The Olympics: taking part is the most important bit...

Foto: www.olympics.org

Next Friday the Olympics Games start in London. In dutch we have a phrase that translates into: 'Taking part is more important than winning'. Nowadays with big money at stake from sponsor contracts (f.e. Usain Bolt with Puma, or Australian 400 meters gold medal winner in 2000 Cathy Freeman with Nike) taking part is no longer enough. Not so for Guor Marial!

Guor, aged 28, is a refugee from South-Sudancurrently living in the US working to become a US citizin
Guor is one of the many victims of the war in Sudan. Kidnapped at the age of 8, he escaped from the forced labour camp to return to his family. Only to be kidnapped once more and again forced to work.

After this he escaped once more and via Egypt travelled to the US. He lost 28 family member in the war and therefore does not want to participate on  behalve of Sudan. However the newly formed South-Sudan does not have an Olympic committee. He successfully applied to take part at the games and he will compete under the Olympic flag (as one of four, the other three being from the Netherlands Antilles).


Guor will start at the marathon  with a PB of 2:12. not very likely he will be taking part to take away a medal but definitely motivated to take part and value being there to be an inspiration for youngsters from the South-Sudan.

Read here one of the many news items on Guor or view the short video.

The Olympic Torch and Chariots of Fire

Rember this one. The scene on the beach in the classic Chariots of Fire?



The Olympic torch was in Scotland last week. There on West Sands Beach in St. Andrews, 20 schoolchildren reenacted this famous scene. It's a beauty!

Wear red and improve your performance

Jessica Ennis in
new kit (source usatoday)

The controversy over the new kit, by Stella McCartney designed for Adidas, for the Olympic sporters form the UK triggered me to look into the meaning of colours. The kit lacks the red from the Union Jack.

Research published in Nature in May 2005 shows that: "Given the undoubted role of other factors, such as skill and strength, it is likely that the red advantage will determine the outcome only in relatively symmetric contests. That is, wearing red presumably tips the balance between losing and winning only when other factors are fairly equal. We found that this is indeed the case: only in contests between individuals of similar ability were there significantly more red than blue winners"

bron: http://www.math.ku.dk/~rolf/RedVsBlue.pdf

For more details read this PDF. The explanation given in this article is evolutionary: Red colouration is a sexually selected, testosterone-dependent signal of male quality in a variety of animals. As for human: When angry humans colour slightly red due to increased blood flow in the skin. Whereas fear is associated with increased pallor in similarly threatening situations. Hence, increased redness during aggressive interactions may reflect relative dominance. And as artificial stimuli can trigger natural stimuli: Red clothing can influence the outcome of contest. As a runner each run you do is in competition with yourself so all the circumstances are the same so deciding to wear red clothing can positively influence your performance. Remember this next time you are in front of your wardrobe wondering what to wear during the marathon or any other run.

Marathon Road; a road movie;p

This short documentary highlights Jason Lehmkule, Andrew Carlson, Matt Gabrielson and Josh Moen of Team USA Minnesota as they train for the 2012 Olympic Marathon Trials.

Lets hope they know "It is al about the journey and not about the destination" because they did not succeed in running in the top three of the trails. Actually: The top three is made up of two quite senior runners with an African background.

First to finish was Meb Keflezighi, born in the African nation of Eritrea but immigrated to the U.S. with his family when he was 12. He won the trials race in a personal-best time of 2 hours, 9 minutes and 8 seconds. Aged 36 he will be 37 when running in London.
Second in 2:09:30 and earning a trip to his second Olympiad was the pre-race favorite, Ryan Hall, 29, who stamped himself as America's fastest marathoner when he ran a 2:04:58 in the 2011 Boston Marathon, placing fourth behind three African runners.
Third was another Africa-born runner, Somalia native Abdi Abdirahman, also breaking 2:10 with a time of 2:09:47. Like Keflezighi, he is, at 34, one of the older practitioners of this physically punishing sport. A three-time Olympian at 10,000 meters, he will be on his fourth Olympic team in London.

The power of social media: over 1M pound raised after death

In last week Londons Marathon Claire Squires died in the final mile of the race. Aged only 30. It could have been just one of the new items that pop up every now and then. A runner who dies while out on the track.

However, as most runners in the London Marathon, Claire was running to raise money. In this case for the Samaritans. She had just raised around 500 pounds on the morning of the race. Nothing out of the ordinary there as well.

