10 Amazing Facts About Your Heart

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Jody-Lynn Reicher plans on running 450 mile ultra

There are some things that I constantly do that drive myself crazy. Some of them are so simple and stupid but yet I never seem to learn.

1. Always wearing too many layers: It doesn’t matter what the temperature I wear too many clothes. I hate being cold at the beginning so I always come home with a jacket wrapped around my waist

2. Forget to charge the Garmin: I do it a few times every week. I run early in the morning so I am always in a hurry and just throw the watch on the table and forget to turn it off. Next day as I head out the door, beep beep no juice, no Garmin

3. Take to long to get going and end up late: I get up in plenty of time to run or meet my friends but I need a little time to wake up. So I read my email, grab some water and now I’m either running late or I have to cut my run short because I was goofing around.

4. Whiplash with my shoelaces. I tie them plenty tight but sure enough there’s one strand that comes undone and whips the opposite leg for 5 miles because I don’t want to stop and redo it.

5. Forget to wear my wind briefs aka the “Dicker Knickers”: I should know that under 5 degrees there is a part of my body that leads my way that is going to freeze. It’s one of the most painful things I go through and yet I always forget. You would think that something that hurts as if it were slammed in a car door would get me to remember, you’re wrong » Continue reading “As a Runner, 8 Things I Always Do That Drive Me Crazy”

In order to try and get you guys to come back each day, I am going to post 5 funny or interesting links each day.  Here’s the first day.  Could be running, could be funny

 24 Ways to Improve Your Vision

 Redneck Mansion

A great article on the importance of strengthening your core 

A bummer of an allergy.  This girl is allergic to water

World’s Toughest Bikepath 

 ”Irony”

» Continue reading “New Daily Links”

WASHINGTON, Feb 27 (Reuters) - Eat an orange. Wear a face mask. Train elsewhere and fly in at the last possible moment to compete.

These are some of the strategies suggested for Olympic athletes planning to compete in Beijing, where a thick cloud of smog often blankets one of the world’s most polluted cities.

“There really isn’t anything specific you can do to acclimate to substandard air quality,” said Darryl Seibel of the U.S. Olympic Committee. “From a training point of view, there’s nothing we’ve found that an athlete can do without risking their health and well-being.”

The U.S. teams expect Beijing’s air to reach a “safe and suitable standard for elite competition,” Seibel said in a telephone interview from Colorado Springs, Colorado, home of the U.S. Olympic Training Center.

He did not think athletes would need to wear activated carbon filtration masks, as U.S. coaches advised in a newsletter article in 2006, and as U.S. triathletes did on a visit to China last year.

But he did not rule anything out. » Continue reading “Olympic Runners Biggest Competitor? Pollution”

I have decided to take my training “to the next level” as they say and start using my heart to gauge my training. I am an avid Garmin user but have heard great things about the Polar watches for heart training so I picked up the Polar RS200 (review to come later). I have always known that my standing heart rate (STR) was a bit higher than most athletes. Despite the fact that I ran two marathons this fall, one under 3:30 and finished a 95 degree Chicago at 3:50, my standing heart rate is still 70. Most of my training partners are in 40-50 range. With this knowledge I decided to try the Polar and see what I’ve found. Here are the details of what I’ve found

» Continue reading “Me and My High Resting Heart Rate”

So it’s your first marathon. Here are some helpful hints from Pat Connelly, official coach of the L.A. Marathon and the L.A. Roadrunners, the marathon’s training program; Kathrine Switzer, author of “Marathon Woman: Running the Race to Revolutionize Women’s Sports” and a former L.A. Marathon commentator; Rod Dixon, Olympian and former director of coaching and training for the L.A. Marathon; Dawn Dais, author of “The Nonrunner’s Marathon Guide for Women: Get Off Your Butt and On with Your Training”; and Julian Myers, who, at 90, is a 13-year veteran of the L.A. Marathon.

* Go with the tried and true. Most runners are aware of the adage “nothing new on race day,” also don’t take or wear anything you haven’t tried out on a long run.

* Pace yourself on the first downhill. Some runners go flat-out, trying to shave off time, but that pounding can be bad for joints and uses up more energy. Others slow it way down, but straining the quadriceps muscles can lead to intense soreness later. “Just relax,” Connelly suggests. “Have a nice, relaxed heel strike and be limber, like Jell-O. Let the hill take you down.” » Continue reading “Tips For the First Time Marathon”

Thinking of running a half marathon this spring? Here is a pace chart to help you reach that goal.

Warm Up and Warm Down

Run at 60-70% max heart rate.

Mile Pace: 8:40-9:20 » Continue reading “A Training Pace Chart for a 1:30 Half Marathon”

The taper is supposed to be a time in which athletes’ bodies recover from months of demanding exercise and especially from the last long workout they endured, the dreaded 20-miler. During this rest break, muscles, bones and minds gird themselves to endure 26. 2 miles of punishmen.

Few training authorities advise marathoners to take advantage of the shorter distances they run during the taper by honing their speed. Most urge caution.

This week, “rest truly replaces training as the most important element of your race preparations,” as the Runner’s World Guide to Road Racing (Rodale, 2008 ) explains in its chapter about tapering for a marathon.

Little Rock Marathon training coach Hobbit Singleton agrees.

“For those who feel the need to exhaust themselves up until the marathon, my advice would be limiting the speedwork to one day during the second taper week and keeping the distance short,” she says. “Maybe a onemile warm-up, one to two miles at race pace, and then a one-mile cool-down.

“ The point of the taper is to get your body rested and revitalized before the race — not to keep pounding it into the ground. Better to go into a race a little under-trained than overtrained.” First-timers often have a hard time appreciating the fact that as their 20-mile training run retreats into memory, their leg muscles can start to feel terrific again well before the rest of the body has recovered. Bones, tendons and ligaments take longer and may well need all three of the tapering weeks the Little Rock coaches build into their basic training schedules.

“If you’re wiped out from too much training, lack of sleep, under-hydration and skimping on your fuel in the weeks before the race, you’ve decreased your chances of getting to the finish line, much less having a wonderful experience during your race,” Singleton says.

“In keeping with that theme, to those athletes who think they’ll do a few extra workouts to make up any miles they missed in training: Don’t try to add the mileage you missed back in December. You’re trained, you’re ready. Let it go.” And weight-lifters ought to lay off their strength workouts this week, too. As editor Katie McDonald Neitz advises in the Runner’s World Guide: “And if you’ve been lifting weights as part of your training program, stop.

“ Weight training at this stage of the game can’t help your race, but it can sap your strength or cause an injury.”

“Even if they’ve never come to a meeting, we want them to come to this one,” Singleton says. “This is our ‘hand-holding’ meeting before the marathon and it really seems to help a lot of them to just come and talk about their fears.

A story like this would be odd enough if just a right foot washed ashore but at various islands in the Straits of Georgia a part of Canada, 3 running shoes, all right footed, and size 12 have been washing ashore. The first foot was found washed ashore on Jedediah Island on Aug. 20, and six days later a second was found on Gabriola Island. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and the British Columbia Coroners Service are investigating three cases of washed-up right feet inside running shoes. The latest was discovered on a beach on the east side of Valdes Island on Feb. 8 and it has not been determined what size the last one is. » Continue reading “Three Right Footed Running Shoes Wash Up On Shore…With Feet in Them”

I am pretty sure I’m not the only one that goes through this. Every winter as my mileage drops down due to weather conditions and lack of motivation, my weight does the opposite. The problem with runners such as myself is that we are always eating to keep the calories up. On many days I will run 10 miles before work and then walk another 10 at work because I have a job that requires me to be on my feet. Here lies the problem. During the winter I only average 4-5 miles and I sit all day at work. Of course my food intake doesn’t change and thus the 20-25 pound weight gain every year. It is a an amazing transformation, one that I think I may share through pictures.

There is not much I can do about it, other than heavy diet and I never cross that 25 pound gain limit because if I do I put myself on a mini-diet. In about 2 weeks I start the transformation because the weather will start to warm up and work has started to get busier(I own a nursery/garden center). The guys I run with certainly put on a few pounds but nothing like I do. Some would say that this isn’t healthy but I’ve done it for 20 years now. The difference is in the three years I’ve been running the weight is from 195 to 170 each time (I’m 6′0), with each year the upper limits and lower limits dropping by 2 or 3 pounds. This year I will probably get down under 170.

Before running, I would go from 225 to 200. My health has been great and I have only been sick once in 16 years so the weight doesn’t seem to effect the immunity at all. The other organs I don’t know but I feel great. Especially at the 170 range. It also makes me feel so much faster. Imagine dropping a 25 pound weight off your back and then running. That’s what it feel like. Of course the winter feels like the complete opposite. I feel slow and heavy but in the back of my mind I know what’s ahead. Anyone else go through this each year? Drop me a line