Health and Fitness

Each year since 1995, Running USA has documented the ‘state of running’ in terms of road races. They have looked at the total number of finishers of official races, as well as how those numbers are distributed by race, age, and gender. For every one of the last 20 years except 2003, there have been new records set in every aspect of road races as covered by Running USA. They released the numbers for 2012 last week, and as that was my first year of participating in road races I was intrigued to see the numbers. Here are a few…

This is going to sound a bit cynical and perhaps it is: American culture has become obsessed with the possibility of actions without consequence followed by a ‘quick fix’ to undo whatever mess we’ve made. I have a picture of my mother at a bicentennial celebration in 1976 and she was rail-thin, thinner than I had ever seen her. She had problems for years losing weight after my younger sister was born, so her doctor gave her diet pills to help. In the mid-70s ‘diet pills’ were basically speed. She lost weight way too fast because the speed diet pills…

Many of us grew up with some specific ideas about soda, coffee and caffeine in general: mainly that caffeine is a diuretic; it will therefore flush fluids from your system (make you urinate) and dehydrate you. Therefore, any of those types of drinks are bad choices for athletes at any point around a workout. But like so many other things we learned growing up, there is much about that ‘common knowledge’ that is incorrect and misleading. Let’s take a look at a few reasons why perhaps your next workout drink should have caffeine!

Tomorrow (June 5th) is the fifth annual National Running Day, but is the first one I have known about or participated in running. The purpose is to get people inspired to get out in run in as many different ways as there are runners. So whether it is a street run, pounding around a track, doing trails or relays or group runs or whatever, it is a great opportunity for distance runners to reaffirm our commitment and for new or occasional runners to get themselves started with a new training plan or goal. According to Running USA’s media director Ryan…

As I went out for a run last week, I was fresh off cashing in a gift card at my local Dick’s Sporting Goods (and loads of coupons), and I was flush with cool new stuff. It occurred to me that I was outfitted with HUNDREDS of dollars in gear – minimal shoes, high-tech socks, absurdly expensive Dri-Tech shorts, Dri-Tech compression shirt, SpiBelt, Garmin FR-10 GPS watch, and even a $25 high-tech running hat! The only thing that wasn’t exorbitant, was the $0.30 of band-aids to prevent ‘shirt front bleeds’, if you get my drift. Contrast this with what I…