Happy New Year!

A new year is about to start. New plans for the running season are taking shape. Like for example the ambition for my spring marathon this year. According to some calculators such as this one on chatnrun I should be able to make it under the 3 hours and 30 minutes!
Most likely it will be Rotterdam where I will run. However the two previous attempts where dissaters with an end time over 4 hours. Maybe I have to relax a little bit in the months leading up to Rotterdam but I like to run the city pier city run. So that will be on my schedule most likely as well as the Bruggenloop to start with.
Other ideas for 2008? Staying free of injuries and a more regular contributions to this english part of my blog. For now.....

Lose weight, run faster

Every runner has his own reason for running, Roughly you can divide it into two categories
1: Running for the exercise burning calories, being healthy, being outside instead of in the gym, etc.
2: Running for the performance: Further and Faster
Most runners know you’ll get reason one for free if you start working on number 2.
On one of the blogs on complete running I found this table which also shows that the reverse is true. If you loose some weight you will gain speed. According to research 2 seconds on a mile:

Unfortunately no link is present to the research that resulted in this table. There should be some optimum minimum weight. However I would not go for this optimum. Most top runners look like a running skeleton wrapped in a skin and nothing less. For me, and I think for most recreational runners, this is a bit over the top. So I stick to my current weight and try to gain these second with a little more trainingeffort!
Added on 21st of june: I found a nice calculator that gives an indication of the effect of weight on your performance. The results are in line with those of the table above.