mellow Johnny<br />
<br />"a brief compendium on nearly everything"http://www.blogger.com/profile/15684863895906892463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4592799389789748656.post-23545868122112154862013-12-22T10:35:00.001-05:002013-12-22T10:35:21.102-05:00As Fonzi said, "sit on this and rotate (your running shoes)"<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 25px;"></span><br />
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Can Rotating Running Shoes Reduce Injury Risk? Seems so...</h1>
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</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 25px;">Shoe geeks rejoice! If you’ve been looking for a good reason to convince your spouse or significant other that you need a new pair of running shoes, look no further than <a data-ls-seen="1" href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24286345" sl-processed="1" style="color: #0000cc; text-decoration: none;">a new study</a> that suggests <b>that runners who rotate among more than one pair of running shoes are significantly less likely to get injured than those who wear the same model of shoe on every run.</b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 25px;"><div class="entry-content">
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The abstract of the study arrived in my inbox a few days ago, and I do not yet have access to the full text, but <a data-ls-seen="1" href="http://www.runresearchjunkie.com/can-mixing-up-the-running-shoes-prevent-overuse-running-injury/" sl-processed="1" style="color: #0000cc; text-decoration: none;">Craig Payne at Running Research Junkie</a> and <a data-ls-seen="1" href="http://www.runnersworld.com/injury-prevention-recovery/study-backs-rotating-shoes-to-lower-injury-risk" sl-processed="1" style="color: #0000cc; text-decoration: none;">Scott Douglas at Runner’s World</a> have both covered it in some depth.</div>
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Here’s the abstract:</div>
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Scand J Med Sci Sports. 2013 Nov 28. [Epub ahead of print]</div>
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<a data-ls-seen="1" href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24286345" sl-processed="1" style="color: #335577; text-decoration: none;">Can parallel use of different running shoes decrease running-related injury risk?</a></div>
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Malisoux L, Ramesh J, Mann R, Seil R, Urhausen A, Theisen D.</div>
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<strong>Abstract</strong><br />The aim of this study was to determine if runners who use concomitantly different pairs of running shoes are at a lower risk of running-related injury (RRI). Recreational runners (n = 264) participated in this 22-week prospective follow-up and reported all information about their running session characteristics, other sport participation and injuries on a dedicated Internet platform. A RRI was defined as a physical pain or complaint located at the lower limbs or lower back region, sustained during or as a result of running practice and impeding planned running activity for at least 1 day. One-third of the participants (n = 87) experienced at least one RRI during the observation period. The adjusted Cox regression analysis revealed that the parallel use of more than one pair of running shoes was a protective factor [hazard ratio (HR) = 0.614; 95% confidence interval (CI) = 0.389-0.969], while previous injury was a risk factor (HR = 1.722; 95%CI = 1.114-2.661). Additionally, increased mean session distance (km; HR = 0.795; 95%CI = 0.725-0.872) and increased weekly volume of other sports (h/week; HR = 0.848; 95%CI = 0.732-0.982) were associated with lower RRI risk. Multiple shoe use and participation in other sports are strategies potentially leading to a variation of the load applied to the musculoskeletal system. They could be advised to recreational runners to prevent RRI.</div>
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© 2013 John Wiley & Sons A/S. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.</div>
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I’ve long felt positively about rotating running shoes since I think that one of the major causes of repetitive overuse injury in runners is that many of us run on the same type of uniform surface (road/sidewalk) in the same model of shoe on every single run. In other words, we hammer ourselves in the same way every time we head out the door (trail runners like my friend Maureen excluded!!).</div>
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I believe that wearing shoes that vary in sole geometry and the amount of cushioning and support provided results in forces being applied to the body in different ways and thus reduces the overall repetitive load to individual tissues. This, in turn, reduces injury risk. I’ve employed a shoe rotation myself for several years now, though mine may be a bit larger than necessary given that I seem to have a running shoe obsession (what with over 15 pairs in the training room - and counting!). But, heretofore (I am inclined to use one "lawyer" phrase per blog posting) my thoughts on the benefits of rotating shoes were just a hunch based on my (rather limited) knowledge of how footwear can alter mechanics and force application; but the study reported above seems to lend some scientific support to the practice.</div>
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In <a data-ls-seen="1" href="http://www.runnersworld.com/injury-prevention-recovery/study-backs-rotating-shoes-to-lower-injury-risk" sl-processed="1" style="color: #0000cc; text-decoration: none;">his article on the study</a>, Scott Douglas reports the following regarding the researcher’s explanation for the mechanism behind the benefits of a shoe rotation:</div>
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“The researchers wrote that this could well be because different shoes distribute the impact forces of running differently, thereby lessening the strain on any given tissue. Previous research has shown, and runners have long intuitively felt, that factors such as midsole height and midsole firmness create differences in gait components such as stride length and ground reaction time.</div>
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As the researchers put it, ‘the concomitant use of different pairs of running shoes will provide alternation in the running pattern and vary external and active forces on the lower legs during running activity. Whether the reduced [injury] risk can be ascribed to alternation of different shoe characteristics, such as midsole densities, structures or geometries cannot be determined from these results and warrants future research.’”</div>
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This hypothesis is thus right in line with my own belief that mixing up force application is a plausible explanation for why a shoe rotation might reduce injury risk. However, we can’t confirm the mechanism for certain yet.</div>
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In any event, it’s nice when science supports a practice that I and many people I know have long advocated. It’s OK to experiment with footwear, and in fact it may be a good thing. And this also lends further support when we need to explain why need a pair of different shoes for our long run; our intervals; our tempos; our marathons; our trail runs; track work; speed work; rainy days; etc..and don't even het me started on the need for racing flats and spikes!!</div>
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see ya on the roads</div>
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Mellow Johnny</div>
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</span>"a brief compendium on nearly everything"http://www.blogger.com/profile/15684863895906892463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4592799389789748656.post-28907110679358827382013-12-06T16:08:00.002-05:002013-12-06T16:08:36.117-05:00Active Recovery is the Key<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px;"></span><br />
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Aerobic Accelerator: Proper Recovery Between Intervals Is Key</h1>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwXyB8ZHJbQ0emRedl5JjcWllyQBLnZ4l_Q7EpgZtHHvb0LIDY2m_1ZNGPqTG__9wDYqppfRwXsF_UeXh5fKkt6oEOSQZz0uiiEZVmOHadVRXgz2my5eERD6cv4s66R5vbUBqiAa2w88E/s1600/18249-874-19323449.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwXyB8ZHJbQ0emRedl5JjcWllyQBLnZ4l_Q7EpgZtHHvb0LIDY2m_1ZNGPqTG__9wDYqppfRwXsF_UeXh5fKkt6oEOSQZz0uiiEZVmOHadVRXgz2my5eERD6cv4s66R5vbUBqiAa2w88E/s320/18249-874-19323449.jpg" width="213" /></a></div>
<figure style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; display: block; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> (if you start puking in between sets - you be goin' tooo hard!)<figcaption style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: grey; display: block; font-size: smaller; font-style: italic; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></figcaption></figure><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
It doesn’t take a research experiment to prove that aerobic fitness is important. Without input from scientists, coaches (and self-coached athletes) frequently recommend training right between the barrier of hard breathing and uncontrollable gasping — the spot where the body’s aerobic fitness is working at near full capacity — to boost aerobic fitness. But researchers at Rennes 2 University in France have found that the type of recovery taken between intervals is also important.</div>
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They trained two groups of new runners with interval workouts made up of the same hard sections, but with different recovery.</div>
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Science-Speak Translated</h2>
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VO2 is shorthand for volume of oxygen. VO2 max is the most oxygen a person can consume and is a common (although imperfect) way to measure aerobic fitness.</div>
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For short-course triathletes who don’t fit into the “elite” wave, VO2 max is a strong indicator of performance, according to a study performed at the University of Tennessee. The right kind of training can boost this all-important number.</div>
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The Study</h2>
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<strong style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 12px; font-weight: bold; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Group 1: Standing Recovery</strong><br />30×30 seconds hard, 30 seconds standing<br />Result: No change to VO2 max</div>
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<strong style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 12px; font-weight: bold; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Group 2: Running Recovery</strong><br />20×30 seconds hard, 30 seconds slow jog<br />Result: Improved VO2 max baseline</div>
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Despite running fewer intervals, <b>the athletes who ran between repeats upped their aerobic fitness more than those who stood for recovery.</b> If interval workouts with short repeats are part of your training plan, jog between repeats for a meaningful fitness boost.</div>
"a brief compendium on nearly everything"http://www.blogger.com/profile/15684863895906892463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4592799389789748656.post-68497423447347690552013-11-30T18:35:00.001-05:002013-11-30T18:35:25.842-05:00Best Race Report - EVERSo - while I have written several race reports over the years[some good, some "meh"], I aspire to the self-deprecating humour, candour and sheer brilliance of Trevor's race report.<br />
I bow at the feet of the master.<br />
<br />
<i>Trevor Wurtele's Ironman 2013 Arizona Race Report</i><br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="344" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/aAHhh_xj614" width="459"></iframe><br />
<br />
Guess now I have to shoot for the stars.<br />
And for the record, no, I have never "shushed" my wife during an Ironman. I am wayyyy too smart to run that risk...<br />
<br />
peace out<br />
Mellow Johnny"a brief compendium on nearly everything"http://www.blogger.com/profile/15684863895906892463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4592799389789748656.post-46312117003000849732013-11-27T18:40:00.000-05:002013-11-27T18:40:00.240-05:00Running Form Comparison: Bekele, Gebrselassie, Farah<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Open Sans', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 14px;"></span><br />
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Running Form Comparison between Bekele, Gebrselassie, and Farah in the 2013 Great North Run</h1>
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<span class="vvqbox vvqyoutube" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; display: block; font-size: 14px; height: 344px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; margin-top: 10px; max-width: 100%; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; visibility: visible !important; width: 425px;"><object data="http://www.youtube.com/v/mWM6B3ACxDQ&amp;rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;showsearch=0&amp;showinfo=0" height="344" id="vvq-179-youtube-1" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 1.714285714rem; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 100%; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; visibility: visible;" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="425"></object></span><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.714285714; margin-bottom: 1.714285714rem; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
