Runners' World: These Boots Were Made For...?

Why Runners Might Want to Try Walking in Minimalist Shoes
Alison Goldstein/Runners' World, 21 Dec 2018

As runners, we are encouraged to do a whole load of “prehab” activities: core work, strength sessions, stretching, and foam rolling, among others.

Sometimes, though, life gets in the way. Our other commitments—jobs, family, friends, even other hobbies—can encroach on that time, and we inevitably end up taking the gamble: We skip some of those injury prevention tasks, cross our fingers, and hope for the best as we set out for our runs.

So wouldn’t it be nice if something we already do as part of our daily lives—say, for example, simply walking—could double as an injury prevention tactic?

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Outside - Yes, You Need This

5 Awesome Key-Chain Bottle Openers 
Graham Averill/Outside. 15 Dec 2018 

We’re big fans of the multitool and the pocketknife, but another useful tool to keep handy is a bottle opener. We’ve found five bottle openers that are small enough to be unnoticeable on your key chain but so beautiful that you’ll look for an excuse to use them....

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Inner Voice - Not Traditionally Associated

A Wonderful Place
Rob Watson/Inner Voice, 19 Dec 2018

I like music even more than I like running. I don’t play an instrument, I’ve never had the gear, and I’ve never had the ability. But I’ve always been really into the punk rock/hardcore scene. I can’t explain it. I’ve been going to punk rock shows since I was 13 years old. Growing up, none of my friends were athletes, so I was the odd one out, but we were more connected through the music side of things. There’s just something about going to a concert that brings out a certain side of me...

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NYTimes - Anything You Can Do She Can Do Better

The Woman Who Outruns the Men, 200 Miles at a Time
Rebecca Byerly/NY Times, December 5, 2018

Courtney Dauwalter specializes in extremely long races. But her success in winning them has opened a debate about how men’s innate strength advantages apply to endurance sports...

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Outside - Trots and Beer

What Strava Tells Us About the State of Running in 2018
Martin Fritz Huber, Outside/November 29, 2018

This week, Strava, the activity-sharing network favored by endurance athletes and those who stalk them, released its annual “Year in Sport” report, which offers insights on data collected from over 36 million users in 195 countries. Even though Strava is looking to broaden its reach—for better or worse, roller skiers and kitesurfers can now upload their activities on the app—runners and cyclists continue to dominate...

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Runners' World - Better Run For Shade?

How to Handle Running in the Heat
Richard A. Lovett/Runners' World, Jul 26

However many bad-weather-will-make-you-tougher quotes we collect, there’s still one aspect of weather that most of us do our best to dodge: heat. In fact, many of us do everything we can to avoid it: running at dawn or in the late evening or even seeking shelter on treadmills in air-conditioned gyms. It is, however, possible to run in heat.

In the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, Portuguese distance star Maria Fernanda Moreira Ribeiro set an Olympic 10,000-meter record under hot, humid conditions (82 degrees with 60 percent relative humidity, according to historical data from Weather Underground). In the process, she posted a time of 31:01.63—one that 16 years later would still have put her in the top 10 in the much more temperate conditions of the London Olympics. The bottom line is that the human body is remarkably adaptable to heat. Its ability to adapt to high temperatures is faster and more dramatic than its ability to adjust to any other environmental stress that nature can throw at us, such as altitude or cold...

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Outside - Two-Hour Smart

Wisdom From the World's Best Marathoner
Martin Fritz Huber//Outside, Feb 9 2018

Eliud Kipchoge, the Olympic marathon champion, gave an address last November at the Oxford Union Society, a 200-year-old institution that touts itself as the “most famous debating society in the world.” Though there was no debating as such, attendees nonetheless got to hear two distinct perspectives on marathon running.

The first came from Kipchoge, winner of seven consecutive world-class marathons (and counting), who gave listeners some insight into his training philosophy in his characteristically understated style. The odds-on favorite to win the London Marathon in April spoke with quiet authority about the importance of consistency and discipline before ceding the lectern to David Bedford, the one-time world record holder in the 10,000 meters, who said he was certain that Kipchoge would retire as the “greatest distance runner the world had ever seen.”

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Runners World - Whoops.

Hardrock 100 Leader Disqualified for Taking Water Outside of Official Aid Station
Andrew Dawson, Runners' World//Jul 23

Less than 10 miles from the finish line, the race leader for the Hardrock 100—a 100-mile endurance race throughout steep and evolving elevation—was disqualified after receiving aid outside of an aid station.

 Xavier Thévenard, 30, of France, was leading the grueling race when he accepted water and ice from friends on the course outside of a designated aid station, according to the The Durango Herald. The race’s rule state that, there is “no stashing of supplies along the course and no accepting aid except within 400 yards of a designated aid station.”

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NY Times - I Wanna Be Accelerated...

Nike Says Its $250 Running Shoes Will Make You Run Much Faster. What if That’s Actually True?//Kevin Quealy and Josh Katz, New York Times, 18 July 2018

If a running shoe made you 25 percent faster, would it be fair to wear it in a race? What about 10 percent? Or 2 percent? The Nike Zoom Vaporfly 4% — a bouncy, expensive shoe released to the public one year ago — raises these questions like no shoe in recent distance running history.Nike says the shoes are about 4 percent better than some of its best racing shoes, as measured by how much energy runners spend when running in them. That is an astonishing claim, an efficiency improvement worth almost six minutes to a three-hour marathoner, or about eight minutes to a four-hour marathoner.And it may be an accurate one, according to a new analysis by The New York Times of race data from about 500,000 marathon and half marathon running times since 2014...

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Outside: How to Save That Third Sock

How to Survive the Most Frigid Winter Runs
Get the formula right and you'll never have to resort to the treadmill again
Alex Hutchinson, Outside/Jan 5 2018


The recent frigid temperatures hovering over the Northeast meant that my New Year’s Eve run was (as I noted on Twitter) a “three-sock run.” I was surprised to discover that quite a few people—even men—couldn’t figure out where the third sock would go. It was a reminder that dressing for winter running is an art born of hard-earned experience. Forget the third sock once and you’ll never forget it again...


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