Seen on TV: The Truth about Food

Yesterday the Belgian television showed a BBC documentry: 'The Truth About Food' (see BBC site). Yesterdays episode had the subtitle 'How to be the Best' (site from this episode). This episode had some nice topics for runners.
The diea from the programm is to anwser questions about food by doing some experiments. The next questions were interesting for runners:
Grazing Vs Bingeing? (see clip)
Is there a way to eat your food so you can perform better? Could eating little and often be better than having three square meals?
Eating little and often makes you more productive because a square meal drwas your blood towards your stomic and bowels leaving you with less energy for your work. Everybody know the famous lunchdip;-)
Carb Power? (see clip)
Two genetically identical teams battle it out to see what’s better for long endurance activities – a diet high in carbohydrates or a diet packed full of protein and fat. Runners knwo the answer: a diet high in carbohydrates.
Is just tasting carbohydrates enough?
A strange question but the answer is yes. Apparently you have receptors on you tongue that makes you releasing energy by just tasing carbohydrates. This part of the documentry is not available online:-(
Meat to Beat? (see clip)
The filmmakers convinced six staunch vegetarians to embrace the carnivore way for eight weeks to test whether they would become stronger athletes by eating meat. Did it work? Fortunate for the vegatarians amonst us: No there was statsically relevant improvement in their strength. SO you can keep combining your healthy running with the healthy vegetarian way of life.

Other episodes in the series are a.. 'how to be healthy' and 'how to be sexy'. The first one can be relavant for runners. The second....well with our athletic bodies we don't need advice on that front;-)

Shoe laces

On the My Asics forum (dutch part) a runner is complaining about bad circulation in her feet during running. One of the responses suggests the use of an extra loop in the laces near the top holes. I think most runners are familiar with 'the loop' but as it is difficult to descripe I use an image to explain what to do.

In the left image you see the right shoe which has its laces in the normal fasion. The left shoe uses the loop. So instead of crossing over with the lace to the other side of the shoe for the last hole stay on the same side and loop back trough the top hole (outside in) and than cross back to the other side where you pull the lace trough the loop.
The right image shows the loop 'in action' with tied shoelaces.

In this way you can vary the tention of the laces on the top of your foot and you bring the knot a little bit lower. Most shoes, these Brooks as well, have an additional hole that you can use. This gives you plenty of possibilities to vary the way you tie your laces. So experiment a little to find out which configuration is the most comfortable for you.