Bolt and Shoelaces

From time to time it happens that I have to redo my shoelaces while running. Sometimes it is becouase they became undone. Sometimes is it because that get to tight later on in the run. It is good to know it happens even to the best of the world. I expect that everyone has seen the images of Usain Bolt winning in Beijing and setting an new world record with his shoelaces undone!

As this picture from the Reebok Grand Prix Saturday, June 2, 2007, in New York shows this is not an incident. Bolt ran the 200meter. Check out his laces of the left shoe (again):

Tis blijkbaar toch moeilijk, vetersstrikken....

What a race!

6.69 over 100meters from stand still. It's amazing. And you could easily tell Usain Bolt just went for the gold because in his last 10 meters he was already slowing down and leaning back. It is obvious that he wants to keep some margin so he can improve his world record again in one of the well paid grand prix races were running a world record comes with a nice bonus.

No we can look forward to a interesting 200meters.

Countdown...

A few more hours and the real fire works will start in the Birdsnest stadium of Beijing: The 100m final for men where Bolt, Powell and Gay will fight over the medalls. On the BBC News site a nice report from Jamaica.
Mind you both Powell and Bolt made it to the semi final as well as a third Jamaican: Micheal Frater...

The Making of Me: Colin Jackson

Last night on BBC you could have seen the documentry "The Making of Me: Colin Jackson". The serie challenges scientists to explain what makes certain people stand out of the crowd. In this episode: What makes Colin Jackson so special making him the top athlete that he was. Unfortunately the series is not available on BBC i player.
Therefore I try to summarize it for you. First of all for those who do not know Colin Jackson. He was, on the 110meters hurdles, two time worldchampion, twice second, once third, four times european champion and once second in the Olympics (Seoul). Barcelona should have brought his Olympic triumph but in the final he hit the third, fourth and final hurdle and stumbled on almost falling over the finish line in sixth place. One year later however he set a new world record that lasted voor 13 years (the race on youtube).
This video is his world record race:

More recent achievements are on the dance floor in BBC's Strictly Come Dancing.

Now about "The Making of Me": The documentry looks at the various aspects that might explain why Colin was succesfull:

• His genetics and partly Jamaican origin: It appears the top 20 sprinters come from either the North America's or the Carabean and mainly Jamaica
• His upbringing and environment that enabled him to explore and exploit his talents to the full
• His ability to focus and concentrated under pressure before a start shutting out the public (There is a nice quote from his dancing partner telling he showed the same attitude before going on the floor in Strictly come Dancing
• His ability to deal with setbacks. A test showed negative images stimulated his part of the brains that are generally linked to pleasant images. It appears that with every negative experience he turn is into something positive.
• His muscular structure: as might be expected he has more fast fibres (I think white muscle tissue?) than slow fibres (red?) but also an unussual amount of super fast fibres (something I never heard of before) 25% in contrast to the average 2% in other athletes....

Keep an eye out if the series comes your way or will be repeated on the BBC. It is worthwile to watch.

Start with a bang

It is hard to believe but in Beijing they will use an ordinary starting gun. One that just makes al lot of noise and nothing else. No signal to electronics and loudspeakers behind the runners according to this article on the of New Scientist.

Everybody knows the loudspeakers are meant to get the starting signal to all runners at the same time. Without them the runner on the inside track will hear the gun before the runner on the outside track. This difference might be as much as 150 millisecond on a 4x100m relay race where the runners are a long way apart.

Except that the sound needs time to travel to the runnner on the outside track there are two more effects that come into play:
1) the runner on the ouside track is faced with a 'bad start' which will not help in running a relaxed race. A tensed up runner is usualy not the best runner;-)
2) the extra decibels from the bang of the gun will help to get out of the starting blocks faster as research has shown...(I doubt if the kids in the picture get anywhere;-) frightened as they are by the bang of teh gun)

One of the researchers dealing with this topic is Jesus Dapena. If you browse to his research topics you find he also developped a model that takes into account the wind and the airdensity (high level tracks should give faster times that sealevel tracks due to the difference in air density and the lower amount of oxygen has no effect on a 100 meter run)....where was this kind of research when I went to university and the only models I worked on were wingstructures...

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: