Run to Win

As part of their Second Tuesday Speakers Club, the Freeport Performing Arts Center will be hosting a presentation by Joan Benoit Samuelson, the first female Olympic Marathon gold medalist and the creator of the Beach to Beacon 10k. Joanie will discuss the experiences that she has had throughout her life and will take questions from the audience.

Admission is free and the program begins at 7:15 p.m. next Tuesday, October 14^th. The presentation should run through about 8:30 p.m. The Freeport Performing Arts Center is located at 30 Holbrook Street, next to the high school, in Freeport, Maine.

The Second Tuesday Speakers Club (2ndTSC) program is modeled on the 19th century Chatauqua speakers who went from town to town for a dollar and a free dinner to speak in a lecture hall before moving on.

Such lectures helped persons to broaden their views of life by being exposed to the experiences and thinking of others, …and so we hope will happen here in this fascinating series.

The IOC has announced that it is going to retest all of the samples collected from the Olympic games in the wake of the positive tests found by the Tour de France for the latest version of EPO, Continuous Erythropoiesis Receptor Activator. CERA is a stamina boosting drug which was not detectable until recently. It increases the number of red blood cells produced by bone marrow, but lasts longer and requires fewer injections than older forms of EPO.

“There will most definitely be some athletes who thought they could escape being caught because they thought the test would not be ready,” said Christiane Ayotte, director of a World Anti-Doping Agency-accredited laboratory outside Montreal. “We knew it came to the market just before springtime last year and if there were positives in the Tour de France, then we think there will be positives from Beijing.

“Why the technique was not put into place in Beijing, I have no answer to give you,” she said. “But we’re not missing anything. The opportunity to have those samples retested one or two months later is great.”

The President of the IOC, Jacques Rogge, is planning on making retroactive tests a normal part of the Olympic Games in an effort to discourage doping in the future. The statute of limitations states that an athlete can be found guilty of doping for up to 8 years following an athletic contest.

Christiane Ayotte is positive that there will be more cheats found from the Beijing Games, which is a very cynical point of view that I’m afraid will turn out to be the correct one. There were only 9 positive tests out of 5000, which is less than 0.2% coming positive at the games.

(More Info: NY Times - Photo Credit: Kevork Djansezian)

About 3 years ago, I wrote about a great program started by Matt Velguth in Portland, Maine called The Bike Shop. He operated in some space owned by the Portland Housing Authority in one of the poorer neighborhoods of the city, where he taught civic values to kids by selling them $5 bikes (and $1 bike parts), teaching bicycle maintenance, and leading group rides.

In the program, he has kids between the ages of 8 and 17 and who began by using tricycles and have worked their way up to competing in some of the toughest triathlons in the state. Recently, the group has ridden their bikes all the way to the New Hampshire border (pictured at right.)

Unfortunately, the annual budget of $51,000 that depended upon private funding has dried up and the program has outgrown the small space that it has available to it. Local nonprofit companies haven’t been willing to donate money while allowing the Bike Shop to maintain its independence, so the program is going to be closed down as of the end of October, 2008.

“We just can’t go any further,” said program director Matt Velguth. “There’s going to be hundreds of bikes that literally grind to a halt.

“I really believe this is the most successful bike project in the country and we just can’t get support for it.

“If we had more funding or more space, we would have stayed.”

The shop serves about 500 kids annually, and has helped over 1100 kids in the past 5 years. It’s sad that the program has to close down, and I hope that Matt is able to successfully get it started again with wherever he moves to.

(More info: The Forecaster)

Here in the United States, everything is in an uproar over the collapse of the financial industries. Personally, I do not worry about it because it lets me buy into the market at a discount. I’m not the only person who isn’t worried, though. IOC president Jacques Rogge has expressed his lack of concern over the financial industry’s problems affecting preparations for future Olympic Games.

“No one has certainties today, but I am not pessimistic for the Olympic Games,” Rogge said.

Funding for the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver, British Columbia, is secure while authorities in London, site of the 2012 Summer Games, have assured the International Olympic Committee they can overcome the worldwide credit crunch.

The over $3 billion that the IOC spends in each 4-year Olympic cycle are not seen as an expense but as an investment.

The infrastructure improvements that the host cities receive provide benefits for the next 4 to 6 decades, and the Olympic Village is sold after the games to private investors.

(More Info: ESPN - Photo Credit: Dr Andy Miah)

Frank McCourt just bought the operating rights to the Los Angelos Marathon from Divine Racing Management. He is already shaking things up, moving the date of the race up from Sunday, March 1^st to President’s Day on Monday, February 16^th for the 2009 running of the race.

As the owner of the Dodgers, McCourt plans on providing all of the financial backing for the race. I think that this makes 2010 a prime year to run the LA Marathon, after McCourt has had an opportunity to get his feet wet and figure out what makes marathons work and makes his sophomore debut into the marathon management scene.

The city council unanimously approved the transfer. Said Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa in a statement earlier today: “Frank McCourt has proven himself a great steward of one of our city’s crown jewels, the Dodgers, and I have great expectations for what he will do with the LA Marathon.”

Any of you readers planning on running next February? If so, let me know so I can look for your names in the results after the race.

(Associated Press)

Researchers at USC, Palo Alto, and the University of Delaware have come to the conclusion that online gamers are fitter than the average American.

Their research involved surveying 7000 players of the Everquest II online role playing game.

The results suggest that adult gamers have an average body mass index of 25.2, compared to the overall American average of 28. The average gamer also engages in vigorous exercise once or twice a week, which the researchers say is more than most Americans. The reasons for this are not obvious, although the team suggest it may be because more educated, wealthier people are attracted to computer games, and these people also tend to take better care of their health.

(Click here to continue reading…)

This Thursday, September 18^th, 2008, Bill Rodgers will be running with the crowd before giving a talk about running and marathons. He is a 4 time winner of both the New York and Boston marathons, and was on the 1976 Olympic Team.

I will be unable to make it this week, so if anybody wants to take some notes and write an article then I’d be more than happy to publish it here at Run to Win.

(More info: Maine Running Company)

Olympic 5,000 and 10,000 meter runner Kara Goucher has announced that she is going to make her marathon debut at New York City this year, and that she has been planning on running it since she rode in the media vehicle during last year’s race.

“Last year when I watched the race first hand, I decided I wanted to run in New York,” said Goucher. “The ING New York City Marathon is one of the most prestigious, and the course is challenging, so I’m excited for my first marathon to be this one. I have a strong emotional connection to New York, as it is where I was born, where my family lives, and where my father passed away. This one will be personal for me and my family.”

(Click here to continue reading…)