November 2, 2006

    Clinics

1. Weekend Results
2. Rethinking Junk Miles
3. Putting the Ironman in Context
4. Walden Cross Country Ski Swap
5. Upcoming Events - Walden's Run Under the Lights, Santa Shuffle, Resolution Run
6. Mike Coughlin's Detailed Ford Ironman Experience (check Mike's TRi Website at page bottom)

October 29, 2006

MALE AGE GROUP: 55 - 59
Place   Oall    No.        Name          City       Sta   Ag   Guntm    Time      Pace

   1       25  11754   Frank Lesk   Sudbury   ON   55   1:24:43  1:24:20   6:27

October 30, 2006     Team Diabetes Goes to Dublin

Team Diabetes Captain Lise Edwards lead a few locals and other team members to successful finishes in this year's Dublin Marathon. Participants and times:

Bev Baxter - 4:09:01, Kerry Shubert - 4:19:14, Kimberly Roach - 4:45:17, Karen McCluskey - 5:07:28, Mary Verch-Campbell - 5:09:52, Elizabeth Taillefer - 5:58:17, Janet Guembel - 6:08:15 and Lise Edwards - 5:59:15. Carol Mulligan successfully completed the 1/2. Her time is not available now. Congratulations to all participants.

By Matt Fitzgerald
As featured in the October 2006 issue of Running Times Magazine

(Forwarded by Tim Uuksulainen - North Bay Rock!!)

For both the juggler and the runner, it is time spent simply practicing the relevant action that improves communication between the brain and the muscles. It’s not a matter of testing physiological limits, but of developing a skill through repetition. Thus, the juggler who juggles an hour a day will improve faster than the juggler who juggles five minutes a day, even if the former practices in a dozen separate five-minute sessions and therefore never gets tired. And the same is true for the runner.

Now, training stress—especially key workouts inflicting high-intensity fatigue—and running volume sort of work at cross-purposes. If you go for a bona fide training stress in every workout, you won’t be able to do a huge total amount of running before breaking down. By the same token, if you want to achieve the maximum volume of running, you have to keep the pace slow and avoid single long runs in favor of multiple short runs. But then you won’t get those big fitness boosts that only exhaustive runs can deliver. In other words, you can’t maximize training stress and running volume simultaneously. For the best results, you need to find the optimal balance between these two factors, and that’s where recovery runs come in.

By sprinkling your training regimen with relatively short, easy runs, you can achieve a higher total running volume than you could if you always ran hard. Yet because recovery runs are gentle enough not to create a need for additional recovery, they allow you to perform at a high level in your key workouts and therefore get the most out of them.

I believe that recovery runs also yield improvements in running economy by challenging the neuromuscular system to perform in a pre-fatigued state. Key workouts themselves deliver a training stress that stimulates positive fitness adaptations by forcing a runner to perform beyond the point of initial fatigue. As the motor units that are used preferentially when you run begin to fatigue, other motor units that are less often called upon must be recruited to take up the slack so the athlete can keep running. In general, "slow-twitch" muscle fibers are recruited first and then "fast-twitch" fibers become increasingly active as the slow-twitch fibers wear out. By encountering this challenge, your neuromuscular system is able to find new efficiencies that enable you to run more economically.

Recovery runs achieve a similar effect in a slightly different way. In a key workout, you experience fatigued running by starting fresh and running hard or far. In a recovery run you start fatigued from your last key workout and therefore experience a healthy dose of fatigued running without having to run hard or far. For this reason, although recovery runs are often referred to as "easy runs," if they’re planned and executed properly they usually don’t feel very easy. Speaking from personal experience, while my recovery runs are the shortest and slowest runs I do, I still feel rather miserable in many of them because I am already fatigued when I start them. This miserable feeling is, I think, indicative of the fact that the run is accomplishing some real, productive work that will enhance my fitness perhaps almost as much as the key workout that preceded it. Viewed in this way, recovery runs become essentially a way of squeezing more out of your key workouts.

Putting the Ironman in Context

[From Sports Illustrated, By Rick Reilly]

forwarded by Minna Mettinen

" Eighty-five times he's pushed his disabled son, Rick, 26.2 miles in Marathons. Eight times he's not only pushed him 26.2 miles in a Wheelchair but also towed him 2.4 miles in a dinghy while swimming and Pedaled him 112 miles in a seat on the handlebars--all in the same day"

" This year, at ages 65 and 43, Dick and Rick finished their 24th Boston Marathon, in 5,083rd place out of more than 20,000 starters. Their best Time? Two hours, 40 minutes in 1992--only 35 minutes off the world Record, which, in case you don't keep track of these things, happens to be held by a guy who was not pushing another man in a wheelchair at the Time."

" Now they've done 212 triathlons, including four grueling 15-hour Ironmans in Hawaii . It must be a buzzkill to be a 25-year-old stud Getting passed by an old guy towing a grown man in a dinghy, don't you Think?"

(I would think so...) Minna

Read more here

Ski Swap,

Club & Jackrabbit

Registration

10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.

Where: Walden Cross Country Fitness Club

Naughton Chalet

Bring your “gently used” cross-country ski equipment and clothing to the chalet Friday from 6 - 8 p.m. or Saturday from 9 - 10 a.m. The club will charge a 10% commission on all items sold.

Read the Club's fall Newsletter Here (Word Doc. Only)

Upcoming Events

Walden Cross Country Fitness Club's 3rd Annual Fun Run under the Lights November 9, 2006 Information

Visit our Events Section for all the Details