Gloves for your foot

During last Rotterdam marathon I saw a more senior participant running on some kind of gloves instead of the regular running shoe. I realised that enables you to run kind of bare foot in city environment.

I just came across some information on the 'gloves' from the brand Vibram with the fitting name FiveFingers.
A video review:

Recovery: trust your gut feeling

How do you determine the duration of the recovery periods during an interval training? On your gut feeling according to recently published research findings published in Psychophysiology.

During the research three groups were asked to do a 5 times 1000 interval at 90% effort. Recovery was done by:

recover for teh same duration as the duration of the interval, the work to rest ration (WR)

recover untill the heartrate is below 130 BPM

recover on your feeling

Result: With the heartrate methode the later interval went slower. Based on feeling or the WR method there was no decline in the duration of the intervals. Howerver the recovery periods were shorter with the gut felling method.
I wonder how far the heartrate sank with the recovery periods but the this is not mentioned in the abstractof the report:(

What to do after retiring from prof marathon running?

What to do after you end our marathon carreer? Some end up being trainers, coaches, write books on running etc. In other words they stay in field of running.

Some however start something completely new like Naoko Takahashi, the 2000 olympic marathon winner frm Japan, who started a vegtable farm (see Reuters).

Running with earphone dangerous?

Some people like to run with an i-pod or other musicdevices. This newsreal feature shows that it is not al togehter save to run woth earphones blocking 'outside' noises as you might miss out the odd crashing plane now and then..... It would be funny if it wasn't real....

50 marathons in 50 days

It has been done before. Running a lot to raise a lot of money. This time it is Hugh Williams-Preece from the UK. He started last week in Portugal and will finish in 50 days in downtown London after 50 marathons.
His aim? Raising 30.000 Pound for Marie Curie Cancer Care.
Wanna know more?: click here for the site.
And here to donate your cash.

The Hague goes for a new WR

The Hagues half marathon, the CPCrun, will have a topfield aligned for the upcoming half marathon according to the dutch newspaper AD.

On my Dutch Blog I wrote on an change in the course that probably will make it a faster course. Now with the fast runner Patrick Makau on the starting grid it looks like we are heading for an attack on the resident World Record. Makaus PB is only 19 slower than the World Record Wanjiru ran 3 years ago in the Hague.
With 3 other runners with PBs under the hour and 5 with a time just above the hour this is a very fast field. According to the article another fast runner is to be expected. We wait!

Like Rotterdam as a marathon city (read my previos post) the Hague is one of the top places to see a half marathon.
Like for the marathon I made the same tables for the half marathon. First we notice that there far more cities are in the top 100 of all times for the half marathon than for the whole marathon. So I limite the overview to those with 3 or more entries in the top 100:

And again we come across Rotterdam!

Looking at the course record the Hague leads the list with its world record:
And the same for the top 10 times ever:
Rotterdam only comes in 7th place but to show taht you can do anything with number: I took the average of the 3 best times ever run in these cities:

And yes our own Rotterdam is back up on place 3 (c:

Running into college

What do you get when you make college entry troublesome and give extra credits to people good at sports? Cheating! Check out this report on BCC sport.

Students in China can earn extra credit on college entry exams with good sport results. In this case a time below 2:34 on the Marathon. During the Xiamen International marathon 30 people with times below this limit were disqualified either for

carrying two time-recording chips and thus recording not only their own time

using imposters

using transport on some parts of the course.

I think that might be the effect if you add anything else to sport than just plain competition or your own private battle with the distance and the clock.

Top times in Rotterdam?

In my preperation for Rotterdam this April I was looking back at my Dutch blog and came across this overview with the top ten marathon cities.
This overview is a bit out of date so I started to look for a new overview. Unable to find one I took the top 100 marathon times from the IAAF site.
It resulted in these tabels. First of all I looked at how many times a city is present in the list. This contest is won by London (sorry the tables are in Dutch but I think it is still celar what they show):

Then lets have a look at the track records of the city. Then Rotterdam comes second behind Berlin with its World Record:
Than looking at the top times ever you wonder why other cities still organize marathons as only four realy seam to matter:
Anyhow it is obivous. Rotterdam has a fast track so if I don't succeed in running a personal best I can't blaim the track(c;

Darwin en running?

No, the title is not refering to all the attention Darwin got last year. It has to do with scientific research from the States. Carry on reading.

Early January I posted an article (and youtube clip) on forefoot or heellanding. This previous article also refered to other scientific research on the effect of the straing on the lower body due to heellandings.
This article on BBC News roughly has the same findings but refers to other research. However this research also suggest that wearing cushioned running shoes may have changed the way in which many of us run. A kind of evolution and hence the title!

