This week last year centered around two topics, the world championships in Osaka and trail running basics for beginners.

Ian Parlin and Jamie Anderson gave an excellent Trail Running 101 clinic at a local shoe store, introducing the basic concepts and rules of trail running to the crowd. You can read my notes on the presentation as well as download the original powerpoint slides.

The world championships had a fair bit of media coverage, with constant radio broadcasts and daily television broadcasts on the Versus network and on NBC.

The IAAF coupled the increased media coverage with the first incarnation of their fantasy athletics game.

The heat and humidity was good preparation for this year’s Olympics, but led to quite slow times as Luke Kibet won the men’s marathon in a “pedestrian” 2:15:59.

In other racing news, the L/A Bridge Run was exactly a year ago. I managed to run (slightly) faster and place higher despite not being in as good of 5k shape as I am this year.

This week two years ago, I gave some reasons that running takes practice just like any other sport. I also found the “Athletes Against Doping” website, which contains a lot of information about what substances are banned in each sport and who the governing bodies are.

This week three years ago, I also talked about doping by explaining what EPO was after the furor with Lance Armstrong brought it to attention. Kenenisa Bekele also set the 10k world record with a time of 26:17.53.