Run to Win

I’d like to start another regular feature highlighting what I wrote about during the week a year ago. A great way to get where you are going is to remember where you have been. Some of the highlights from this week last year:

• Friendly’s New England Mile: Race results from the first New England Mile race and my thoughts on what was happening. This year’s New England Mile had a new major sponsor, a better post race, and more accurate results. Somebody must have read my comments from a year ago, or else had the same ideas that I did.
• Two books were reviewed, Running with the Buffaloes about the University of Colorado’s 1998 cross country season, and Eat to Be Fit about nutrition and exercise.
• I wrote about the effects of and how to deal with migraines, specifically related to exercise.
• How to make Beef Jerky, one of the best snacks to have laying around.
• How much I miss a good Beach Run.

I realize that the New England Mile was technically last week last year, but since this is my first time highlighting where I’ve been I took a few liberties…

One again, Lance Armstrong has been accused of doping. I am starting to get tired of reading about it, too…

This time, Le Monde cycling magazine has reported leaked court testimony alleging that Lance Armstrong admitted to his doctors while he was going through chemotherapy in 1996 that he used EPO. The fun part of all this is that the testimony has already been proven fraudulent.

The newspaper reported the Andreus’ account was denied by a third person, Stephanie McIlvain, a friend of Armstrong’s who was also at the session with the doctor. She testified that she did not hear Armstrong make such an admission. “There were probably 10 people in the room. Betsy was apparently the only one that recalls this alleged incident,” said Herman, Armstrong’s attorney. Armstrong’s statement said part of his cancer treatments included steroids and EPO. Armstrong’s doctors repeatedly asked him during his treatment about substances he may have taken and Armstrong answered only that he occasionally drank beer, Herman said.

Apparantly, Lance Armstrong’s court proceedings were not supposed to become public. I do not think that he will get very far though in his effort to take legal action against whoever leaked the documents. This is a lot like Barry Bonds’ leaked grand jury testimony, except it is a much smaller stage and it doesn’t really paint Armstrong as a cheater nearly as conclusively.

(Source: ESPN.com)

A good tip for sleeping well is to not fall asleep in front of the television, or even to watch your TV directly before going to bed. If you actually fall asleep in front of the television, then chances are pretty good that you are in an optimum position for sleeping. You are probably sitting or lying on a couch with your body contorted in some fashion. This can lead to neck strain, and if the television is still on your sleep will be fitful from the outside stimulous. Bright lights and concentrating on the babble box can lead to eye strain, especially if all you do is close your eyes and snooze right afterwards. The same can be said to some extent for looking at a monitor in front of your computer right before bed time.

I have found that I sleep best if I look at a magazine or read a book for 15 minutes to an hour before going to sleep. I will lay in bed and read until I begin to feel my eyes drooping, whereupon I shut off the light and settle in. If I watch a movie right before going to bed, then my head is usually still full of loud noises and bright lights and I have trouble both falling asleep and staying asleep.

Lance Armstrong wrote a letter to the IOC president Jacques Rogge calling for Dick Pound to be removed as the head of WADA. Not surprisingly, Dick Pound has responded to the letter by ridculing Lance Armstrong for writing it.

“Maybe now that [Armstrong] has retired, he has too much time on his hands,” Pound said in an e-mail to the newspaper. “For someone beating the ethical drum, you might have thought that transparency and courage would suggest he would have the decency to let me know directly, rather than through a leaked disclosure [of Armstrong's letter] to certain media, that he was launching his ill-considered attack.”

I find his comments fairly amusing, since he admitted that he has not even read the letter that Lance Armstrong wrote. According to the letter that he is making fun of, Dick Pound is doing exactly what Armstrong suggested that he does any time that he is challenged. It is made more humorous because he is ridiculing Armstrong for the very things that he has done in the past.

(Source: ESPN.com)

It is amazing how something as simple as catching a football wrong can derail your workout plans. After my mile race on Sunday, I spent the afternoon at the beach tossing the football back and forth while out wading in the ocean. One wrong catch, and the finger has been jammed. Five minutes later, it’s still hurting, which is starting to get to out of the ordinary.

Yesterday, I got up and went about my morning all the way up to the point where I leave for the gym, when I realized that my swollen and bruised finger was not going to do very well trying to support a barbell. As the morning progressed, the bruising kept spreading from the base of the finger until it had gotten about a third of the way past my last knuckle. It is still discolored today, but it is not nearly as purple and is starting to look more fleshy. It is still swollen though. If my wedding band comes in again this week, then I will not be able to try it on.

My workout plans are flexible enough to account for minor setbacks like this. I took Monday off from lifting, and very well may take the rest of the week off and let my finger heal. In the meantime, I will get plenty of running done, which can be held without having to support weights that are heavier than myself.

How much would your training be derailed by something as silly as a broken finger?

Lance Armstrong wrote a letter to the IOC calling on them to suspend or remove Dick Pound, parts of which were leaked to the Los Angelos Times. Armstrong then decided to openly publish his letter on his website (registration required): The Pace Line.com. In the 8 page letter, Armstrong details the specific transgressions by Dick Pound during this latest scandal, as well as mentioning and alluding to other ethical violations committed by him in the past.
(Click here to continue reading…)

The Keybank New England Mile was this morning. A fast race through downtown Portland, the course drops 70 feet from start to finish. Prize money is awarded to the winners as well as the leaders at each quarter split. A sub 4 minute mile comes with a $5000 prize. Dereck Treadwell of Milford, Maine, thought that he had the bonus prize money in hand, but miscalculated on his third quarter split and ran too slow in 4:05. He still finished in first place by almost 10 seconds. Kristin Barry of Scarborough, Maine won the women’s race in 4:52.

Bill Rodgers was on hand to emcee the event and sign autographs. He was a very down to earth gentleman who loves the sport of running. He claims that in the twenty teens there will be national television coverage of track and road race events as the sport gains more popularity. I will be looking forward to when that happens.

In total there were 144 finishers coming through in under 13 minutes. 28 people were under five minutes, and over half the field came in under six minutes. The race doubled in size in only its second year. It is the second event of the Maine USATF grand prix race series.

Okolo over at Team in Training asked, “How many pushups can you do?”

I love pushups so much because they work so many muscles, and because after you master the basic pushup (can do about 50 without stopping) there are lots of variations to keep it interesting and keep different muscles working. Pushups work the arms (biceps and triceps), chest, shoulders, back, and abs.

So my challenge to the folks in blog land is how many pushups can you do? Please reply and post here.

Pushups are a great exercise, and it has been a long time since I have sat down and just done a lot of them in a row. I usually incorporate some form of them into my workout, but then I do 10 to 20 of them in sets rather than just doing a large set to exhaustion. For example, my current workout involves doing T-Pushups, where you go down as normal but then explode up to your right or left (switching each time) and point at the ceiling.
(Click here to continue reading…)