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I came across this video clip via <a href="http://www.runblogger.com/2013/09/kenenisa-bekele-haile-gebrselassie-and.html" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #21759b; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: none; outline-width: initial; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Peter Larson</a>. Despite the fact that Bekele is turning through much of it, it gives us an opportunity to look at the running form differences between three great runners: Kenenisa Bekele, Haile Gebrselassie, and Mo Farah.</div>
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You may have first looked at footstrike, checking whether they heelstrike and/or overstride. These questions are so much the focus of research and discussion about running form these days that it can sometimes seem like they’re all that matters.</div>
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However, footstrike is really just the tip of the iceberg, and if you are trying to change your footstrike you need to know something about the whole iceberg, not just the part that’s most easily visible. So I’m going to walk you through a few of the things I look at when I evaluate a runner’s form and maybe this will give you some new ideas about what to feel for in your own form and look for in others’.</div>
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Before I go any farther, though, let me clarify that this commentary represents me adapting my evaluation methods to video. In reality I rarely use video to work with runners because what you can’t see in video dwarfs what you can, and my analysis doesn’t depend generally on particular moments in the gait cycle but how the cycle unfolds – in short, I analyze movements, not a series of positions.</div>
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That said, here are three very interesting positions I’ve pulled out of the video:</div>
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<span style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: large; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 24px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">1. Midstance</strong></span></div>
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<a href="http://balancedrunner.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/BGFmidstance.jpg" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #21759b; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: none; outline-width: initial; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="Bekele, Gebrselassie, Farah midstance comparison" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-181" height="169" src="http://balancedrunner.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/BGFmidstance-300x169.jpg" style="border-bottom-left-radius: 3px; border-bottom-right-radius: 3px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-style: initial; border-top-left-radius: 3px; border-top-right-radius: 3px; border-top-width: 0px; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.199219) 0px 1px 4px; float: left; font-size: 14px; height: auto; margin-bottom: 0.857142857rem; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 1.714285714rem; margin-top: 0.857142857rem; max-width: 100%; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" title="BGFmidstance" width="300" /></a></div>
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The first collage is midstance for each of the runners, plus or minus the margin of error of my reaction time on the YouTube “pause” button. If you wondered whether any of these runners were overstriding, this should set that question to rest.</div>
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Yes, yes, I know these are not pictures of footstrike! Frankly looking at initial contact of a foot with the ground can be confusing because whether it’s the impact-transient-causing type of event depends on what is on the foot, how stiffened the leg is on contact, how the weight progresses over the sole of the foot, and even how fast the runner is going. At the speed these guys were running the foot definitely touches the ground out in front of them, but their bodies are moving so fast that by the time there’s any significant force through that foot they’re on top of it.</div>
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With so many conflating factors in visually determining whether a runner is overstriding I’ve stopped caring much about the question unless it’s extreme, and I’ve switched to checking where their weight is in midstance instead. If a runner is overstriding in a meaningful way, their hip joint will be behind the ankle in midstance. These guys all have their standing hip joints exactly over their ankles in midstance. Clean as a whistle. (And in case you’re wondering how I determined midstance, I picked the moment their heads were lowest.)</div>
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So they’re not overstriding. However there’s a major difference between the first two and Farah. Bekele and Gebrselassie are both leaning forward (And please note in this part of the gait cycle it looks like “bad” leaning, just from the pelvis. It isn’t, as you’ll see in the other pictures.) If you drew a line from ankle upwards through the hip joint and continued up to head height, both their heads would be in front of it. However the back of Farah’s head lies on the line. He’s much more upright than the other two. (In this context I’m using “upright” to mean how close to vertical his spine is, not how straight it is.)</div>
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<a href="http://balancedrunner.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/BGFtoeoff.jpg" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #21759b; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: none; outline-width: initial; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="Bekele, Gebrselassie, Farah toeoff comparison" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-182" height="139" src="http://balancedrunner.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/BGFtoeoff-300x139.jpg" style="border-bottom-left-radius: 3px; border-bottom-right-radius: 3px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-style: initial; border-top-left-radius: 3px; border-top-right-radius: 3px; border-top-width: 0px; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.199219) 0px 1px 4px; float: left; font-size: 14px; height: auto; margin-bottom: 0.857142857rem; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 1.714285714rem; margin-top: 0.857142857rem; max-width: 100%; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" title="BGFtoeoff" width="300" /></a></div>
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In this picture you see the three at the moment of toe-off. As you can see, their shoes have just lost contact with the ground. I’ve taken a shot at drawing lines from hip joint of the toe-off leg through the neck to the head, it looks a little sloppy and I didn’t have the control to get them exactly where I felt they were most accurate. (If anyone knows of a better tool for doing this than picmonkey.com, I’d be grateful if you’d leave a comment pointing me to it!) In pictures where someone has drawn a line through the body I often disagree with their placement of the line as being not anatomically precise. It’s easy to draw these things in a way that confirms your bias. I’ve aimed my lines to run from hip joint parallel to the spine, through the neck and into whatever part of the skull they arrive in. I didn’t get all three necks the same, Gebrselassie’s should angle yet a little more forward. Even so, you can see that Bekele and Gebrselassie are leaning forward about the same at this point (Gebrselassie actually a little bit more) and Farah is quite a bit more upright. You can also see that Farah’s chin is more tucked than the other two. In this picture it’s hard to see Gebrselassie’s chin but overall in the video you can see that he tucks his a little more than Bekele.</div>
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Aside from lean you can also see that Bekele and Farah have their left shoulders and hands behind the line I’ve drawn while Gebrselassie’s shoulder is right on it and his hand is in front of it. This shows something that will be even clearer in the next set of pictures, which is that Gebrselassie uses less trunk counterrotation than the other two when he runs. You can also see here that his back leg is not as straight as the other two have theirs. This is connected to the counterrotation issue – less rotation gives him a shorter stride length which he compensates for with a higher stride rate. I counted the stride rates of the three while watching the actual race and got approximately 180 for Farah, 188 for Bekele, and 204 for Gebrselassie! All of them are reasonable for runners of their level but it’s worth observing that Gebrselassie and Farah use opposite strategies for speed – Gebrselassie takes shorter, super-quick strides with minimal torso rotation while Farah takes super-long, slower strides with huge torso movement. Bekele is right in the middle in balancing stride rate/stride length.</div>
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<span style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: large; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 24px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">3. Maximum Trunk Counterrotation</strong></span></div>
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<a href="http://balancedrunner.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/BGFflightrotation.jpg" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #21759b; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: none; outline-width: initial; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="Bekele, Gebrselassie, Farah torso counterrotation comparison" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-183" height="132" src="http://balancedrunner.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/BGFflightrotation-300x132.jpg" style="border-bottom-left-radius: 3px; border-bottom-right-radius: 3px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-style: initial; border-top-left-radius: 3px; border-top-right-radius: 3px; border-top-width: 0px; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.199219) 0px 1px 4px; float: left; font-size: 14px; height: auto; margin-bottom: 0.857142857rem; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 1.714285714rem; margin-top: 0.857142857rem; max-width: 100%; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" title="BGFflightrotation" width="300" /></a></div>
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In this final collage I’ve selected what looks like the point of maximum trunk counterrotation for each of them, which happens in the flight phase of the gait cycle. These pictures are the hardest to compare because each runner is captured at a different angle and Bekele’s head is still turned, which limits how much he could turn his upper body the other direction. It looks from the leg and foot position like I’ve caught Farah a little bit later in the gait cycle than the others but I’ve watched the video a million times and this seems to be the moment of maximum forward movement of his shoulder, so I’m going to go with it.</div>
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The first thing that stands out to me is that the difference between the forward lean of the first two runners and Farah has become very large indeed. His spine looks absolutely vertical. We’ve seen this change in the angle of his trunk to the ground over the course of his gait cycle, and this reveals the biggest difference between him and the other two: Farah moves his trunk in the sagittal plane when running and they do not. He goes from a moderate forward lean at midstance to almost upright, then leans forward again for the next stride. The other two maintain a steady lean through out their gait cycles.</div>
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You can easily see an indicator of Farah’s sagittal-plane movement in full-speed race video, for instance the 10,000 meter final from the Olympics. When seen from the side, his head clearly bobs forward and backward (relative to the speed of his body overall) in contrast to the heads of all the runners around him which just move smoothly forward. Farah positions his trunk so that when he pushes off in late stance his head is behind the line of force and is pushed backwards – in other words, pushing off makes him arch his back a little. And then he has to counter that movement by activating his trunk flexors to bring both his head and leg forward for his next footstrike. Very few world-class runners do this; I believe very few runners who do this rise to world-class level because it is less economical than positioning the torso so the force in late stance is transmitted through the spine to the head, pushing it smoothly forwards instead of backwards. However, a runner’s success is created by a constellation of attributes and economy is only of them, and Farah depends on it less than the other two.</div>
