One of my favorites.
It looks like that chocolate bar I keep in my desk drawer is not a bad thing after all.
NPR explores the question: Does a Chocolate Habit Keep You Lean?
Spoiler alert: Possibly!
A new study finds that people who eat chocolate several times a week are actually leaner than people who don’t eat chocolate regularly.
Registration closes at midnight tonight!
This past spring, I was visiting Washington D.C. and asked the hotel concierge for suggestions on where to run the next morning.
“Well,” she said. “A lot of people run around the Mall, but the Cherry Blossom Run is tomorrow and it might be crowded.”
“Oh!” I said. “A race! Maybe I could run that.”
I could see the smirk form on her face before she looked up from the map she was doodling on.
The lead pack after 8-miles: Gary Gellin, Rich Hanna, Shaun Martin and Sam Robinson
This past weekend featured two of the regions most popular races.
On Saturday, over 700 ultrarunners, including some of the top names in the sport, lined up near the Cool Firehouse for a go at the remarkably dry Way Too Cool 50K.
This was the second running on a new and designed to be faster course. For last year’s debut of the new course, mud was the theme of the day and thigh-deep stream crossings kept a lid on the pace.
Last week, I wrote about some repairs of the parkway around the 3 mile mark. The work was supposed to have finished by now, but there have been delays.
The notice from the Sacramento County Regional Parks said:
Beginning Thursday, March 1, the American River Parkway Bike Tail will have a short detour near Mile 3 while work is being performed to repair damage (undermining) to the trail by beavers. The detour will take trail users off the paved tail for less than 100 feet and onto the adjacent unpaved maintenance road. The detour will be in effect until the repairs are completed.
Huh?
I’m not sure how I missed a race that encourages you to run in your underpants, but there it was in today’s Bee.
I’m happy to see the Bee covering a local race–but kind of sad it has to be because of a gimmick like running in underpants.
Oh well.
Results are here.
The Napa Valley Marathon was this morning and if you were hoping for a top-spot, you had better have brought your long-game. A quick survey of the results shows a surprising number of the region’s top ultrarunners among the top finishers.
The winning woman was San Francisco’s Devon Crosby-Helms, whose 2:39:37 appears to be a new course record. According to my March issue of Ultrarunning, Crosby-Helms is also the woman who ran the fastest 100Km in the North America last year. (7:46:33 at the Mad City 100Km)
I don’t recognize any of the other top women, but the men’s field was stacked with some of the top ultra guys.
Proponents of barefoot running often speak of the improved efficiency of barefoot versus shod running, but for some reason we still don’t see many barefoot runners at a competitive level.
Why is this?
A recent study published online in the journal Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise worked to minimize the possible confounding factors that have plagued prior research.
To tease out the differences that could be attributed only to the shoes or lack of shoes, the researchers worked with experienced barefoot runners and all the runners in the study were midfoot strikers–with or without shoes.
Then, the researchers added weight to the feet of both the shod and barefoot runners and found, not surprisingly, that people use more oxygen as the weight of the foot or shoe increased.
