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Busy Labor Day Weekend – Hear Steve Speak at the Disneyland Half Marathon Expo
Last Year’s SoCalRunning.com and Beach Runners Baldy Race Crew
It is a always one of my favorite weekends, Labor Day Weekend. I will be running on Monday in the Run-to-the- Top of Mt. Baldy, Sunday in the Disneyland Half Marathon, Saturday going on an easy run with the Beach Runners. On Friday and Saturday I will be speaking at the Disneyland Half Marathon Expo along with ChiRunning® founder Danny Dreyer. The expo is free and open to everyone. It also gives you a chance to have Danny sign your ChiRuninng® book.
Disneyland Half Marathon Expo Speaker Schedule
Friday 2:30 – 3:15 pm Steve Mackel, “Improve Your Performance – Unleashing Your Mental Running Strength through Visualization”
3:15 – 4:00 pm Danny Dreyer, “ChiRunning®: A Revolutionary Approach to Effortless, Injury-free Running – Tips for Making Your Marathon Easier”
Saturday 12:30 – 1:15 pm Danny Dreyer, “ChiRunning®: A Revolutionary Approach to Effortless, Injury-free Running – Tips for Making Your Marathon Easier”
2:00 – 2:45 pm Steve Mackel, “Improve Your Performance – Unleashing Your Mental Running Strength through Visualization”?
I’ll be shooting video all weekend long so say hi and let me put you in our RunCasts.
Race Focused, Steve Mackel – MarathonTraining.TV Head Coach
ChiRunning Talk at New Balance Torrance
Dear Runners,
I am giving a ChiRunning introduction at the New Balance store in Torrance.
Come and you will get a chance to get the NEW CHIRUNNING SHOE.
New Balance is giving us a discount (I hear 10%) on purchases that night.
Great time if you are marathon training to get some new shoes.
Date: Wednesday, August 27th
Time: 5:30-6:30 p.m
Location: New Balance Store, Torrance CA (map)
Coach Gary
Olympic Men’s Marathon 2008 – Coach Steve’s Thoughts
Sammy Wanjiru Crossing the Finish Line -photo Dennis Passa – AP
I don’t know about you, but I got chills watching Sammy Wanjiru running into the Bird’s Nest listening to the massive crowd cheer for the first Keyan to win an Olympic gold medal in the marathon. Not to mention, he smashed the 24-year old Olympic record on a hot humid day and it was only his 3rd marathon. Oh yeah, he is only 21 and Tsegay Kebede from Ethopia at 21 years of age took bronze. There is a new guard in the sport of marathon.
The strongest survived and won while the smart runner took the bronze. The first few miles were run at a blistering pace and only 5 could maintain it. At mile 18 things started to change. A couple bumps in tempo dropped runners. Jaouad Gharib, the silver medalist, yo-yo’d falling back just a little then climbing back to the lead runners. Soon Sammy W. would drop the hammer and leave no doubt who the strongest and fastest marathoner was on this day. Kebede was a good minute back of the leaders at mile 20, he ran his race and beat out his fellow countryman in the last 300 meters.
So, here’s what I took away from watching the men’s Olympic marathon.
Cadence: I was counting foot turnover and the leaders I counted were around 180-186 SPM (strides per minute).
Heel Kick: With the exception of Gharib, the Moroccan, the runners heels seemed to float effortlessly back and up almost touching their rear-ends.
Forward Lean: Very present in the Ethiopian runners not so much with the Kenyans.
Pace: Out of the gate,it was too fast for most of the field. I watched to see who was thinking conservation of energy and the Kenyans drafted off the leaders the entire first half of the race.
Hydration, Fuel and Cooling: As I watched I really only saw Gharib eating and it seemed like they took big gulps of fluids each time they drank rather than small sips. I wondered, what was in their special bottles. And lots of water went over their heads to help keep their core temps down
Training: I am intrigued by what the announcers talked about being the Japanese training system. Sammy W. moved to Japan to train at the age of 15. I will find more information on this but it was inferred that mental training was a big part of it. It was also said that Kenyan isn’t quite as hot as some of us might think and the Kenyan runners live and train at 8,000 feet in Kenya, so Sammy W. had to put in some additional lowland (heat and humidity), which obviously paid off.
The Americans: “Ritz” and Hall did us proud with a 9th and 10th place finish, Brian Sell finished 22nd.