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What causes Farah to organize his running in this more expensive manner is something that can’t be determined visually; I’d have to put my hands on him and feel what his neck is like, his ankles, his upper spine, and so forth to know the answer. (Incidentally, the level of tension a runner would feel in their neck, face, and jaw running like this would lead to a lot of grimacing.) In my experience, people instinctively choose to be economical when they can feel how to do it, and if a runner isn’t making that choice there is probably what Feldenkrais practitioners call “parasitic effort” getting in the way.</div>
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There’s still more to say about this: the possibility that Farah is at maximum trunk rotation later in his gait cycle than the other two points to the overall larger trunk movements he makes, much of which can’t be seen from the side. His head moves more side-to-side than other runners’, as do his shoulders and ribcage. When he stretches out his stride at the end of a race he makes his fabulous stride length happen without overstriding through this huge trunk movement. The possibility that it might be slightly out of sync with his legs – slightly delayed – coupled with the sagittal-plane trunk movement so unusual for a runner add detail to the impression I always get that he’s “pumping” not only with his arms but somehow with his torso, pushing harder against the ground and driving his legs through the whole cycle by tremendous auxiliary motion of his trunk. This is strength, not economy, that he calls upon to perform his best.</div>
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You can see a small difference between Bekele and Gebrselassie’s backs in these pictures as well. Gebrselassie is a little straighter, you could almost say his back looks arched as well. That difference would likely seem larger if Bekele were looking forward and his shoulder were able to move naturally – he would look even more relaxed and forward-leaning, based on how he looked in the rest of this race and how he usually looks. Gebrselassie has always had a slightly more arched back than the average East African distance runner, and a tendency to tuck his chin as well though under pressure he lets it move forward in more efficient fashion – the opposite of Farah’s response to pressure. Bekele by contrast has always had an exceedingly clean lean and easy trunk mechanics free of distortion. If I had to be any runner in the world other than myself, I’d want to be him.</div>
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(If you haven’t seen the whole race, you can probably find it on YouTube and if you’ve read this far you should really just go watch it! Then read the rest of this blog post.)</div>
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Under pressure at the end of the race, Farah pumped in all the ways I’ve described, reaching out of his form for more power anywhere he could find it. He found it and closed on Bekele in amazing fashion. Bekele, nearly overtaken, seemed to smile calmly and then inexplicably sped up without appearing to do anything different, and won the race.</div>
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Does Bekele’s win mean his way of running is best? I think at this level “best” is a vague and possibly useless word. Farah beat Bekele in the Olympics 10,000m, after all, and Gebrselassie is more accomplished than either. I think we could eventually agree that Bekele’s style is most efficient and Farah’s least, or, to flip it around, Farah’s is most powerful – even extraordinarily so – and Bekele’s least, with Gebrselassie striking perhaps the perfect balance and possessing more versatility than either.</div>
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For me this becomes an aesthetic question. They are three extraordinary runners with very different styles, bodies, and personalities, and so they give very different gifts to those of us watching. I think we love to watch Farah run because he embodies desire and force of will, Gebrselassie displays amazing speed and lightness, and Bekele channels calm and grace.</div>
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</span>"a brief compendium on nearly everything"http://www.blogger.com/profile/15684863895906892463noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4592799389789748656.post-24433550560153703182013-08-31T13:10:00.001-04:002013-08-31T13:10:13.578-04:00Feeling Blah? You're Not Alone<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px;"></span><br />
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Tips to Harness Motivation</h1>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;"><strong style="font-weight: 700;">It’s a phenomenon every runner has experienced: Some training sessions, you feel motivated, energetic and capable of pushing your body to its limits. Other days, you barely feel inspired enough to plod through a recovery run.</strong></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px;"><div class="region region-content">
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<br />Sports psychologists say low-motivation days are no accident, and say negative thoughts can stymie motivation and jeopardize performance, for pros and weekend warriors alike.</div>
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“I think every athlete has those moments of doubt,” says 10,000m American record-holder <a href="http://runningtimes.com/Article.aspx?ArticleID=18555" style="color: #202f5b; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Shalane Flanagan</a>, who worked with sports psychologist Greg Dale while running cross country and track at University of North Carolina. “My doubts are usually along the lines of, ‘Maybe I’m not fit enough or strong enough to do this.’”<br /><br />Flanagan combats those motivation-zappers with visualization exercises, including one she calls upon often frequently during tough workouts.<br /><br />“I’ll pretend I’m grinding out the last 600 against the top Ethiopian runners,” Flanagan says. “I just visualize running against them, and getting that fast time, or winning the race, during a workout, and it gives me that little boost of motivation.”<br /><br />Sports psychologists offer the following tips for other runners looking to harness their motivation:<br /><br /><strong style="font-weight: 700;">Identify negative thoughts.</strong> Sports psychologist Alison Arnold, founder of<a href="http://www.headgamessports.com/" style="color: #202f5b; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Head Games Sports</a> in Westford, Massachusetts, has coached a host of Olympic athletes and warns that negative thoughts can be sneaky. We know better than to tell ourselves we're about to have a bad workout. We're more likely to make definitive statements like, “I always get tired around this point,” or, “I never run well in the morning,” Arnold says. And <a href="http://www.dukenews.duke.edu/2010/01/dale_tip.html" style="color: #202f5b; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Greg Dale</a>, now a professor of Sport Psychology and Sport Ethics and the director of sports psychology and leadership programs for Duke University athletic teams, says something as simple as the weather can spur a chain of performance-hampering thoughts. “If you say, ‘Man, it’s going to be hot out today,’ you plant a seed before you ever get started that it’s going to be a crappy run,” Dale says. Dale tells athletes to keep a journal tracking their thoughts before, during and after workouts to learn how their thought patterns affect their performance.<br /><br /><strong style="font-weight: 700;">Substitute positive thoughts – or at least neutral ones.</strong> Dale says it’s important to acknowledge negative thoughts, then to rationalize them with thoughts that are “positive, truthful, and relevant to you.” “You don’t need to tell yourself, ‘I’m the fastest runner in world and I feel wonderful today,’” Dale says. Arnold says it’s OK to take "one step up on the feel-good scale." Rather than telling yourself you feel fabulous when you’re slogging through a long run, simply tell yourself you can make it to the next curve in the road, Arnold says.<br /><br /><strong style="font-weight: 700;">Find out what works, then feed it. </strong>Once you figure out which positive thoughts fuel your best performance, feed them with breathing, music and continued positive self-talk, Arnold says. Dale suggests having a specific plan to direct your brain toward performance-boosting thoughts during difficult parts of races or workouts. Arnold says a pre-run ritual of stretches, music or breathing exercises can “anchor the mind, and prepare the mind for what it’s about to do.”<br /><br /><strong style="font-weight: 700;">Infuse long-term goals with passion.</strong> Every runner should have a long-term goal they’re passionate about, and should remind themselves frequently why that goal is important with visual representations and key phrases, Arnold says. This can mean a course map on the refrigerator, a motivational quote on the bathroom mirror or a billboard with inspirational magazine cutouts and photos. Arnold recommends dedicating races, either formally or informally. “When you’re doing something for a cause, there’s emotion involved,” Arnold says. "That's what will carry you through the hard days."<br /><br /><strong style="font-weight: 700;">Let yourself feel disappointment.</strong> Then, move past it. Arnold says it’s important to “honor yourself” by not squelching feelings of anger or sadness after a disappointing workout or race. But she says it’s also important to consciously move past the disappointment. Dale suggests using visualization, saying one athlete he worked with imagined pouring a bucket of water over her head to wash away negative feelings. Arnold says it helps to diffuse a difficult runs with humor and “a lightness of being.” “It is so important to not take ourselves too seriously,” Arnold says. “There is such a difference between saying, ‘I can’t finish this run today’ and saying, ‘I guess today’s my day to just walk and smell the roses.’"<br /><br /><strong style="font-weight: 700;">Channel past successes. </strong>Dreading your speed workout? Spend a few minutes visualizing your best race before heading out the door, says Eugene sports psychology consultant and marathoner Kay Porter. In the last few laps of the 10K in the 2008 Olympics, Flanagan imagined she was finishing a tough workout on the American Tobacco Trail in North Carolina. “It made me feel like it was just another hard workout,” Flanagan says. “It calmed my nerves, so I could execute the way I’d execute in practice.” The proof it worked: Flanagan netted a bronze medal. </div>
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</span>"a brief compendium on nearly everything"http://www.blogger.com/profile/15684863895906892463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4592799389789748656.post-61840760869314159362013-08-30T19:37:00.002-04:002013-08-30T19:37:25.166-04:00Open Water Anxiety - all gone!<br />
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I stumbled across this piece in "Triathlete" - a good overview of how not to freak out in an open water swim.</div>
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'Nuff said: </div>
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A few years ago, watching an open-water swim left a lasting impression on me. It was at the Cayuga Lake Triathlon in Ithaca, NY, where my wife, Alice, was participating in the 1.5k relay leg.</div>
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I watched five waves, each with some 80 participants, start the swim. Each time the same pattern unfolded: Following the start, 10 percent of the field swam steadily and confidently down the course. Another 20 percent swam reasonably well in their wake. Fully 70 percent swam uncertainly at best, barely at all in some cases, stopping frequently, switching to breaststroke, turning on their backs. Generally they took five to ten minutes to settle their nerves before making steadier progress. </div>
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Alice, a skilled swimmer with 30 years of pool experience, who had swum two miles and more at Total Immersion Open Water camps, was among those who looked overwhelmed and unable to swim at anything like her true ability until the field spread out.</div>
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New triathletes have a right to be a little timid when it comes to the open-water swim. Even 2008 Olympic open-water silver medalist David Davies said he felt "violated by people swimming all over me." If an Olympic medalist feels that distressed, what chance does a triathlete have of being comfortable in a chaotic swim start?</div>
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Actually, a very good one.</div>
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When it comes to swimming, the majority of triathletes have a more urgent need to learn how to be comfortable than to increase speed or fitness. Here’s my four-part prescription for new triathletes to maximize their chances of a safer, happier swim in their first race and <em>every</em> race.</div>
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<strong>1. Learn Balance.</strong> This is the primary skill that gives you a sense of having control over your body in the water. In TI, balance is the foundation for every subsequent swimming skill. Learning to control that sinking legs sensation gives you confidence you can learn to control other things—like anxiety in open water. And feeling support for the water brings an overall sense of calm.</div>
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<strong>2. Practice Mindful Swimming. </strong>Replacing reactive thinking with calm, observant, reflective thinking is integral to the process of learning balance and every subsequent skill in the Total Immersion method. The ability to exert control over <em>what and how</em> you think in an environment where you may not be able to control much else is the best defense against anxiety. When teaching Total Immersion Open Water camps, I always teach our students how to use focus to create a “cocoon of calm” in the midst of exterior turmoil.</div>
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<strong>3. Practice with a Tempo Trainer. </strong>An inevitable result of the fight-or-flight response in open water is a shift to high-rate survival strokes, which greatly increases respiration rate. Faster, shallower breaths make you feel light-headed, making an uncomfortable situation even more so. Using a Tempo Trainer to encode a controlled tempo in your nervous system will also control your respiration rate.</div>
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<strong>4. Avoid the rush.</strong> After the start signal, take your time before you begin swimming, and/or start at the perimeter of the pack. “I remind my triathletes of pythagorean geometry: On a 200-yard stretch, if you start 60 feet outside the most direct path to the first buoy, you’ll only swim one yard farther to get there,” Says Total Immersion coach Dave Cameron.</div>
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<strong>What to do when anxiety strikes anyway?</strong></div>
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It’s not the end of the world if you still feel your heart, breathing and stroke rates getting away from you. Here’s how to handle that.</div>
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<strong>Hit the reset button.</strong> It’s so common to feel some anxiety early in the swim leg, that all new triathletes should have a plan for <em>recovering</em> from anxiety—and practice it in advance. The athletes I observed at the Cayuga Lake event had the right idea: Swim 10 or 12 strokes of breaststroke—a more naturally relaxing style than crawl. Stretch out fully with head hanging between your shoulders. Emphasize a leisurely glide, exhaling fully to clear CO2 and slow respiration. As you do, remind yourself how great it is to be living it in such a vibrant manner. Take a few more strokes and breaths to visualize how you want your crawl stroke to feel, and then get back to it calmly and easily.</div>
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<strong>Become the "quiet center."</strong> I personally love pack swimming and swim better with close company than alone. A primary reason I enjoy it so much is that it sharpens my focus. When swimming with others in open water, I observe their strokes and turn it into a game, testing my ability to swim with a quieter, more leisurely stroke than anyone around me. In fact I enjoy it so much I’m sometimes sorry to see the race end. When in a pack, strive to swim with a more relaxed stroke than all those around you. This will help turn your swim leg from pressure-filled into a game or work of art.</div>
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see ya in the lake</div>
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Mellow Johnny</div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Titillium-Regular, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><span><br /></span></span>"a brief compendium on nearly everything"http://www.blogger.com/profile/15684863895906892463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4592799389789748656.post-61450529160644883162013-06-13T17:46:00.001-04:002013-06-13T19:31:23.290-04:00"I'mmmmmm Baaaaack"....So, after Boston, I sort of laid low and in light of everything that happened during - and after - the marathon, sort of lost my mojo.<br />
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But, one can't wallow forever, so, I slowly headed back into training, knowing that the ITU World's are only 16 weeks away - and full on training seemed to be the way out of the darkness that Boston foisted on all of us.<br />
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Under the excellent - but often merciless! - coaching of Tommy Ferris <a href="http://www.ignition-fitness.com/">Team Ignition Fitness</a>, we targeted the Binbrook Triathlon as the first tri of the year.<br />
Having raced this event for the last several years, it is a great season opener to shake off the rust and get back into the game. John Salt, Jason V and the team at <a href="http://www.multisportcanada.com/">MultiSport Canada</a> put on a fantastic series of events and this one is one of my favs - warm lake, flat bike on beautiful country roads and flatter cross country run: perfect for me!<br />
So with more swim/bike/run miles on my aging and pretty creaky body than last year (thanks Coach!), I was pretty excited about how going from the long tempos of Boston training to the "seeing red from hurling blood" fast shite would play out (and of course, there was and is the great unknown: my wonky hip - but more on that later).<br />
Race day started with the usual bad sleep - you would think after nearly 25 years of racing every summer I would have this dialed in, but nope, still get those butterflies and nerves, which I suppose is a good thing?!<br />
Arriving and setting up in transition was like old home week - all the old farts in my age group [50 plus...] were there: Brett, Alfred, et al - really great to see all the gang back, and they are as competitive as ever!<br />
The race - well, suffice it to say I made the usual "early season mistakes" - but overall I was pleased with the whole race.<br />
My swim was quick - and thankfully the water was quite warm [relative to Lake O!]; out 3rd, as usual I was passed on the run up by what seemed like the entire 11th grade of a local high school! Great bike - pushed up and stayed in 3rd - which is where I started the run about 300m back from the 2nd place runner.<br />
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And the start of the run is where I had one of those "come-to-Jesus" moments: do I settle for 3rd, or not...<br />
I think we have all had those internal chats with ourselves during a race: "Hey John, it's your legs - this pace is too hard! Settle back, go easy, no shame in 3rd, pal - 3rd is better than 4th - so relax, and stop hurting so much..."<br />
You know what I mean - the dark demon of mediocrity!<br />
But as Jens Voight [he of TDF fame] is known to say, "shut up legs".<br />
And so, I sucked it up, and while I knew this was going to hurt - a lot - I began to try and run down the two guys in front of me.<br />
And it was a good day - and I was able to somehow put together the turnover to catch Roman, who was battling hard to stay up front - and take 1st overall.<br />
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*ya, I did the "hands on knees and drool" thing at the finish line. nice.</div>
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The better news was that I although one year older and thus should-be-slower, I actually had a better swim, bike and run time then last year -and shaved over a minute off my ridiculous "are-you-kidding-me-how-slow-that was" transitions (seriously - I freakin' hate transitions - since when does it take a minute to take off a bloody wetsuit> For god's sake, when I was in university living in my frat, with the right sorority girl, I could make 2 martinis, get completely undressed and throw on some sexy tunes in less time than that!)(...if my wife is reading this, kidding!).</div>
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My teammates from Team Ignition Fitness also tore up the course - with Jesse, Cavin, and Keith having stellar races (man, if I could run like Jesse - and ride like Keith - I would be SuperHero fast!).<br />
And: my training partner also podiumed - in only her second full tri [awesome job Mits!] so it was a good day all around.<br />
After I finished, I went for a nice easy cool down run on the country roads - and yes, like a total idiot, I missed the awards - so there are the two podium shots: overall winners, with me absent, and then me, hopping up and getting a solo pic (big shout out as usual to Mike Cheliak and his team for their usual excellent race pics!).<br />
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I also found this race summary on You Tube: great coverage of the race, and for my money, it gets really good at around 7:10 into the vid - hahaha (note to self: wipe race crap off face if on camera after crossing finish line!)(and ya, some of the other racers really were "so young", or is that just a reflection, sadly, that I am just bloody old?).<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="270" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/KiZdmD1q2NY" width="480"></iframe><br />
So there it is: 2013's race #1 under the belt.<br />
See ya in Welland.<br />
Johnny Boy<br />
<br />
ps: go 'Hawks.<br />
<br />
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<br />"a brief compendium on nearly everything"http://www.blogger.com/profile/15684863895906892463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4592799389789748656.post-23491319782583643982013-04-29T21:11:00.002-04:002013-04-29T21:12:49.713-04:00After Boston: Run the Recovery<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i>I read this piece, by American distance runner Mike Cassidy, in the upcoming May 2013 "Running Times".</i><br />
<i>Wish I had written it...</i><br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">
I am a runner.</div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">
I’m also an American. I’m a Catholic. I’m a New Yorker. I’m a graduate student. I’m a former government employee.</div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">
Those things describe me. But running defines me.</div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">
I am a runner who ran the 2013 Boston Marathon. My family and I — like most runners — were fortunate to be out of harm’s way. The victims were someone else’s child, someone else’s parent, someone else’s friend. Their faces and names were unfamiliar, their pain incomprehensible.</div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">
But they were part of the tribe of runners, family and friends of runners. They are the type of people who sacrifice Friday nights for Saturday mornings — or support it. The type of people who measure life in minutes per mile — or can interpret it. The type of people whose most treasured possession stinks up the closet — or at least don’t complain about it. They are strangers, but they are runners, and so we know who they are.</div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">
Runners share an unspoken bond, a spiritual affinity that runs deeper than age or race, nationality or religion. Show me a runner, and I’ll show you a friend. Running identifies.</div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">
Running is not something you do; it is something you are. It’s a worldview as much as it is a form of exercise. It’s a way of life as much as it is a sport. It’s a state of being as much as it is a means of transportation. An attack on any of us running is an attack on all of us.</div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">
That is why we must run on.</div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">
The cruelest part of the bombings was the jarring juxtaposition between the senseless slaughter of innocents and the marathon’s jubilant pageantry. In an instant, something we had spent months and years meticulously preparing for became magnificently inconsequential. Our standard obsessions — in my case, a disappointing finishing time — suddenly seemed astoundingly selfish.</div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">
The overriding sentiment was one of shocked disbelief, tinged with anxious outrage. A sacred ritual had been gruesomely desecrated. We were confused, angry, scared. We wanted comfort, security, revenge. But most of all, we wanted answers.</div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">
Who did this? How could this happen? Will marathons change forever? </div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">
In the wake of tragedy it is natural to ask questions. To change perspectives. To challenge priorities.</div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">
As runners, we were forced to confront a troubling truth: Running was fallible, even trivial. As we watched others suffer, we were forced to ask: Does running matter?</div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">
And the reality is: Running doesn’t matter as much as we think. It matters more.</div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">
When despair is overwhelming, what do we do? Go for a run. When stress is oppressive, what do we do? Go for a run. When hope is gone and all seems lost, what do we do? Go for a run.</div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">
