Core Power Blog » marathons

Quick Tip of the Day: Don’t Be So Hard on Yourself

Anders Porter — Fri, 31 Aug 2012 12:00:19 +0000

Don’t be so hard on yourself… Playing down your accomplishments can be detrimental. Jason Bahamundi, of Cook Train Eat Race reminds us to be proud of what we do after EVERY workout.

Celebrate your accomplishments and don’t downplay and therefore downgrade them by saying negative things about them. Statements such as: I ONLY did 3 miles have a long lasting negative effect on your mind. I just did 3 miles and I feel great about it! will have a much more positive, lasting effect on your psyche!

Recently have a workout that didn’t quite go the distance that you wanted it to? Share it with us and let us know what you did to “get over” it!

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Jason Bahamundi is a vegetarian endurance super athlete and Core Power fan who doesn’t know the meaning of the words ‘limits’ or ‘cannot.’ You can follow him on Twitter and check out his adventures at CookTrainEatRace.com.

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VIDEO: Tyler McCandless, Training to Defend Kauai Marathon Title

Anders Porter — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 04:00:17 +0000

Core Power athlete and guest tipster Tyler McCandless is heading back to Kauai today, to get settled in before he takes on the Kauai Marathon on Sunday, this year hoping to defend his 2011 title – a victory with which he set a course record of 2:23:21. This year, he’s shooting to break that record again!

We caught up with him in Boulder, CO, this past weekend, and here’s what he had to say about how his training has been going as race day nears:

We’ll be paying close attention to the race, so make sure you’re following us and Tyler on Twitter!

Good luck Tyler!

Tip of the Day: Slow Down, Cool Down

Anders Porter — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 11:44:13 +0000

Today we have a tip of the day from professional triathlete Doug MacLean:

After seeing so many athletes struggle with the heat in races, even most recently at the Boston Marathon, it’s time to review a general pacing guideline for racing in the heat: if your heart rate is rising unusually high, or if you feel like you’re overcooking… SLOW DOWN! It may seem like a good idea to keep pushing, but all you’ll do is continue to raise your body temperature and dig a deeper hole. It’s important to slow down and re-hydrate (walking at aid stations can be a huge help) to allow your core temperature to return to normal levels. After your body temp drops a bit, then you can get back to runnin’ fast!

Core Power user Doug MacLean is a pro triathlete and triathlon coach. You can follow Doug on Twitter and learn more about him on his website.

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Is Boston really that slow?

Anders Porter — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 17:04:58 +0000

Some are calling it the greatest marathon of all time, others are saying it was simply a another great effort in an era where sub 2:06 marathons are expected.

In case you missed it, 21-year-old Robert Cheruiyot of Kenya won yesterday’s Boston Marathon in 2:05.52, absolutely annihilating the old course record of 2:07.14. Perhaps what’s even more impressive is how he did it. The lead pack went through the halfway point on course record pace. They’re going to fade, right? Well, pretty much everyone did except for Cheruiyot. In the second half of the race which includes the infamous Newton Hills he actually sped up (threw in some 4:35 miles) and won the race by a minute and a half.

This race was of course great for the sport but also will help redeem the Boston Marathon. In the past several years, the elite fields have been soft which has caused questioning of whether the oldest marathon should still be given World Major status. Additionally, Cheruiyot’s time has opened up discussion of whether Boston is truly a slow course.

If you’ve run Boston leave a comment below and share your experience. Do you agree that it’s an especially slow course?

And of course a big congrats to all the Boston finishers!

You look good for being 2500 years old

Anders Porter — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 20:34:19 +0000

Tomorrow the 114th Boston Marathon will take place. It’s also more or less the 2,500 year anniversary of the Battle of Marathon, the event which birthed the marathon. Of course, the messenger who ran from Marathon to Athens died shortly after running the 26.2 miles between these two Greek cities. But that’s not really the point.

The point is: Happy Birthday Marathon!

Tomorrow’s race should be a good one for both elite and amateur runners. The forecast is ideal for marathon running, high of 58 degrees and as always there will be thousands of fans lining the course – in Boston not too many people work on Patriot’s Day.

On the men’s side, defending champ, Deriba Merga of Ethiopia appears to be the favorite. Defending women’s champion Salina Kosgei of Kenya headlines the women’s field.

Wish you had more leg speed? Try striders

Anders Porter — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 19:21:35 +0000

So you’re never going to be Usain Bolt. Okay, that’s fine - you’re a distance runner anyway (and you’d prefer not to stay at the club until 4am). But do you ever find yourself wishing you just had a little more speed? I’ll go ahead and admit it, I day dream about this at least once a week.

There are a bunch of traditional ways we can go about maximizing our leg speed: strength training, increasing flexibility, speed work on the track. I think these are all great and if you have time for them, go ahead and work them into your training plans.

But if you’re looking for less of a commitment, I suggest doing what I call striders:

A strider is running 15 to 25 seconds at an anaerobic pace. This short sprint encourages your muscles to get faster without putting the same strain on your body as a full speed workout or weight session (In other words, striders don’t create need for extra recovery time).

I suggest getting in the habit of doing four to six striders after two to three runs a week. Not only does this help speed, but running this fast also helps nurture better form and efficiency.

Here are some more tips to consider when doing striders:

Gradually increase the pace of each strider, start at 75% and do your last one at 95%
Stay relaxed, this shouldn’t be hard. If anything it should be fun to run fast for less than half a minute.
Don’t start them a couple days before a race. At first they may make you a little more tired or a little sore like any new exercise would.
“Stride out” or lengthen your stride to encourage increased flexibility. As distance runners we tend to get in a rut where the majority of our runs are long and slow and our default stride is short. Striders will shake this up!

Happy Training,

Miguel,

Meet the other half of the Running Couple: Isis Hargrave

Anders Porter — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 15:26:54 +0000

We’d like you to meet the better, ooops, we mean other half of the Running Couple (@runningcouple), Isis Hargrave. She and her husband Lee form this amazing dynamic duo, whose mission it is to run all over the place, one marathon at a time. The world according to Isis?

“I have always been a fitness fanatic. In 2006, I made a goal to get into running with my husband after he ran the Chicago marathon. So far, I have completed 2 half marathons and have 3 more lined up in the next 5 months. Eventually, I want to get into triathlons.

I love Athletes Honey Milk because it has all the benefits of a protein shake without the lactose and chalky taste.”

You said it, Isis. Thanks for digging the AHM.

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Meet AHM Athlete: Melissa Galyon

Anders Porter — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 16:06:43 +0000

Meet Melissa Galyon of Rockwall, Texas

Melissa is very active in both the online and offline running communities. We’ve had the pleasure of connecting with her on Twitter and at the Cowtown Marathon. Good work, Melissa, on all your success!

“I tried Athlete’s Milk for the first time at the Luke’s Locker Tweetup a few months ago. I thought it tasted great and appreciated the company’s willingness to be actively involved in the runner community.

The next time I tried it was before and after the Cowtown Half Marathon in February. That’s when I got hooked! I have been drinking Athlete’s Milk several times a week and highly recommend it for both the nutrients and taste.”

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Woman Versus Marathon

Anders Porter — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 05:48:09 +0000

We recently wrote about the evolution of men’s world records and posed the questions how fast will man go?

Now let’s talk about women. Since March is Women’s National History Month, it seems fitting to take a look at the history of the women’s marathon.

Here is a timeline of some of the more significant events regarding the evolution and establishment of women’s distance running (for more history, check out marathonguide.com), some very interesting and surprising stuff in here:

1896 – Stamatis Rovithi became the first woman to run a marathon when she covered the proposed Olympic course from Marathon to Athens

1926 – Violet Piercy of Great Britain was the first woman to be officially timed in the marathon, she clocked a time of 3:40:22

1928 – women were allowed to compete in the 800m in track and field but some women collapsed from exhaustion so they took away the event

1960 – women were allowed to compete in the 800m again

1966 – Roberta Gibb hid behind a bush at the start of the Boston Marathon, sneaking into the field and finishing the race in an unofficial time of 3:21:25. She was the first woman known to complete the arduous Boston course. Gibb had been inspired to run by the return of her race entry with a note saying that women were not physically capable of running a marathon.

1971 – Adrienne Beames of Australia became the first women to run a sub-three-hour marathon, smashing that barrier with a time of 2:46:30

1973 – First all women’s marathon was held in Waldniel, West German

1984 – First women’s Olympic marathon held

2003 – Paula Radcliffe ran 2:15.25, the current world record

Man Versus Physiology

Anders Porter — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 19:29:45 +0000

The men’s world record in the half marathon was broken today by 11 seconds by Zersenay Tadese of Eritrea. The new record is 58:23 which is averaging 4 minutes and 27 seconds per mile. Not too shabby!

Eleven seconds faster than the old record may not seem like a lot for a race that is over 13 miles, but consider the idea that the record was 59:17 in 1998. That means on average the record has improved less than 5 seconds a year over the last 12 years.

As the world record progression will continue to become more gradual, this begs the question of how fast can man go? Will man ever break 57 minutes? Will he even break 58 minutes?

Similarly, the men’s marathon world record is getting to the point where just a small improvement seems nearly impossible. Though with a new half marathon record getting close to 58 minutes it makes you wonder will man one day be able to go under two hours? Will he go under 2:02 or 2:03 anytime soon?

Then there are fast twitch muscles. We’ve recently seen Usain Bolt of Jamaica reshape our thinking on how fast a human can run as he broke world records in the 100m and 200m dash.

So where will we be in 20 years? 100 years? The statement below from the 2008 Time article, How Fast Can Humans Go, seems to sum it up:

“no one can really know exactly how fast a human may be able to run,” says Dennis Bramble, professor of biology at the University of Utah. Certainly, runners have been getting faster, as far as we know, but as Peter Weyand, an expert in biomechanics at Southern Methodist University, points out, our history of recorded time in sprints is relatively brief. “We have no way of knowing if humans might not have been even faster centuries or millennia ago,” he says.