Forefoot
The researchers used high speedcameras. I cannot embed the footage so please visit the BBC site. The footage shows the impact of a heel strike, the effect of the cushioned landing with shoes and the forefoot strike of barefoot runners.

Hammer
The heel strike is compared with the blow of a hammer with htree times your body weight. Thankfully this is softened by the modern runningshoe.

Efficient
Besides absorbing the impact, it seems that forefoot strike also makes better use of the engery stored in ankle and the arch of the foot. So a more efficient style of running.
Is it al positive? No! The straing on calf muscle and achilles tendon is higher. Swithing to a new runningstyle comes with the risc of injuries.

Topspeed for humans? Fast!!

Last summer every body watched Usain Bolt set two amazing worldrecords. His 9.58 on the 100 meters and his record on the 200 a few days later. His topspeed is around 28 miles per hour. But according to research this is not the limit!

The research from Southern Methodist University in Dallas and the University of Wyoming shows that the limiting factor for the top speed in running is the speed of contraction.
The research found that the limbs are capable of applying much greater ground forces than those present during top-speed forward running.
So the amount of force that can be applied during the short contact between foot and ground is limited by the speed of contraction of a muscle.
From these finding teh researchers conclude that the theoratical topspeed for humans is 35 to 40 miles per hour en possibly even faster.

Published in:
Bundle, M.W., (2009). Mechanical limits to human running speed. Paper to be presented at Symposium on Training Running Speed: A Critical Consideration of Contemporary Practice, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX.
and on dailycalaxy

Trainingschedule of an Olympic Gold Medallist

In the Polish Magazine Bieganie (translated: Running) was a nice historic fact. The 1908 Olympic Marathon winner Johnny Hayes trained as follows:

• every day a 3 mile run
• a longer run was followed by resting the first day en just a walk the second day and a 3 mile run on the third
• this was completed with long marches

As an example of one of these marches....during the Games in London they were bored waiting for the day of teh marathon. The team went on a 30 mile march. An extreme example of a LSD ( Long Slow Distance) run.

He won the marathon in 2:55. Not realy a time for medals nowadays but I would be very proud with a time near the three hours.

If you want to learn more on the history of teh 1908 marathon and the tale behind the marathon distance of 42 kilometer and 195 meters I refer to a nice article on Times online. For example: Hayes wasn't the first to finish but got the gold medall anyway. Why? read on....

Barefootrunnning, Forefoot or heellanding?

Found on Youtube. A video comparing, side by side, running on barefoot and on shoes.

I would say a great add fore barefootrunning.

Better still, the findings from a more scientific appraoch to the subject:

TITEL: The Effect of Running Shoes on Lower Extremity Joint Torques
link to the full article

Objective: To determine the effect of modern-day running shoes on lower extremity joint torques during running.

Results: Increased joint torques at the hip, knee, and ankle were observed with running shoes compared with running barefoot. Disproportionately large increases were observed in the hip internal rotation torque and in the knee flexion and knee varus torques. An average 54% increase in the hip internal rotation torque, a 36% increase in knee flexion torque, and a 38% increase in knee varus torque were measured when running in running shoes compared with barefoot.

Conclusions: The findings at the knee suggest relatively greater pressures at anatomical sites that are typically more prone to knee osteoarthritis, the medial and patellofemoral compartments. It is important to note the limitations of these findings and of current 3-dimensional gait analysis in general, that only resultant joint torques were assessed. It is unknown to what extent actual joint contact forces could be affected by compliance that a shoe might provide, a potentially valuable design characteristic that may offset the observed increases in joint torques.

I am almost sorry it is to cold outside a the moment to go running barefoot (there is snow and a freezing wind with a chillfactor bringing down the temp to minus 12 dergrees centigrade)

Running with a New Year''s Eve hangover

A new year!

May it be happy and a good year for running!

Get an early start and run right away on the first day of the new year. The first training of the year down the pocket! ...or not?
Did you have a few drinks to many last night? Do you suffer from a hangover from all the bubbles? You might think of skipping a training. Your hangover headache is one of the results from the dehydrating effect from alcohol. Kind of the same effect as a exertion headache.
Anyway, if you do have a hangover, consider skipping the training as starting a training while dehydrated is not very sensible. Actually, getting a hangover is not so sensbile to start with. So start being sensible. 1) Skipp the training today, 2) drink plenty fluids without alcohol, 3) do your training tomorrow and 4) If you realy are a runner: stay away from to many alcohol next time so it won't interfere with you running;-)

And...lets hope that compare to 2009 I am more productive on my english blog in 2010. But that shouldn't be to hard;-)