A run can turn the worst day into the best day; it can bring us from the lowest of lows to the highest of highs. I ran after September 11, I ran after the deaths of my grandparents, and I run whenever things aren’t going my way. It never fails.</div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">
If the perpetrators wanted to inflict lasting devastation, they could not have picked a worse target. Running defies destruction.</div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">
To run is to live. Running nourishes our muscles and nurtures our minds. It induces clarity of thought, vitality of physiology, and tranquility of emotion. It demands complete unity of body and spirit, it requires your legs, your lungs, your heart, your mind, but rewards all those parts too. It’s in this harmonious holism that we come to understand our true identities, our authentic selves. The universe’s uncertainty is distilled into a singularity: We exist in and of the moment. In the midst of entropy, serene bliss. In the midst of confusion, clarity. Surrounded by constraints, we are freed. Running creates.</div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">
But running is more than the antithesis of terror; it is also the antidote. Just as a vaccine implicates pestilence in its own defense, running takes pain as a template and produces something beautiful.</div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">
Terror holds no more power over running than wind over wildfire. Runners do not avoid suffering, they embrace it. Pain is merely the pathway to our potential. From the depths of agony rise meaning and purpose.</div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">
It is perhaps this fact that separates runners from non-runners, and it’s why we are the subject of curious bemusement and occasional derision. In a world that celebrates leisure and luxury, runners seek austerity. In a world in search of simple answers, runners chase impossible questions. In a society that valorizes the easy way, runners take the path of most resistance.</div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">
But it goes deeper than that. We do it together. Running unites.</div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">
The falsest truism in all of sports is that running is an individual pursuit. Anyone who has ever run for a team recognizes the value of training partners. They push us when we’re hurting. They make us laugh when we want to scream. They turn our doubts into confidence, our dreams into realities. United by shared sacrifice, they become lasting friends.</div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">
But the same is true of our opponents. In running, there is no such thing as foes, only co-conspirators. It’s one of the few competitive endeavors where my success doesn’t mean your failure.</div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">
Sure, only one person can win — but it’s not a zero-sum game. The real rewards are diffuse and self-defined. Victory and defeat — these occur internally, in our ability to conquer our emotions and triumph over our own limitations. Work together, and we realize collective greatness. Our fates are linked. It’s no accident that records are often set in pairs. As much as relative success yields medals, as much as podiums mean prize money, as much as second place is a footnote, we cannot hide from our most relentless rival: ourselves.</div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">
And this amicable accord extends beyond the athletes to the fans. In running, the sidelines are part of the playing field. If competitors require us to run faster, crowds inspire it. Nothing can galvanize greatness as much as throngs of screaming fans. Running persists on passion. It rides on emotion. Cheers can’t compensate for underprepared hearts or untrained legs, but they can make those hearts beat a little faster and those legs drive a little harder. </div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">
Just as important as the volume is the attitude: inclusive rather than exclusive, universal rather than partisan. In running, cheering for someone doesn’t mean rooting against someone else. Being a fan at a marathon is an expression of genuine altruism: helping a stranger without request or recompense.</div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">
Kind words infuse failing spirits with optimism. Internal anguish is transformed into external glory. I’ve always felt a marathon felt seems shorter when it’s 26.2 miles of compliments. Adrenaline is a heck of a drug.</div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">
Nowhere is this more obvious than Boston, where the fans are unquestionably the most passionate, most knowledgeable spectators in our sport (and this is coming from a Yankee fan). In many cities, a marathon is a significant event; in Boston, it is a holiday. Lined with fans, Heartbreak Hill feels flatter. With applause echoing, the Citgo sign approaches faster. When you do something for 117 years, you get pretty good.</div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">
It’s days like the Boston Marathon that remind us the running community is greater than the sum of its parts. Bound by the pursuit of the same ephemeral euphoria, our collective presence makes its realization all the more likely.</div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">
This is why running community must carry on — not in spite of Boston, but because of it.</div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">
As we heal from the attacks, the right question to ask is not if we should run, but why we run.</div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">
It’s not about running logs or mile splits, PRs or age-group awards, breaking tapes or setting records. It’s much more basic than that. We run because it’s who we are.</div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">
Running cannot resurrect lives or repair limbs, but it can recall the spirit that brings us together on Marathon Monday. It reminds us that even on the loneliest of long runs, we are not alone. We are part of something bigger. What distinguishes running is not solitariness, but solidarity.</div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">
Each run is an emphatic statement for everything that terrorism is not. Terrorism destroys; running creates. Terrorism divides; running unites. Terrorism is about fear; running is about hope. Terrorism signifies giving up; running means pushing ahead. Terrorism represents humankind at its malevolent worst; running, people at their inspirational best.</div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">
When we run, we take a stand for life, and in so doing, we bring into being the very spirit that defines the greatest threat to terrorism: the unconditional embrace of existence, the relentless optimism that progress is possible, and the unflinching conviction that our individual hopes are inseparable from our shared humanity.</div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">
To transcend our limits, we must confront our own mortality. As runners, reaching new levels demands staring human fragility in the face, accepting the futility of our quest, and forging ahead anyway.</div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">
Then somehow, when those magic Marathon Mondays come, what was once unfathomable becomes unavoidable. The inconceivable becomes tractable; the hypothetical, real. The most insurmountable peak becomes a mere plateau on the path to greater heights. The boundary is extended. The cycle begins anew. The finish line becomes the starting line.<br />
<br />
see you in 2014, Boston<br />
Johnny Boy</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
"a brief compendium on nearly everything"http://www.blogger.com/profile/15684863895906892463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4592799389789748656.post-23776002216177222042013-04-17T21:01:00.000-04:002013-04-17T21:01:37.457-04:00Thoughts on Boston Marathon<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<h2>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><i>ALL THAT IS NECESSARY FOR THE TRIUMPH OF EVIL IS THAT GOOD MEN DO NOTHING. </i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; font-weight: normal;">Edmund Burke </span></h2>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><span style="line-height: normal;">I wanted to thank everyone for their kind words and concern about Monday's race. My friends and I arrived home safely quite late Monday night - the lockdown on all cell service and the airport/trains etc was lifted around 9pm that day and we were able to sneak out.</span></span></span><br />
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="ecxApple-style-span" style="line-height: normal;"><br style="line-height: 22px;" /></span><div style="line-height: 21px;">
<span style="line-height: normal;">Sensitive as I am to the horrors of what happened at approx. 4:09 into the marathon, I will be brief: but I wanted to let all who sent emails inquiring as to the events in Boston that it was a sad and tragic day. <br style="line-height: 21px;" /></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 21px;">
<span style="line-height: normal;">I finished the race some time before 2 bombs were detonated approximately 100 meters from the finish. <br style="line-height: 21px;" />As of now, they have confirmed 3 dead, including as we have last heard an 8 year old boy who was watching for his dad at the finish line. There are also over 170 injured and again the estimates are that 17 are critically injured. <br style="line-height: 21px;" />At the point the bombs exploded, I was approx 1 block from the 1st detonation and can say it was scary as hell, as well as extraordinarily loud (and so unexpected and out of context). </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 21px;">
<span class="ecxApple-style-span" style="line-height: normal;">I cannot begin to describe the shock and terror that we all experienced. <span class="ecxApple-style-span" style="line-height: 17px;">To have been a part of this carnage and watched the drama unfold was both unnerving and truly frightening.</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 21px;">
<span style="line-height: normal;">Most disconcerting was that Saturday I was with 2 close friends and we three spent 2 hours watching several "elite mile" races - standing at almost the exact spot the bombs hit at the "Marathon Sports" running store (right at the finish)(the site of the first bomb).</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 21px;">
<span style="line-height: normal;">Then, to add more fear into the mix, I read that there was a 3rd bomb found (undetonated) quite near where I was watching for friends to finish [at Copely Square, which is approx 200m behind the finish line, and 1 block from our hotel]. </span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhF4oP-xqmQUSTro42nyziKEp9Cupht8rsBRBTjElsiyT4B3IAobV8hWGqfIOrg7wenV16-RT6Cp_Hk9FTmD_jTsLM4hyphenhyphenEPPKIhtCzjMy34Yw4naQYERrF4ObkHn8R7dsiVp65GtnaEntE/s1600/546058_10151372556763869_341457446_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="256" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhF4oP-xqmQUSTro42nyziKEp9Cupht8rsBRBTjElsiyT4B3IAobV8hWGqfIOrg7wenV16-RT6Cp_Hk9FTmD_jTsLM4hyphenhyphenEPPKIhtCzjMy34Yw4naQYERrF4ObkHn8R7dsiVp65GtnaEntE/s320/546058_10151372556763869_341457446_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="line-height: 21px;">
<span style="line-height: normal;">A terrorist attack at a marathon is not what any of us signed up for. <br style="line-height: 21px;" />I fear that this will once again tear away another layer of innocence, regardless of those responsible. <br style="line-height: 21px;" />But my friends and I are all safe and really, that is what matters most. How I did in the race seems so unimportant now.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 21px;">
<span style="line-height: normal;"><span class="ecxApple-style-span" style="line-height: 14px;"><h5 class="ecxuiStreamMessage ecxuserContentWrapper" data-ft="{"type":1,"tn":"K"}" style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 5px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; word-break: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;">
<span class="ecxmessageBody" style="line-height: 1.38;"><span class="ecxuserContent" style="line-height: 22px;"><span class="ecxApple-style-span" style="line-height: normal;">To be honest, this was not how I ever imagined my first Boston Marathon to be. </span></span></span></h5>
</span></span></div>
</span></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 21px;">With that being said, I'm trying to focus on the positive as much as possible. That all of my friends are safe and sound fills me with an enormous amount of relief. My faith in the resiliency of the running community could not be any stronger, and I know we'll pull through this. Though I worry about how this will affect the sport that touches every aspect of my life, I'm confident that we'll endure and persevere. Heck, it's what we do.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 21px;">I will go back - we can't let evil triumph.</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 21px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Johnny Boy</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; line-height: 14px;"></span><br />
