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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