Run to Win

Tonight there was perfect running conditions for a good time, so it surprised me that there were still over 100 people that showed up to the starting line this evening! (Perfect running conditions for a good time to me means temperatures in the low to mid 60s and a steady helping of wind and rain. Fun to run in, but not really all that fast.)

The streak continues as 105 people crossed the finish line this evening, with at least 3 or 4 people starting out but deciding to run to the Eastern Prom beach instead of finishing. Over 615 people have run at least one of the 11 races so far this year, and 68 of them have run at least 6 of them and found their way onto the leader board (which has finally seen some changes up near the top!)

Tyler Jasud got his 5^th race of the year under his belt, but he couldn’t quite run down Claton Conrad who won the race in 15:57. Olivia Mackenzie took the women’s race in 20:22.

The start of the race had a little excitement, as Dave Weatherbie got tripped up a quarter to a half mile into the race and hit the ground hard.

David Mann (01:51:29) fell back to 4^th place, as I (01:51:28) overtook his position by 1 second and Scott Gorneau (01:44:50) took over the lead spot with his 6^th completed race.

I went back to running Tabata Intervals this week, although I programmed my watch to correctly keep me going for 4 minutes instead of just 2. Thankfully, I had somebody to do them with this week as Logan Price decided that intervals would be a good use of his time as well. I think that next time I will change the rest to the full 4 minutes and plan on doing 2 intervals instead of 3, because 2 minutes left me pretty tired and I decided to only run 2 of them anyway. We jogged for 5 or 6 minutes after the 2nd interval, and then raced through the finish where I managed to edge Logan out by half a second.

(Full Results – Leader Board)

I’ll admit it. Having never met Curtis Wheeler before, and seeing the pace he set from the very beginning, I fully expected him to blow up within a half mile and fall back to the crowd. Of course, I didn’t find out who he was until after the race, or else I would have known better.

Curtis beat everybody else by over a minute, so he must have taken it a little easy at some point. He was a good 25 to 30 seconds ahead of the chase pack at the first mile. I finally got to meet Tyler Jasud during the race, since he kept catching up to me during my rest intervals and eventually pulled ahead. We had a nice race through to the finish, but he had the stronger kick and edged me out at the line. Well done!
(Click here to continue reading…)

This guest article was written by John Harker, a cardio kickboxing teacher in Santa Cruz, California. I have incorporated Tabata intervals into my workouts for a few years now, and they are a very effective way to get a lot of work done in a very short amount of time.

The Tabata workout is a high-intensity training regimen that produces remarkable results. A Tabata workout is an interval training cycle of 20 seconds of maximum intensity exercise, followed by 10 seconds of rest, repeated without pause 8 times for a total of four minutes. In a group context, you can keep score by counting how many lifts/jumps/whatever you do in each of the 20 second rounds. The round with the smallest number is your score.

Credit for this simple and powerful training method belongs to its namesake, Dr. Izumi Tabata and a team of researchers from the National Institute of Fitness and Sports in Tokyo, Japan. Their groundbreaking 1996 study, published in the journal Medicine and Science in Sports & Exercise, provided documented evidence concerning the dramatic physiological benefits of high-intensity intermittent training. After just 6 weeks of testing, Dr. Tabata noted a 28% increase in anaerobic capacity in his subjects, along with a 14% increase in their ability to consume oxygen (V02Max). These results were witnessed in already physically fit athletes. The conclusion was that just four minutes of Tabata interval training could do more to boost aerobic and anaerobic capacity than an hour of endurance exercise.

Although Dr. Tabata used a mechanically braked exercise cycle machine, you can apply this protocol to almost any exercise. For example, a basic Tabata workout can be performed with sit-ups. The more muscles used the better, so use full knees-bent sit-ups. Sit-up non-stop for 20-second intervals, followed by 10 seconds of rest. Repeat for a total of 8 cycles.

How effective can just 4 minutes of exercise be? (Click here to continue reading…)