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"a brief compendium on nearly everything"http://www.blogger.com/profile/15684863895906892463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4592799389789748656.post-64462531120375179132013-03-11T19:56:00.001-04:002013-03-11T19:56:38.173-04:00You Cannot "Unwatch" These - everIn the "spirit" of continuing to creep on vids I find on the 'net, I have no way of commenting on the one below; rarely am I speechless.<br />
I was as I watched this - and am still laughing.<br />
<br />
Enjoy this - or I will "pop a cap in your ass and shout "Hallelujah"<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="344" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/videoseries?list=FLuuw6tCiVZmOB74e5HVjr8Q" width="425"></iframe><br />
<br />
Then, of course, to round out the "Glee"ful nature of this posting (singing and dancing and rap - oh my!), ask yourself, when you are next out riding, can you "bust a move" like this [for that matter, who actually says "bust a move" anymore, except for old white guys reliving their frat days?]:<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=igaCXsPzaC0"><b>TDF Epic Dance Off</b></a><br />
**warning: do not try this with cleats on, especially at the end of a long ride.<br />
<br />
rap on, my brothers and sister<br />
Johnny Boy<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
"a brief compendium on nearly everything"http://www.blogger.com/profile/15684863895906892463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4592799389789748656.post-12517050679908704302013-03-07T15:16:00.001-05:002013-03-07T15:32:11.408-05:00Dogs are from Mars, Cats are from VenusWhile I understand that it will be hard to top the video I posted yesterday (see Blog posting below), this one here is pretty good.<br />
In fact, as Larry David was wont to say, it is <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_05qJTeNNI">"pretty, pretty, pretty good"</a>.<br />
<br />
Reflective of the inherent and yet important differences between dogs and cats, this video also stresses and reinforces some of the basic ideals I hope to impart here in this Blog: trust, caring, nurturing, team work, and most importantly, the lesson that sometimes - whether it is to head out the door for a 3 hour run when it is -25 with the windchill, or trudge into work on a Friday - we all need a kick or shove in the ass to get going.<br />
So, here's to training partners who help us get "down those stairs" (however they do it!) and out the door - and just as importantly, our partners' at home who put up with us and all our training/racing/injuries and crap...<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="344" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/videoseries?index=7&list=PLA1B121E4C2AAFBAA" width="425"></iframe><br />
play nice<br />
Johnny Boy<br />
<br />"a brief compendium on nearly everything"http://www.blogger.com/profile/15684863895906892463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4592799389789748656.post-41477391313437754732013-03-06T14:42:00.001-05:002013-03-06T14:50:42.302-05:00PerspectiveSo, I raced a Half on the weekend (well, better stated to say I "trained through a race", but that's a different blog) - and ya, my hip was pretty sore throughout the race.<br />
And then I saw this; sorta puts my crappy little aches and pains into perspective.<br />
<br />
People often throw around the term "hero" when talking about pro athletes, etc; in the age of Lance, Oscar, Tiger - whatever.<br />
For me, well, these two little guys seem to fit the definition of what a "hero" is perfectly.<br />
So, the next time you are out there training, racing, or even having a "bad" day at work, when you find you are feeling sorry for yourself, think of Connor and Cayden.<br />
<br />
'nuff said<br />
Johnny Boy<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="344" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/vptX99LcmTY" width="459"></iframe>"a brief compendium on nearly everything"http://www.blogger.com/profile/15684863895906892463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4592799389789748656.post-34560908737992591422013-02-15T20:44:00.002-05:002013-02-15T21:08:32.158-05:00Tour de France Team Overview<br />
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21.984375px;">So, I was mulling over the upcoming TDF, and wondered which teams have been invited to ride...when it occurred to me, as I am sure it has many. many people, </span><i style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21.984375px;">just who are the sponsors of these teams and how do they come up with the Team names</i><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21.984375px;">? One of my favourite blogs, </span><i style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21.984375px;">The Inner Ring</i><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21.984375px;">, has the answers:</span></div>
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There are 18 World Tour teams and 21 Pro Continental teams. One difference from other sports is that cycling teams come with naming rights and usually they are named after the sponsor. But who are these sponsors and what do they do?</div>
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You might know about Garmin or Cannondale but do you know what Qhubeka, Orica or Vacansoleil are about? What’s the link between Frano Pellizotti and Hello Kitty? Why do Ag2r ride in brown shorts? <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">All this and more…</em></div>
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<strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Ag2r La Mondiale</strong>: an insurance and savings company. Note the team name is not two sponsors but Ag2r La Mondiale is the name of one company. The firm offers retirement savings, healthcare insurance and other forms of social insurance. And why are the shorts brown? Well the corporate logo is blue and brown but note the company’s Parisian headquarters are located at 35 boulevard Brune. <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Brown Boulevard</em>.</div>
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<strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Astana</strong>: not a company but a city, a nation. Astana is the capital city of Kazakhstan and the team is funded by the state to promote the country, a bid to counter the “Borat” image if you like. The jersey features the names of various state-owned companies. Note team manager Vinokourov was on a winning list in the last parliamentary elections, showing the close links between the team and the state.</div>
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<strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">FDJ</strong>: is short for La Française des Jeux or “French Games” and is the French state lottery with regular draws, scratchcards and more. The sponsor has backed a team since 1997 but almost quit in the wake of doping scandals but courageously decided to stay in the sport on the condition the team rode clean. This meant lean years in terms of results although we now know why. The Fondation FDJ also supports other supports like other nations the lottery funding helps cover Olympic sports</div>
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<strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">BMC Racing</strong>: a brand of Swiss bicycles. The team is registered in the US but funded by the Swiss francs of Andy Rihs, a billionaire cycling enthusiast who owns BMC and other bike brands. Registering the team in the US helps the team to tap this giant, lucrative market whilst trading on the image of Swiss quality.</div>
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<strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Euskaltel – Euskadi </strong>: Euskaltel is a regional telephone operator in the Basque region, known as Euskadi in the Basque language. Euskaltel has had a tough time of late with the Spanish courts imposing a €222 million fine last year but this is being appealed. The region is semi-autonomous and retains a strong separatist movement. The team is one way to affirm the region’s identity.</div>
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the new Garmin team bike computer - haha<br />
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<strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Garmin – Sharp</strong>: Garmin is the US satellite navigation company, well it is from Kansas but registered in Switzerland. It was founded by Gary Burrell and Min Kao which explains the Gar-Min name. Some have questioned the company’s future in a world where smartphones replace many GPS devices but the cycling and sports equipment is proving to be a big new area. Sharp are a Japanese electronics company but the sponsorship is with the European subsidiary as the firm wants to promote its brand in Europe. The team cleverly has a large screen TV incorporated in the side of the team bus.</div>
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<strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Orica – Greenedge: </strong>Orica is an Australian company that makes explosives and other speciality chemicals for the mining industry. It bought Nobel, the Norweigan dynamite firm several years ago. Australia has been a big part of the global mining boom and the company does not have a great reputation with <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/backgroundbriefing/truck-explosion-site-mexicojpg/3817714" style="color: #2361a1; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" target="_blank" title="abc.net.au">explosive disasters</a> as well as several fines for environmental damage but sponsoring a cycling team is seen as a way to put something back. Greenedge meanwhile is a holding name as the team searches for a co-sponsor, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_colours_of_Australia" style="color: #2361a1; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" target="_blank" title="Wikipedia">green as in the Australia</a> but also the environment and edge as cutting edge.</div>
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<strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Lampre – Merida</strong>: Lampre make rolled, laminated steel. If this sounds unfamiliar take a look at your washing machine or fridge and the white steel around it. The Italian firm supplies the “white good” industry with the white steel and has operations around the world. It’s been in the sport since 1991 with Colnago Lampre and then in 1992 the Lampre team was born with the blue and fuchsia jersey that we still see today. Merida is a Taiwanese bike manufacturer linked to Specialized that’s keen to make a name for itself in the pro peloton.</div>
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<strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Cannondale</strong>: the bike brand has had its ups and downs. In the 1990s it supplied bikes to the Saeco team in Italy and was famous for its oversized alu tubing. The company moved into motorcycles, offering innovative lightweight offroad bikes but this was a commercial disaster and the brand was bought by Dorel, a Canadian conglomerate that also owns Sugoi, Schwinn and GT as well as a range of brands supplying infant products like Bébéconfort.</div>
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pee break<br />
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<strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Argos – Shimano</strong>: Argos is a Dutch oil company but don’t think of oil rigs, think gas stations and tanker trucks as the firm sells and distributes diesel, heating oil, petrol and lubricants in the Netherlands, Belgium, France and Germany. It was recently bought by a Russian firm but I’m told the takeover changes nothing and the sponsorship continues. Shimano is obvious but note their European base in the Netherlands which explains this Dutch connection.</div>
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<strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Lotto Belisol Team </strong>: Lotto is the Belgian state lottery and like FDJ in France, has the monopoly in Belgium. Founded in 1934 to raise funds for the sick in the Belgian Congo, the company has continously sponsored a pro team since 1985 although at times it has been the number two name, for example Omega Pharm – Lotto a couple of years ago. It also sponsors the Stanard Liège football team. Belisol make alu and wooden windows and doors and has branched out into domestic renewable energy products like solar energy panels.</div>
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<strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Movistar Team</strong>: Movistar is a mobile telecoms operator owned by Spanish national telecoms firm Telefonica with operations in Spain and Latin America and also in several European countries under the 02 brand. It’s a giant company but the pro team is one of the smallest budget teams in the World Tour. Be sure to pronounce the team name right, it is not “movie star”</div>
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<strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Omega Pharma – Quickstep</strong>: contrary to the name Omega Pharma is not a pharmaceuticals company. Instead it sells para-pharmaceutical products like wound dressings, vitamin supplements and other products find in pharmacies. Quickstep is a brand of laminated flooring that might seem indissociable from Belgian cycling but in fact it’s owned by US company Mohawk Industries.</div>
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<strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Blanco Pro Cycling</strong>: “your name here” as the team formerly known as Rabobank is hunting for a sponsor. Rabobank quit the mens’ pro cycling at the end of 2012 but fulfilled its contract by leaving enough money to fund the team. It says something that the sponsor prefers to pay for the team but not have its name linked.</div>
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<strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Radioshack – Leopard</strong>: Radioshack is a US electronics retailer that came into the sport to support Lance Armstrong’s comeback. Surprisingly they’ve lasted longer than the Texan although the company frequently attracts headlines about being bought out. Leopard is another holding name, supplied by Luxembourg real estate millionaire Flavio Becca. I gather a new sponsor will be announced later this spring.</div>
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<strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Team Sky</strong>: Sky is a satellite television channel with operations in Britain, Germany and Italy. The brand is ultimately controlled by Newscorp and the cosmopolitan Murdoch family. The team is partly owned by British and Italian Sky which helps to explain the presence of several Italian riders and is surely an additional incentive as Wiggins targets the Giro.</div>
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<strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Team Saxo – Tinkoff</strong>: Saxo is a currency brokerage from Denmark that offers software platforms to the banking industry. Tinkoff is a Russian bank and credit card issuer that operates online only, copying the model of Capital One in the US.</div>
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<strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Vacansoleil – DCM</strong>: Vacansoleil is a Dutch operator of holiday camps across Europe and the name is play on<em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">vacances </em>and <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">soleil</em>, French for holidays and sunshine. They have camping sites in France and beyond. DCM is a company selling garden products, notably soil and plant food. Note this is big business in the Netherlands where the flower industry is huge and supplies much of Europe.</div>
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<strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Pro Continental teams</strong><br />
<strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Accent Jobs – Wanty</strong>: Accent is an employment agency in Belgium whilst Wanty is a construction company.</div>
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<strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Androni Giocattoli – Venezuela</strong>: <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">giocattoli</em> is Italian for toys and Androni makes a range of plastic toys under licence including a Hello Kitty lawnmower. Venezuela is of course the South American nation and the team has recruited several riders from here.</div>
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<strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Bardiani Valvolve – CSF Inox</strong>: two names but the same company, Bardiani makes steel valves for the food industry. The next time you see TV footage of a food factory with liquids being pumped and poured as products move along conveyor belts it might feature Bardiani’s valves or CSF’s steel piping.</div>
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<strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Bretagne – Séché Environnement</strong>: Bretagne is the cycling-mad region of north-west France that juts out into the Atlantic whilst Séché is a recycling company that manages waste and other products.</div>
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<strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Caja Rural</strong>: a Spanish banking brand, it covers over 70 different small banks run on a cooperative basis.</div>
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<strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">CCC Polsat</strong>: CCC is a chain of shoe shops in Poland whilst Polsat is satellite TV channel.</div>
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<strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Champion System Pro Cycling</strong>: makes custom cycle clothing for clubs and teams.</div>
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<strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Cofidis</strong>: is a French consumer credit company offering loans in France, Belgium and Spain. It concentrates on the sub-prime segment and has drawn criticism for aggressive tactics.</div>
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<strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Colombia</strong>: is a quasi-national Colombian team but the funding is diverse with the national government making a contribution via the Coldesportes (Colombia Sports) agency and then a range of co-sponsors chipping in funding and equipment.</div>
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<strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Europcar</strong>: is a privately-owned vehicle rental company with operations around the world. The green brand is a common sight at airports and beyond and in France you can spot the likes of Thomas Voeckler painted on the side of rental vans.</div>
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<strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">IAM Cycling</strong>: Independent Asset Management is a Swiss fund management company that has focussed on private funds but is moving to sell its funds to the general public.</div>
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<strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Crelan – Euphony</strong>: Crelan is the new name for Landbouwcrediet (“land-build-credit”) a bank offering savings and mortgages. Euphony is a telecoms reseller offering mobile phones and broadband in Belgium and the Netherlands.</div>
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<a href="http://qhubeka.org/2013/?page_id=88" style="color: #2361a1; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><img alt="Qhubeka bike" height="191" src="http://www.qhubeka.org/2012/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/About-the-bike-web.png" style="border: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" width="320" /></a><br />
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Meets the UCI’s 6.8kg minimum weight rule</div>
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<strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">NetApp – Endura</strong>: NetApp is a Californian company offering data storage and other IT services. Endura is a Scottish cycle clothing manufacturer.</div>
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<strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Team MTN Qhubeka</strong>: MTN is a mobile phone operator from South Africa with operations across Africa and beyond. The continent often lacks the infrastructure of traditional telecoms and MTN has grabbed a big share of the mobile market. Qhubeka is a charity project in South Africa to get people cycling. It helps rural communities by giving bicycles to children in return for work done to improve their environment and their community, this way the kids can get to school or provide improved access to healthcare.</div>
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Bon appetit!</div>
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<strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Sojasun</strong>: is a French brand of soya-based food products from drinks to snacks to other healthfoods.</div>
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<strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Team Novonordisk – Type 1</strong>: Novo Nordisk is a Danish pharmaceutical company with a range of insulin products and it is funding a pro team comprised only of diabetic athletes as a way to show the condition need not prevent an active life.</div>
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<strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Topsport Vlaanderen – Baloise</strong>: Topsport is a Flemish sports foundation funded by the regional government and is helping younger riders in the pro careers. Baloise is a Swiss insurance and savings company.</div>
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<strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">United Healthcare</strong>: a US healthcare insurance provider.</div>
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<strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Vini Fantini</strong>: a brand of wines from Italy. The same company as Vini Farnese last year, now the team promotes Fantini wines.</div>
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<strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Rusvelo</strong>: is essentially the Russian track cycling program with a road team to allow the endurance athletes to race on the road and is funded by the Russian government.</div>
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<strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Katusha</strong>: is the abbreviated version of Ekaterina, the Russian version of Katherine and the name of a famous Soviet wartime folk song in Russia which still gets patriotic hearts stirring today. In English you’d call them Team Kathy but there’s nothing diminutive about the sponsors: Gazprom and Itera are energy giants and Ростехнологии / Rostechnologii is a Russian state agency designed to fund and control various technology and defence companies making this a team funded from the heart of the Kremlin.</div>
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ride on.</div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21.984375px;">Johnny Boy</span></div>
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"a brief compendium on nearly everything"http://www.blogger.com/profile/15684863895906892463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4592799389789748656.post-87663414631223329892013-02-10T18:38:00.000-05:002013-02-10T18:45:18.627-05:00Catchin' ZZZ's<br />
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Message for today: <i>sleep more, get faster...</i></div>
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THINK for a moment about your typical workday. Do you wake up tired? Check your e-mail before you get out of bed? Skip breakfast or grab something on the run that’s not particularly nutritious? Rarely get away from your desk for lunch? Run from meeting to meeting with no time in between? Find it nearly impossible to keep up with the volume of e-mail you receive? Leave work later than you’d like, and still feel compelled to check e-mail in the evenings?</div>
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More and more of us find ourselves unable to juggle overwhelming demands and maintain a seemingly unsustainable pace. Paradoxically, the best way to get more done may be to spend more time doing less. A new and growing body of multidisciplinary research shows that strategic renewal — including daytime workouts, short afternoon naps, longer sleep hours, more time away from the office and longer, more frequent vacations — boosts productivity, job performance and, of course, health.</div>
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“More, bigger, faster.” This, the ethos of the market economies since the Industrial Revolution, is grounded in a mythical and misguided assumption — that our resources are infinite.</div>
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Time is the resource on which we’ve relied to get more accomplished. When there’s more to do, we invest more hours. But time is finite, and many of us feel we’re running out, that we’re investing as many hours as we can while trying to retain some semblance of a life outside work.</div>
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Although many of us can’t increase the working hours in the day, we can measurably increase our energy. Science supplies a useful way to understand the forces at play here. Physicists understand energy as the capacity to do work. Like time, energy is finite; but unlike time, it is renewable. Taking more time off is counterintuitive for most of us. The idea is also at odds with the prevailing work ethic in most companies, where downtime is typically viewed as time wasted. More than one-third of employees, for example, <a href="http://www.right.com/news-and-events/press-releases/2011-press-releases/item21650.aspx" style="color: #666699; text-decoration: initial;">eat lunch at their desks</a> on a regular basis. More than 50 percent assume they’ll work during their vacations.</div>
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In most workplaces, rewards still accrue to those who push the hardest and most continuously over time. But that doesn’t mean they’re the most productive.</div>
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Spending more hours at work often leads to less time for sleep and insufficient sleep takes a substantial toll on performance. In a study of nearly 400 employees, published last year, researchers found that sleeping too little — defined as less than six hours each night — was one of the best predictors of on-the-job burn-out. A recent Harvard study estimated that sleep deprivation costs American companies $63.2 billion a year in lost productivity.</div>
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The Stanford researcher Cheri D. Mah found that when she got male basketball players to sleep 10 hours a night, their performances in practice <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3119836/" style="color: #666699; text-decoration: initial;">dramatically improved</a>: free-throw and three-point shooting each increased by an average of 9 percent.</div>
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Daytime naps have a similar effect on performance. When night shift air traffic controllers were given 40 minutes to nap — and slept <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2869.2008.00702.x/full" style="color: #666699; text-decoration: initial;">an average of 19 minutes</a> — they performed much better on tests that measured vigilance and reaction time.</div>
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Longer naps have an even more profound impact than shorter ones. <a href="http://psych.ucr.edu/faculty/mednick/index.html" style="color: #666699; text-decoration: initial;">Sara C. Mednick</a>, a sleep researcher at the University of California, Riverside, found that a 60- to 90-minute nap <a href="http://visionlab.harvard.edu/Members/Ken/Ken%20papers%20for%20web%20page/118natneuro_mednick_brief.pdf" style="color: #666699; text-decoration: initial;">improved memory test results</a> as fully as did eight hours of sleep.</div>
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MORE vacations are similarly beneficial. In 2006, the accounting firm Ernst & Young did an internal study of its employees and found that for each additional 10 hours of vacation employees took, their year-end performance ratings from supervisors (on a scale of one to five) improved by 8 percent. Frequent vacationers were also significantly less likely to leave the firm.</div>
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As athletes understand especially well, the greater the performance demand, the greater the need for renewal. When we’re under pressure, however, most of us experience the opposite impulse: to push harder rather than rest. This may explain why a recent survey by Harris Interactive found that Americans left an average of <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2012/nov/25/business/la-fi-1126-travel-briefcase-20121126" style="color: #666699; text-decoration: initial;">9.2 vacation days unused</a> in 2012 — up from 6.2 days in 2011.</div>
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The importance of restoration is rooted in our physiology. Human beings aren’t designed to expend energy continuously. Rather, we’re meant to pulse between spending and recovering energy.</div>
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In the 1950s, the researchers William Dement and Nathaniel Kleitman discovered that we sleep in cycles of roughly 90 minutes, moving from light to deep sleep and back out again. They named this pattern the Basic-Rest Activity Cycle or BRAC. A decade later, Professor Kleitman discovered that this cycle recapitulates itself during our waking lives.</div>
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The difference is that during the day we move from a state of alertness progressively into physiological fatigue approximately every 90 minutes. Our bodies regularly tell us to take a break, but we often override these signals and instead stoke ourselves up with caffeine, sugar and our own emergency reserves — the stress hormones adrenaline, noradrenaline and cortisol.</div>
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Working in 90-minute intervals turns out to be a prescription for maximizing productivity. Professor <a href="http://www.psy.fsu.edu/faculty/ericsson.dp.html" style="color: #666699; text-decoration: initial;">K. Anders Ericsson</a> and his colleagues at Florida State University have studied elite performers, including musicians, athletes, actors and chess players. In each of these fields, Dr. Ericsson found that the best performers typically practice in uninterrupted sessions that last no more than 90 minutes. They begin in the morning, take a break between sessions, and rarely work for more than four and a half hours in any given day.</div>
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“To maximize gains from long-term practice,” Dr. Ericsson concluded, “individuals must avoid exhaustion and must limit practice to an amount from which they can completely recover on a daily or weekly basis.”</div>
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So, if you want to maximize your performance - at work or on the roads running - get to bed, take some time off, and, most importantly: chillax.<br />
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<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPLrXFw76Qg">Good way to "RELAX"? **chill out to 80's grooves!</a></div>
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see ya on the roads</div>
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johnny boy</div>
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"a brief compendium on nearly everything"http://www.blogger.com/profile/15684863895906892463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4592799389789748656.post-65988963715520213062013-01-23T20:03:00.001-05:002013-01-23T20:03:30.333-05:00Is There One Right Way to Run?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Forefoot vs Heel? <span style="line-height: 1.375em;">As Willy the Shake once said, "that is the question".</span></div>
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In recent years, many barefoot running enthusiasts have been saying that to reduce impact forces and injury risk, runners should land near the balls of their feet, not on their heels, a running style that has been thought to mimic that of our barefoot forebears and therefore represent the most natural way to run. But a new study of barefoot tribespeople in Kenya upends those ideas and, together with several other new running-related experiments, raises tantalizing questions about just how humans really are meant to move.</div>
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For the study, <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0052548" style="color: #000066; text-decoration: initial;">published this month in the journal PLoS One</a>, a group of evolutionary anthropologists turned to the Daasanach, a pastoral tribe living in a remote section of northern Kenya. Unlike some Kenyan tribes, the Daasanach have no tradition of competitive distance running, although they are physically active. They also have no tradition of wearing shoes.</div>
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Humans have run barefoot, of course, for millennia, since footwear is quite a recent invention, in evolutionary terms. And modern running shoes, which typically feature well-cushioned heels that are higher than the front of the shoe, are newer still, having been introduced widely in the 1970s.</div>
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The thinking behind these shoes' design was, in part, that they should reduce injuries. When someone runs in a shoe with a built-up heel, he or she generally hits the ground first with the heel. With so much padding beneath that portion of the foot, the thinking went, pounding would be reduced and, voila, runners wouldn't get hurt.</div>
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But, as many researchers and runners have noted, running-related injuries have remained discouragingly common, with more than half of all runners typically being felled each year.</div>
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So, some runners and scientists began to speculate a few years ago that maybe modern running shoes are themselves the problem.</div>
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Their theory was buttressed by a <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20111000" style="color: #000066; text-decoration: initial;">influential study published in 2010 in Nature</a>, in which Harvard scientists examined the running style of some lifelong barefoot runners who also happened to be from Kenya. Those runners were part of the Kalenjin tribe, who have a long and storied history of elite distance running. Some of the fastest marathoners in the world have been Kalenjin, and many of them grew up running without shoes.</div>
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Interestingly, when the Harvard scientists had the Kalenjin runners stride over a pressure-sensing pad, they found that, as a group, they almost all struck the ground near the front of their foot. Some were so-called midfoot strikers, meaning that their toes and heels struck the ground almost simultaneously, but many were forefoot strikers, meaning that they landed near the ball of their foot.</div>
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Almost none landed first on their heels.</div>
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What the finding seemed to imply was that runners who hadn't grown up wearing shoes deployed a noticeably different running style than people who had always worn shoes.</div>
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And from that idea, it was easy to conjecture that this style must be better for you than heel-striking, since presumably it was more natural, echoing the style that early, shoeless cavemen would have used.</div>
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But the new study finds otherwise. When the researchers had the 38 Daasanach tribespeople run unshod along a track fitted, as in the Harvard study, with a pressure plate, they found that these traditionally barefoot adults almost all landed first with their heels, especially when they were asked to run at a comfortable, distance-running pace. For the group, that pace averaged about 8 minutes per mile, and 72 percent of the volunteers struck with their heels while achieving it. Another 24 percent struck with the midfoot. Only 4 percent were forefoot strikers.</div>
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When the Daasanach volunteers were asked to sprint along the track at a much faster speed, however, more of them landed near their toes with each stride, a change in form that is very common during sprints, even in people who wear running shoes. But even then, 43 percent still struck with their heels.</div>
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This finding adds to a growing lack of certainty about what makes for ideal running form. The forefoot- and midfoot-striking Kalenjin were enviably fast; during the Harvard experiment, their average pace was less than 5 minutes per mile.</div>
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But their example hasn't been shown to translate to other runners. In a <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23006790" style="color: #000066; text-decoration: initial;">2012 study of more than 2,000 racers</a> at the Milwaukee Lakefront Marathon, 94 percent struck the ground with their heels, and that included many of the frontrunners.</div>
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Nor is it clear that changing running form reduces injuries. In a <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23073217" style="color: #000066; text-decoration: initial;">study published in October</a> scientists asked heel-striking recreational runners to temporarily switch to forefoot striking, they found that greater forces began moving through the runners' lower backs; the pounding had migrated from the runners' legs to their lumbar spines, and the volunteers reported that this new running form was quite uncomfortable.</div>
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But the most provocative and wide-ranging implication of the new Kenyan study is that we don't know what is natural for human runners. If, said Kevin G. Hatala, a graduate student in evolutionary anthropology at George Washington University who led the new study, ancient humans "regularly ran fast for sustained periods of time," like Kalenjin runners do today, then they were likely forefoot or midfoot strikers.</div>
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But if their hunts and other activities were conducted at a more sedate pace, closer to that of the Daasanach, then our ancestors were quite likely heel strikers and, if that was the case, wearing shoes and striking with your heel doesn't necessarily represent a warped running form.</div>
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At the moment, though, such speculation is just that, Mr. Hatala said. He and his colleagues plan to collaborate with the Harvard scientists in hopes of better understanding why the various Kenyan barefoot runners move so differently and what, if anything, their contrasting styles mean for the rest of us.</div>
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"Mostly what we've learned" with the new study, he said, "is how much still needs to be learned."</div>
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"a brief compendium on nearly everything"http://www.blogger.com/profile/15684863895906892463noreply@blogger.com1