On race day, your finish is what you eat. Training aside, the fourth discipline of nutrition is what can help you reach your goals. Messing it up can also leave you far short. A great race is as much a test of what defines you as it is a test of what fuels you — […]
The period of time leading into your next marathon brings a lot of distinct challenges that are entirely unrelated to the race itself: tapering, traveling, eating, sleeping, etc. While important, these disparate elements don’t matter as much as the fitness you bring to the starting line and the plan you have in place to reach […]
There comes a time when you are so close to your race that there’s seemingly nothing else to do. You can’t train anymore and your taper is done. The race outfit is picked and your are glued to the local weather forecast. With less than 24 hours to go, you might feel like it’s time […]
This was to be my first “real” race back post the bike crash of May 2011, when I broke my hip. I had qualified in 2009 with a 2:59:42, so my dream goal here this weekend was to go sub-3. At the end of the day, I fell short by about a minute but I […]
Running, or rather road racing, is currently one of the most popular activities in the United States. It’s cheap (only need shoes!), it’s accessible (just go outside!), it’s social (join a club!), and it good for your health (in moderation!)…in short, running has the deck stacked in it’s favor when it comes to rapid growth. […]
With the Goofy Challenge mere days away, and the growing popularity of more hard core running events that let you stack up serious miles like Reach the Beach or Bay to Breakers, this article is meant to address the need for almost instant run recovery. Success in endurance running events has less to do with […]
With the New Year upon us, your peers and countless websites are undoubtedly urging you to make resolutions to be a newer and better you. While I think this annual exercise can be a useful one, the changes we pick almost never turn out to work the way we planned — sometimes this is good, […]
When we think of treadmill running, most of us instinctively look down on it as a second-class form of running. But there are times that even the strongest opponent to the treadmill will line up and start pushing the buttons for a workout — could be weather, could be travel, could be anything…and here you […]
If marathon training is hard, then training for a marathon though the winter is downright difficult. Instead of just worrying about mileage, you now have to take the weather, daylight, and countless other factors into account. If you are training for Disney or a similarly timed event, you have little choice but to get tough […]
This weekend marks the 17th running of the Philadelphia Marathon, the final installment of the US fall marathon classics. The Philly Marathon is not as popular as some of the other big marathons, but that means you get a world-class race in a great city without all the craziness and crowds! Fall in Philadelphia is […]
photo credit: OiMax With the change in Daylight Savings complete, dedicated and newbie runners alike are having difficulty transitioning to running in the dark. Night running is a different animal for sure, but it doesn’t mean you have to sacrifice your running fitness or race goals. With the right preparation and focus, you can make […]
This weekend marks the 35th running of the Marine Corps Marathon, another one of the US fall marathon classics. Marine Corps is one of the more popular US events with tens of thousands of avid marathoners making the trip to the Nation’s capital for the 26.2 mile journey. With the Boston Marathon closed out for […]
Training for a marathon takes months of guts, determination, dedication and a ton of good luck. Racing a marathon takes all of those components and crams it into just 26.2 miles. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the final few hours before your race when–all of a sudden–you get that feeling in your stomach […]
Getting ready for the big dance, the full 26.2 miles, is a huge undertaking. As the day approaches, the true significance of the event becomes readily apparent by virtue of just how panicked you become. Not all of the worry is necessarily bad, but it can lead you down the path to some poor deciscions […]
While we all run at different paces and in different places, many of us share a common goal — to get faster. It might be faster than your buddy, or faster in your next race, or even faster than yesterday…but the minute you hit “stop” on your watch it’s running human nature to start doing […]
There is no such thing as being 100% ready for a marathon. While we can strive for perfection in terms of training and scheduling and recovery, the reality is that many of us simply fall short of the perfect-little-world that’s outlined in the training plan taped to our fridge. This is partly due to extenuating […]
