Run to Win

Photo by richelleantipoloThis tip does not apply to people who use speedos or other tight swim trunks. It is for the average men like myself that just use a regular old beach bathing suit when they swim laps in the pool. Before you get in, remember to tie your draw string and make sure that it is tight.

It can be embarassing to push off of the wall and discover that your swim trunks are around your ankles.

For the record, this did not happen to me today. I felt them slipping and managed to grab them and tie them. However, it used to happen on a regular basis when I would go lake swimming after a run. Running shorts and diving off of a dock provided no end of amusement to the local kids, who got to see a lot of painful belly flops mixed in with the shorts sliding any time I managed to do one right. Running shorts without draw strings do not mix well with diving.

One thing that I have been asked a few times is how many pairs of shoes somebody needs to consider themselves a runner. A more frequent question is how many pairs of running shoes do I own. There is no one easy answer to this, and the answer depends slightly on how you train or how competitive you are.

The easy answer to how many shoes you need to be a runner is that you do not need any. Training barefoot is certainly a viable option, and experienced barefoot runners tend to have stronger feet and are less injury prone than us shoe users. The problem, however, is that we start wearing shoes when we are very little, and you need to go into the barefoot mode slowly and carefully. Your feet will be weak due to letting your shoes do most of the work of walking around all day, and running barefoot asks a different stride of us that you may not be used to.

Realistically, though, the minimal answer is one pair of shoes. Most of us will want to wear shoes, and if you are competitive there are certainly advantages to wearing shoes in races. For a casual runner, one pair of shoes will get you out on the roads and can serve you when you are racing.

A more competitive runner, though, is going to want at least two pairs of shoes, and more likely three. It is important to rotate your training shoes between each run if you run more than once a day or more than one day in a row. Your feet will sweat, and you really want your shoes to dry completely before wearing them for another run. A competitive runner may also want to have a pair of racing shoes, whether they are lightweight trainers or full on waffles or spikes.
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Rather than writing on different news notes that I have noticed from over the weekend, I thought (for the sake of brevity) that I’d just link to the interesting articles.

• Saturday evening, I went to the RIT at Bentley hockey game. RIT lost by one point, 7-6. There were probably about 8 or 9 RIT fans for every Bentley fan. It has been a long time since I have painted my chest for a sporting event, but myself and a few friends decided to be a little cold while watching the game. The night before they had clinched the Atlantic East title, so RIT was giving their 3rd string goal tender some minutes. It is only their second year as a Division I program, so they are not eligible for post-season play until next year.
• The commissioner, a few owners, the players association and a few players in the NFL sat down to chat about how to clean up some of the off-field shenanigans and negative publicity that has been plaguing the NFL the past few years. The players thought that there should be a three strikes and you’re out policy. Apparently, they feel that it is hard to be in the wrong place at the wrong time over and over again.
• In cycling news, Jan Ullrich announced his retirement and plans to be a consultant rather than a competitive biker. He still maintains his innocence, and his involvement with the Spanish doping ring was dropped, but the damage to his reputation had already been done. He is still facing legal action in Germany for “fraud against the public.”

In a collaborative effort with Scott over at Straight to the Bar, we wrote about books throughout the month of February.

This week Scott takes a look at the Diesel Crew electronic book on how to get started in the wonderful world of Bending. Bending is taking pieces of metal, such as nails and pipes, and bending them. It is great for grip training, and unlike normal weight lifting you will actually produce a physical end result for your work. Of course, you also need to keep replacing your supplies…

If you are looking for a more conventional weight lifting book, you can read my review of The New Rules of Lifting. The programs in that book are forming the basis of my workouts these days.

This week last year was pretty light article wise, but what was there was mostly worth reading. There were some amazing stories about people and animals, and I offer some great workout tips with a book review. Meaty stuff!

• In a counterpoint to the week before’s animated article, this week last year I continued the animated how-to’s with how to do chinups. I also shared one of the best workout tips that you will find anywhere: always eat breakfast.
• On the nutrition front, I also reviewed one of my favorite nutrition books, Eat Smart, Play Hard. I wrote about that book earlier this week when I discussed all of my favorite nutrition books.
• In the Extreme Sports news category, a Canadian woman wrestled a polar bear after she noticed it eying her son. She started out by kicking and punching the bear, which was about 8 times larger than her, but it swatted her to ground where they started rolling around on each other.
• In other vaguely wrestling related news, a deer tried to bandit the Austin Freescale Marathon. Matt Tillinghast got tackled by the deer on the starting line, but decided to run anyway despite being nauseous and disoriented for the first three miles. This year’s race was last weekend, but I did not see his name in the finisher’s results so my guess is that he did not come back with a “Watch out for flying deer” shirt after all.

It seems that as far as doping labs go, they can never seem to get anything right. It was not too long ago that an 7 year old anonymous blood sample that had no control samples (since the control samples had been previously tested came back negative) seemingly proved Lance Armstrong was a doper. With even more relevance to the issue at hand, the case against Inigo Landaluze was dropped after his blood samples were mishandled.

The French laboratory that handled the test results may have allowed improper access to Landis’ urine samples, [...] According to the report, two technicians who conducted the “A” sample on Landis were involved in tests on the second “B” sample, which is used to confirm the first test. International lab standards do not allow the same technicians to work on both tests to prevent them from attempting to validate their original findings.

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Photo by penmachineOne thing that most runners or cyclists will notice at some point in their career is that there is always a headwind. No matter which direction you are running or biking in, North, South, East or West, you can never avoid a headwind. You may be running or riding a circular loop, such as around a track or around the neighborhood, and notice that there is a headwind entire time. Why is that, you may wonder? There are a few reasons, really. It could be due to the weather, or it could be due to simple physics, or it could be due in large part to psychosomatic paranoia. Here are the most likely reasons that it may seem like there is always a headwind:
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A study has found that kids who do not get enough sleep are more likely to be overweight than their peers who do get enough sleep.

The researchers found that children who got less sleep were more likely to be overweight and have higher body mass index measures than those who got more sleep, even when factors such as race, ethnicity and parents’ income and educational level were considered. The study noted that sleep experts recommend that children ages 5 to 12 sleep for 10 to 11 hours a night and adolescents sleep for 8 to 9 hours. But the researchers said children in the study at age 7 on average got less than 10 hours of sleep on weekdays and at age 14 got 8.5 hours of sleep on weekdays.

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