running

I just came across this podcast and it is so cool, I had to share it. Coolrunning.com has had a "couch-to-5K" running program for some time.

It takes a sensible approach to running and is really amazing.

hello, just discovered this site! :)

suppose i'll start with what i did this morning.. seems the most sensible thing to do.

Ran for 2 miles (15 minutes) under starlight - a great opportunity to see falling stars and satellites - and then walked for 30 minutes.

I usually do that every morning. Hope to eventually run farther as the year goes on, and if it keeps at such a warm temperature here in Iowa it's entirely possible.

from fitsugar.com

Here's the deal. This actually happened. No joke. I was out running the other day and some guy yelled from his porch, "Hey baby. Why are you running away? Why don't you run over here?" I wanted to run a mac truck over him.

This is a great site - just found it today and have been downloading various fitPod mixes. I was looking for other beginners to chat with and get some motivation from but the only blog I could find was Andrews....? Am I missing something? At any rate, I used to run and in the past, have completed 4 half marathons (nothing spectacular time-wise, but hey, I did them!). Then I hurt my knee and had to stop running...couldn't find anything else to take its place, got depressed... and gained a HUGE amount of weight. Now I'm facing the gargantuan task of starting from zero. I can't believe I got to this point...so now I have started to walk and in a week or so will begin to incorporate some running "breaks" into my walk, and so on. If there is anyone else out there looking for someone to lean on, chat with, or just find some inspiration/motivation, give me a holler.

Mary Wittenberg, the 44-year-old president of New York Road Runners, is a fast, strong and experienced runner. But she races best, she says, when she runs just behind Witold Bialokur. He can run 10 kilometers, or 6.2 miles, in less than 44 minutes and he is so smooth and controlled. Dorothy Bower, 78, has had to give up her walks around the grounds of her assisted living residence. “He’s like a metronome with his pacing,” Ms. Wittenberg says. “I am often struggling to keep up with him and it’s a good day when I do.” While Mr. Bialokur’s performance would be the envy of most young men, he is not young. Mr. Bialokur is 71.

Die-hard runners can choose from an assortment of tools to track their progress: sport watches, GPS units and even cellphones with maps and fitness features. Now, a new, run-mapping website has joined the tech melee. At http://www.mapmyrun.com , which launched last summer, runners and walkers can use Google-mapping technology to plot their routes with a few mouse clicks.

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By Adam Kelinson
TrailRunner magazine

For me, part of the joy of running is going with my best friend, Maya, a mixed Shiba-Lab breed. Dogs are great companions out on the trail, can run long distances on consecutive days and never complain. Dogs do, however, rely on you to make sure they are in top shape and eager to go every time you lace up. Here are some guidelines to help keep your dog running.

Make sure you have the right breed and age. Most dogs are sprinters or "stop-start" runners like Greyhounds and terriers. These dogs would be great on wind-sprint days or for shorter runs lasting no more than three miles. Mixed breeds, Labradors and retrievers are great distance dogs.

"Agewise, wait until your dog is at least a year old," says Debbie Sunken, D.V.M., from the Trilby Companion Animal Hospital in Fort Collins, Colorado. "Puppies' bones and joints cannot handle the stress of running."

By Scott Dogget
Los Angeles Times

LAST week's thundershowers gave me all the reason I needed to slip on a pair of Vibram FiveFingers, the strange-looking new slip-on shoe with individual toe compartments that's intended to combine a barefoot feel with the protection of a hiking boot.

The shoes seem best suited for light-duty use, but Vibram is marketing them for canoeing, kayaking, canyoneering and sport fishing.

Canyoneering, as in hiking rocky trails and crisscrossing rivers? I'd have expected nothing less from Vibram, which makes 32 million soles annually for more than 1,000 footwear brands.

By GINA KOLATA
New York Times

INDIANAPOLIS — Steve Spence arrived in Tokyo on an August day in 1991 to run a world championship marathon. He knew right away that it would be bad.

The city was hot and humid and the air so polluted, Mr. Spence said, that he felt as though he could not take a full breath. His adviser, David Martin, an exercise physiologist, agreed. They were, Dr. Martin said, “the most challenging conditions that have ever been reported for world championships.”

But Mr. Spence, who is now the head cross-country coach at Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania, had trained long and hard for the race, the International Association of Athletics Federations’ World Championships. He had run so much that a five-minute-per-mile pace “felt like a jog,” he said. But his training had been so exhausting that he had to sleep 10 hours a night and nap 2 hours every afternoon. And his schedule, running 140 miles a week, was so onerous that he needed 5,000 calories a day to sustain himself.

“I got sick of eating,” he said.

Yesterday, I loaded up djsteveboy's "Rainy Day Run" on my nano (yes, it's been raining in the desert) and went for a recovery run in the hills near my home. Afterward, I loaded it up to motionbased.com

Recovery is a wonderful thing. It gives our bodies a chance to repair, of course, but it also is comfortable and allows the mind to wander while working out ... you don't have to worry about where your next breath of air is coming from. Anyway, I used the time to think about how to teach you to create a training plan that works for you. Remember, this is all about YOU.

I'm not a runner. I'm a rock climber who runs occaisionally for fitness--speciifcally cardio, and keeping my body fat low. My understanding is that if you run more than 20 or 30 minutes 3 times a week, you are running for reasons other than fitness. If that is correct, most of the music you find on fitPod, ironically, isn't really geared for fitness running. At any rate, fixed BPM mixes of an hour or more duration are of little use to me. I typically run for about 25 minutes preceeded by walking to warm-up, and followed by walking to cool-down. I can walk to just about any BPM. For my running, I'm finding it helpful to organize my favorite running music into two playlists in iTunes. One list has 120-140 BPM music. The other is for when I kick it into high gear, which for me right now is 160-180 BPM. Sometimes I may start with the something from the slow list for a few minutes, kick it up to the high list, and then back to the slow list at the end. Or I may gradually build faster and faster. If I can ever figure out how to do it, I'll post my two lists later as fitlists. A couple of the Nike iMixes on the iTunes music store are organized in this way--but I haven't sprung for them yet. (In fact, reading the comments posted re the treadmill workout is what originally led me to Steveboy and through him to this site) SteveBoy, if you are listening, I'd love to see some shorter mixes that mix it up, BPM-wise. Hopefully this doesn't all come across as a complaint. I really appreciate the music, and this site.

MBT shoes are made to re-create the feeling of walking barefoot.

By Hilary E. MacGregor, Los Angeles Times. FOR $235 (and up!) you can buy a funny looking pair of shoes to make you stand up straight, work your "core," elevate and shape your buttocks and, perhaps ladies, burn some extra calories to eliminate those dimpled saddlebags. Using technology named after the Masai warriors of East Africa, who have long, lean bodies and superb posture, the shoes are meant to re-create the feel of walking barefoot for miles in desert sand.

I've only recently started running (about a year ago) I'm fortunate to have some great scenery but I've found that I can be pretty picky about the music I listen to. The one playlist that I've never switched from is my worship playlist- it's great I could listen all day.

Now if only I could run that long...
Ed Palma