Big congrats to Run SMART client Lauren Woodall for her win at the ‘Love The Run You’re With’ 5k last week in Arlington, VA! Lauren’s winning time was 19:28, just over 30 seconds faster than the next female finisher. Full Results.
Lauren works with Run SMART coach Heidi Peoples.
Run SMART client Charlie Hartel dropped another four minutes and change off his marathon PR. Charlie finished the A1A Marathon in Fort Lauderdale this past weekend in 3:24:11 (7:48 per mile). Full Results.
When Charlie signed up for private coaching his most recent marathon performance was 3:49 and his lifetime best was from 2002 when he ran 3:37. Slowly but surely he and coach Vince Sherry have continued to trim away at his fastest times. Based on our records, we’ve tagged this as his 6th PR with Run SMART. His last was this past October when he shattered his half marathon PR by 13 minutes in Connecticut!
Keep it rolling, Chaz!
Congrats to David Gierlak for setting a new PR after ‘Running Under the Influence of Jack Daniels.’ David won the masters division at the Berry College 5k finishing in 18:56 (6:07 per mile), a 20 second PR!
We’re very excited to announce that The Run SMART Project is now the official training plans and private coaching provider for the GORE-TEX TransRockies running events. Training plans for this year’s TransRockies Run and Run3 (Aug. 14th-19th) are now up for sale on our site. Read the rest of this entry »
Many runners (even a coach on our staff who will go unnamed) have and continue to make the mistake of not training enough in the shoes they race in. There’s a great section in Jack’s book on this topic and he makes it very simple to understand why you should never make this mistake.
I’m convinced that some training should be done in racing shoes for two reasons:
- Each type of shoe has its own economy characteristics, and to take full advantage of these characteristics you must do some actual training in the shoes.
- Each type of shoe has its own mechanical characteristics, and it can be disastrous to never train under the same conditions that you’ll face in a race.
It’s hard to document how many injuries have resulted from wearing “new” shoes in a race, shoes that fit and function differently from those used in practice. To never wear racing shoes in practice is like never training at race pace. It’s always risky to let any conditions of a race be completely foreign to you, and that includes wearing shoes whose effects on your economy and your feet are unpredictable.
The professor teaching class.
Question: How much does shoe weight affect performance?
Dr. Jack Daniels: As a matter of fact I did the original research on shoe-weight factor, when I was working for Nike in the early 1980s and our research was presented at the World Congress of Sports Medicine in Vienna in the early 1980s. We found adding 100 grams to the shoe increased the aerobic demand of running by 1%. Now 100 grams is about 3.5274 ounces, so each ounce changes the cost of running about 0.2835% (1/3.5274= 0.2835). If you can run a mile in 5:40, that is going 284 meters per minute and that speed of running typically coasts about 55.55 ml O2 per Kg body weight per minute. 1 less ounce will change the cost to about 55.7075 (from 55.55 above) and that VO2 will be associated with a running speed of 284.7 m/min and a mile time of 5:39.17, so about .83 seconds for a mile, per ounce less weight. Read the rest of this entry »
Once again we turn to our partner on injury prevention and treatment, Dr. Marc Bochner, for a comprehensive explanation on the different types of hamstring injuries and how to diagnose, treat and prevent in the first place. Hamstring injuries in runners are typically very stubborn and difficult to treat so we highly recommend reading this article.
Here he covers the common causes:
Running while listening to music is very common these days and we’ve talked about the dangers and other reasons to avoid it here. We’ve all done it before and some love it more than others but since we’re the “Run SMART” guys we felt it necessary to make you aware of this new study…
From Businessweek:
The study illustrates the dangers of using devices such as music players with headphones, they wrote. While the risk of using mobile phones and other devices while driving is well documented, little is known about distraction associated with wearing headphones while walking, the authors wrote.
“Sensory deprivation that results from using headphones with electronic devices may be a unique problem in pedestrian incidents, where auditory cues can be more important than visual ones,” they wrote.
Next time I hit the roads I’ll turn the music off until I reach the trail.
Just added a new article to our media coverage page. Jack and Vince were both quoted at length in this Runner’s World article about finding your ideal running pace. We’ll be posting a lot about appropriate training paces soon…in fact…we’re planning a whole series on this stuff! This is what we pride ourselves on and Jack’s body of work really focuses on the importance of knowing the purpose of every workout and what your ideal pace should be to achieve optimal results.
ASSIGN WORKOUT TIMES
Once you’ve established your baseline 5k pace, use it to determine how fast to run your workouts. “Your goal is to create the least possible stress on your body that produces the maximum physiological benefits, not maximum stress to accomplish the same benefits,” says Jack Daniels, Ph.D., head coach with The Run S.M.A.R.T. Project. In other words, don’t run one second faster than necessary.
Read the entire article.
In her first race since joining The Run SMART Project Dalit Medina finished first in the 40-44 age group and 12th female overall at the Coyote Hill XC 10k. Her official time was 48:58 (7:46 per mile). Full results.
Dalit works with Run SMART coach Dr. Jack Daniels.
"I've enjoyed a giddy three years of PR after PR as a newbie masters runner. I was initially skeptical about remote coaching (don't coaches stand at the finish line with a stopwatch?)" - Everett H.