But now the story takes of. After her death donations came streaming in, mainly as the news spread due to social media. Up to this moment the figure is up to 1,000,000 pound. Including a contribution of Richard Branson of Virgin. The sponsor of the marathon.

Wanna help? Here is the link to her fundraising site.

Wanna read more? Here are just two flavours of the news as brought by the Daily Mail and the BBC (or just hit google news).

Bold statement from Kenyan Women

Photo: All Athletics

After the clean sweep last Sunday in London there is a bold statement by the Kenyan Women to enter the Olympic race. They want to repeat last Sundays success with a gold, silver and bronze medal during the olympic marathon next summer.
Read more...

There is however one important difference: The Olympic marathon is run on a different course. It is a course that consits of one smaller en three larger loops. Twisting and turning trough the city center. It has 90 turns and the longest straight line they run is 800 meters. Maybe this will help to come up with a surprise winner. A runner that can cope with changes in rythm.

Olympic Marathon Route London 2012

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....

over hundred or not?

Remember I mentioned a 101 year old taking part in London marathon? As it now appears there is some dispute about his age....The Guinness Book of Records gives the men only 94 years due to his date of birth on his NHS papers. His passport states 101!
To me it is still a major achievement finishing a marathon at this age even though it takes him close to 10 hours. Read the story of his life and the dispute in the Guardian.

Running as Art

You might think the title contains a typo and that it should be 'Running is (an) Art'. Which is true as well but to be honest..the title is correct: "Running as Art"
In the London museum Tate Britain you can see a sprinter running by every 30 seconds as a celebration of life. It is an art installation by the artist Martin Creed who once before had an installation of a light bulb swithing on and off in an otherwise empty room. The installation, called "Work No. 850", is on show in the 86-metre neoclassical sculpture galleries of Tate Britain. Imagine the amount of interval training the runners have to do to keep up the schedule for the next four months. The installation is on show untill the 16th of november.
The idea behind the installation is being still represents death so running (sprinting) is the opposite of death and represents life. Nothing new for the runners among us;-)

Creed in the Mirror: "Running is the opposite of being still. If you think about death as being completely still and movement as a sign of life, then the fastest movement possible is the biggest sign of life. So then running fast is like the exact opposite of death: it's an example of aliveness."
In the Telegraph Creed explains the origine of his idea: "In Palermo we went to see the catacombs of the Capuchin monks. We were very late and only had five minutes to see it all before closing time. To do it we had to run. I remember running at top speed with my friends through the catacombs looking desperately left and right at all
of the dead people hanging on the walls in their best clothes, trying our best to see it all... it was a good way to see it. It was that kind of delirious running which makes you laugh uncontrollably when you're doing it. I think it's good to see museums at high speed. It leaves time for other things."

Director Stephen Deuchar of Tate Britain called the work "compelling, simple and lyrical" and "It upsets any preconceived ideas of how to move appropriately through an art space," On its Web site, Tate Britain warns visitors: "For reasons of safety, we ask the public not to run or obstruct the runner."
Wanna know more? Here is a video from youtube with an interview with the artist and clips of the runners, running through the museum:

London marathon is special

While I was improving my personal beste with over an minute in the Rotterdam marathon a lot of people were running theri race in London. London is one of a kind. Some remarkeble feats:

Three finishers within 2:06

Women running their own race starting seperate from the men

A blind runner from West Bromwich has run seven marathons, on seven continents, in seven days, crossing his final finishing line in London.
(see BBC report)

A man from 101 (!) running his first marathon. I saw the interview with him for the start. I could not find if he was among one of the ...

....over 34000 finishers!

Once I know improving my PR is no longer possible I will start among the crouwd in London.

Rotterdam Marathon changes the course

Tomorrow is D-Day for a lot of marathon runners. In the UK thousands of runners (over 35.000 finishers last year) will start in the London marathon and on the other side of the North Sea a smaller amount will start in Rotterdam. Including yours dearly, the author of this blog.
The weather forecast promises to be less extreme than last year (~25degrees centigrade). Only downside is the possibility of Rain

On the website of the marathon of Rotterdam you can see that they changed the course. The loop on the south side of the Maas river is clockwise where in previous years it was counter clockwise. I think this is a good change as one of the narrow stretches of the course is not around the 5K point but around de 22K point when the runners are more spread out.

For the official course Click here for a map in PDF

If you want to compare this years course with the one from last year: look below with the screen dumps from both courses on the Map My Run website: