Run to Win

This week last year touched on a whole range of subjects, from weight lifting to drugs to accidental cheaters and how purposefully bonk during a workout.

• I shared my experience of lifting weights after breaking my ring finger. It had had a week to heal, and while there were no rings that were going to fit on it at that point, I managed to lift and control the bars all right. In other weight lifting news, I found a new animated push-up demonstration.
• Continuing on the sleep theme, I suggested that you never go to bed hungry. You won’t sleep well, and you’ll have trouble getting up and being useful in the morning.
• I also wondered why they only make belts sized for people larger than myself? I still have to spend way too much time finding a belt that isn’t at least 3 inches too long.
• Brian Morrison unfortunately had a little help maintaining forward motion in his last quarter mile of his Western States 100 Mile win. Even more unfortunately, he was disqualified for it and the win was given to Graham Cooper. A race of 99.75 miles was lost due to just a little too much trouble in that last 0.25 miles. That has to be rough. In other large sports event news, Jan Ullrich was barred from the Tour de France following suspicions in the Spanish doping scandal.
• In the performance side, I discussed research about whether or not bonking during training was a worthwhile pursuit or not. Bonking is the process of running out of fuel during a workout.
• I pondered whether or not to pony up the $100 after the Endurance 50 registration opened. I wound up getting hurt and being unable to run, so I’m glad that I decided that it wasn’t worth it for me.
• Two years ago was centered on marathoning, such as a book review and a website review, my list of marathon candidates for Autumn, and my discovery that I was near meeting the requirements to join the 50 States Marathon Club. I also won the Literacy 5k, which I believe has since folded.

Dr. Bente Klarlund Pederse of the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, believes that we should spend some of our time training in a glycogen-depleted state in order to maximize our training benefits to increase production of the immune system agent Interleukin-6.

In other words, do some workouts underfueled and make yourself bonk in training.

Pedersen provided some validation for this hypothesis through a clever study in which she had subjects exercise one leg once daily and the other leg twice every other day. The total amount of training was equal for both legs, but the leg that was trained twice every other day was forced to train in a glycogen-depleted state in that afternoon workout. After several weeks of this, subjects engaged in an endurance test with both legs. Pedersen found that the leg trained twice every other day increased its endurance 90 percent more than the other leg.

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