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This overview is a bit out of date so I started to look for a new overview.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.