Motivational Speeches:

One of the great moments in sport history was when the US Hockey team defeated the Soviet team in the 1980 Winter Olympics at Lake Placid, New York. Dubbed the "Miracle on Ice" legendary hockey coach Herb Brook take a bunch of college hockey players and does the impossible.

Being the 2010 Olympics are going on now I thought it only fitting to provide a little motivation via one of the great moments in sports.

Enjoy!

Video of Speech

Quote of the Day:

"Sometimes the moments that challenge us the most...define us"

-Spirit of the Marathon

Innovations in Treadmills:

I just wanted to quickly post that I have recently discover a few innovations in treadmill that, in my opinion, greatly increase the running experience.

1. Touch Screen multi-media screen built into the treadmill. Fairly easy to use even when running at higher speeds.

2. ipod friendly- I recently got an itouch and it hooks right into the touch screen of the treadmill and I can access and control all the music and videos on my ipod.

3. The ability to hide information on the screen. Up until now I really never cared too much about not being able to see how many miles I ran or how long. However, since I have been doing a lot of miles on the treadmill lately I find that it does help to not have that mileage counter square in your face. This touch screen allows you to hide time, mileage, calories or even change and display different information.

Well that is my plug for the treadmills they have at the gym now and for some reason most people prefer the other ones, so they are alway open. Good news for me.

No that is not actually the picture of the ones they have at the gym.

Product Reviews:

I should mention that I don't recommend racing flats to most runners because if you have not trained properly they will greatly increase your chance of injury. The marginal benefits from a lighter shoe are not worth the increased rick of injury.

Here are a few links to more information about the

Brooks Green Silence

Skins Travel and Recovery Tights

I will do a follow up post when I have had a chance to use these products a bit more and provide a more thorough review.

Inspirational Video:

Hear is a very cool video of Paul Ereng's 800m indoor World Record(at the time).

Enjoy!

Video

The Barefoot Running Debate at Runner's World

The debate on barefoot running goes on. I am far more in the barefoot benefits team, but here is an interesting interview with two people on both ends of the argument.

Enjoy!

The Barefoot Running Debate at Runner's World

Lactic Threshold Workout:

Here is my workout for the lactic threshold run I did on Tuesday so you can get an idea of were my heart rate is.

Garmin Connect -
Activity Details for 9 miles total 4 miles LT

New Gear!!

I am generally not the type to go out and spend too much money on the latest gear, running gadgets or apparel but I did just pony up some cash for running tights. Yes running tights...but not just any tights, these compression recovery tights from Skins are supposed to have similar effects to icing when recovering for a race, hard workout or long flights stuck on an airplane.

So how do they work, well full discloser that I have yet to receive them yet so I will want to post a review until I have had a chance to try them out. The general concept behind compression tights or any compression apparel is that it provides pressure on certain muscle areas to prevent swelling and help promote blood flow. While there is a lot of great studies and information on the benefits of compression wear for recover reason, which is what my new tights will be for, evidence on the benefits of wearing compression apparel during a race or activity is spotty at best.

So I shelled out $120 in hopes that these new tights will aid in my recovery, reduce the effects of jet lag on your body and reduce the amount of times I have to sit in a tub of ice. I did do some research and read some reviews on the different tights and these seemed to be the best. Skins Travel & Recovery compression tights, others that I considered were from Zoot and 2XU but Skins seemed to fit my needs the best.

Training Day #2

Yesterday was my first hard day of training, I did 9 miles total and 4 of the 9 at my lactic threshold (LT). Generally that is about 85%-90% of your max heart rate. Since I don't know exactly what my max heart rate is the general rule is 220 minus your ages which puts me at 195, but I think mine is a bit higher than that. So I cruised along at about 185 which was challenging but seemed about right, for me on a treadmill at about 1.5%-2.0% incline is about 10.0-10.5 mph or a 6:00-5:43 minute mile pace, not too bad.

Ok, enough numbers all in all I felt pretty good for only my 2nd day of official training and I also discovered something worse than icing my legs, which involves me filling my tub with icy water and sitting in it for 5-10 minutes. It is icy during the winter, yes it is exponentially worse to get in a tub of ice when you just came in from 10 degree weather, but you can't deny the benefits of icing.

For those of you wondering why I would subject myself to this and what benefits could justify such an act...I'll tell you. Icing your legs helps to prevent swelling and promote blood flow to muscles which have just been broken down by your workout. This helps them recover more quickly and greatly reduces soreness the next day.

There is a silver lining to icing in the dead of a Minnesota winter, there is plenty of snow outside to grab and through in the tub or freeze a few milk jugs outside without taking up freezer space.

Sad that for at least a few weeks if not months out of the year it is warmer in my freezer than it is outside.

First Day of Training

(That's not me by the way)

It is the first day of my official marathon training program for 2010. Yes, I did manage to find a training program that hopefully will help me break into the 2:30's and beyond. It is definitely a challenging program and peaks in weekly mileage of around 85 miles but is consistently up in the 70's and 80's for weekly totals.

Today was an easy 6 mile run, which I used as a recover run from my fairly hard 11mile run on Sunday and my week of inactivity while in Mexico city last week. The program is from the book Advanced Marathoning by Pete Pfitzinger and Scott Douglas. I have only read about 1/3 of it but it provides a lot of great info for serious marathoners and is very specific to marathoning and is a very scientific approach to training. I will post a review once I have finished reading it.