Sacramento Running News

Although it sometimes feels good to take that long, slow stretch before a run, it turns out there’s not much science to support doing that kind of stretching.

NPR has another story on the evolving theories about how to stretch, whether to stretch, and the movement toward active isolated stretching.

I’ve long been a convert to the active isolated stretching camp, so I’m not surprised to be hearing more about it.

The story includes some videos on a couple of active stretches, but this video here will give you a better sense of how they work. The leotard is optional.

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XC runners take off at Willow Hills

When I look at the calendar, I see that it is now autumn. When I go outside for a run, I still feel the iron grip of summer’s heat holding fast to Sacramento. But there are signs of change. The teams are back.

Nothing says “autumn is coming” like the herds of high school cross country teams hitting the bike trail.  It harkens me back to a fictitious time in my youth, testing myself against my own preconceived limits.  Learning that the pain was temporary but the accomplishment of a goal had permanence.

I’m embarrassed to say that the naked and less flattering truth is while I did go out for cross country in my sophomore year, I only made it through about a week’s worth of practices.  I showed up the first week of school and got thrown into the pack that was running at what seemed like break-neck speed around the campus.

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John Blue finishing up his pacing of the 2008 Cowtown Marathon

If you are planning to run the Urban Cow Half Marathon this year, you should know the fees go up on September 27th.

In case you’ve been living under a rock or somewhere far outside the Sacramento Metroplex, Urban Cow is the new name for the race that had been known as the Cowtown Half.

The owners of the other Cowtown Marathon got pissy with our race just being generally better, if for no other reason than our race is in Sacramento and not Fort Worth.

Lawyers, or the threat of lawyers, got involved and suddenly it is the Urban Cow Half Marathon. You can read the story behind all the name changes right here on the event’s history page.

If you were maybe sitting on the fence, and were trying to decide whether or not you had the fortitude to run this thing somewhere in the neighborhood of 1:40, you can join me, John Blue, as I lead this epic pace group.

There will be other pacers there, and maybe their pace is more what you were looking for, but I guarantee you that I will make many dumb jokes and do my best to get you in by 1:40.

Ladies! You’re at your local women’s running event (Susan B. Anthony 5K, Nike Women’s Marathon, Disney’s Princess Half Marathon, etc.) and you notice the five o’clock shadow on the person lining up next to you. You take a closer look.

We’re not talking about a vagueness of gender along the lines of Caster Semenya. We’re talking about a bona fide dude. It’s a guy that looks like a younger, fitter version of your uncle Louie.

Do you worry about him beating you? What would make a guy want to run in a women only race to begin with?

Would you make fun of him?

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Meseret Defar of Ethiopia wins at Philadelphia.

In case you hadn’t heard, the fastest half-marathon time run by a woman on American soil was run by Ethiopian (Surprise!) Meseret Defar at this weekend’s Philadelphia Half-Marathon. Her time was 1:07:44.

Everyone was watching this race to see if Ryan Hall or Shalane Flanagan had enough mojo to win. They did not. Hall finished 13th and Flanagan was 4th woman.

There is much speculation as to whether Hall’s time means anything as he is deep into preparation for next month’s Chicago Marathon. We’ll just have to wait and see.

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Local runner and writer Sam McManis has an article in today’s Bee about ultrarunner Karl Meltzer’s planned 45-day run of the 1,840 mile long Pony Express Trail.

I know some folks would think this is crazy (my mother, for example), but I’d love to take on something like this! It would be hard to think of something more fun than spending days on the run.

He can do this, of course, because he’s being sponsored by Red Bull in this adventure. I’m not sure who would underwrite the undertakings of a mid-pack runner such as myself. Sadly, I’m not as good looking as Dean Karnazes or as fast as Karl Meltzer.

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Lets say you’ve been training for the California International Marathon and it’s still months away. December 5th seems like a distant country. No need to worry about signing up yet, right?

Unfortunately, that is probably not a good idea this year. Like many races, CIM’s registration is way ahead of prior years’, and they are reporting three times the number of registrations compared to this time last year. You might not want to put it off. They’ve passed 5,000 already and are capped at 7,500.

In a recent post, I wrote about the connection between brain health and physical fitness. Now, there is yet even more evidence for keeping kids active. In two separate studies of children and physical fitness, researchers demonstrate the link between fit children and smart children.

One study demonstrated improved performance by the fitter children (identified by a treadmill test) and connected that with actual physical differences that show up in MRI scans of the brains of the kids .

Meanwhile, a separate study (by some of the same researchers) found a similar connection between working memory in children and the size of the hippocampus. Previous research has shown that exercise can increase the size of the hippocampus, but this study linked working memory, exercise and the size of the hippocampus in children.

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Today’s Wall Street Journal has an interesting article about endurance athletes over-doing it and failing to make it to the starting line.

Local trainer and ultra-running entrepreneur Julie Fingar, and other local runners are quoted extensively.

Most of us in this sport are driven to train. The challenge is to find that point where the training is having a net-negative impact on our lives and our performance. That’s often a tough call!

Thanks to Andy for the tip!

Static stretch? Active stretch? Before you run? After you run? Will it prevent injury?

By and large, it appears to make no difference–just don’t stop stretching once you started. Or something. My head hurts.

Read this article in the New York Times about stretching and your head can hurt too!