Not only did I get chills watching Sammy run on to the track at the Bird’s Nest but I had that feeling for all the runners. Running inspired.
Let us know how watching the Olympic marathon made you feel and are you more motivated than ever? Leave a comment below.
Train Focused, Steve Mackel – MarathonTraining.TV Head Coach
Marathon Training with Coach Gary: Mental Training with Jedi Mind Tricks
Yes back by popular demand…
The feedback from last weeks show was so overwhelming…I had to do it again…
In this show I focus on teaching you how to use your mind to finish your marathon or half marathon.
This is a really good talk for beginning marathoners to listen to as so much of your performance is mental.
So of the topics that I cover are…
– How prepare mentally for your long run
– How to think positive while running
– Ways to improve your breathing even when tired
– Tricks that you can use to keep your body going even when you are tired
Oh, yeah, there’s a little dancing also…
Coach Gary
The Run Coach Show with Special Guest Dick Beardsley – “Marathon Tips from a Pro” 5th fastest American marathoner, Tuesday August 19
Dick is best known by his Boston Marathon performance in 1982 also know as the “Duel in the Sun” Click Here to Watch this Amazing Video
MarathonTraining.TV Coaches Steve Mackel and Gary Smith will be interviewing top athletes and fitness professional, to help you improve your training and performance. These shows will be broadcasted on the web or you can listen in by phone. They will also be recorded so if you are unable to listen to the live broadcast you can listen on your computer or download a mp3 file and listen to it at your convenience. When you sign up for our Run Coach Show you will also have the ability to ask our guest questions by submitting them in advance or during the live broadcast.
Tomorrow’s guest is Dick Beardsley who holds the record for the 5th fastest marathon time by an American.
EVENT: Marathon Tips from a Pro
GUEST: Dick Beardsley
DATE AND TIME: Tuesday, August 19, at 5:30 PM PDT
FORMAT: Simulcast! (Attend via Phone or Webcast — it’s your choice)
TO SIGN UP TO LISTEN TO OUR INTERVIEW WITH DICK BEARDSLEY, CLICK HERE NOW
Listen Focused, Steve Mackel, MarathonTraining.TV Head Coach
Coach Gary’s Friday Night Pep Talk 8:30-9:00 PST.
Coach Gary gives an important talk on marathon training tonight.Topics include:How to survive the wall.
How fast you should go tomorrow.
Last second check list and preparations.
What your goals should be at this point of the training.This will be his first live show…so please excuse any bad lighting, bad language, and advice that contradicts with Coach Steve (who really knows his stuff.)
I am trying out a new video thingy bob so bare with the experiment.
POST SHOW ANALYSIS
This was sooooo much fun. Hopefully you saw it live. I might try to do this more often.
Did anyone watch it live? Did it work on ustream? Let me know. Leave a comment.
Don’t just be a voyeur. Tell us what you think.
God Bless,
Gary
Gary’s Vision
I felt super inspired this morning after going for like eight days on raw food now as part of a cleanse.
Like some ancient energy is coming back into my body.
And I just had to share it with the world.
In my experience, when I share powerful visions with people they tend to begin manifesting in the world.
Thanks everyone for being a part of this fantastic athletic marathon training community that I am a part in.
QUESTION:
“What is your vision for the world?”
Running Slows the Aging Clock
Run to Live, Live to Run
After reading this article, please leave your healthy comment!
Running Slows the Aging Clock, Stanford Researchers Find, Monday August 11, 4:00 pm ET
STANFORD, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Regular running slows the effects of aging, according to a new study from Stanford University School of Medicine that has tracked 500 older runners for more than 20 years. Elderly runners have fewer disabilities, a longer span of active life and are half as likely as aging nonrunners to die early deaths, the research found.
The study has a very pro-exercise message, said James Fries, MD, an emeritus professor of medicine at the medical school and the study’s senior author. If you had to pick one thing to make people healthier as they age, it would be aerobic exercise. The new findings will appear in the Aug. 11 issue of the journal Archives of Internal Medicine
When Fries and his team began this research in 1984, many scientists thought vigorous exercise would do older folks more harm than good. Some feared the long-term effect of the then-new jogging craze would be floods of orthopedic injuries, with older runners permanently hobbled by their exercise habit. Fries had a different hypothesis: he thought regular exercise would extend high-quality, disability-free life. Keeping the body moving, he speculated, wouldn’t necessarily extend longevity, but it would compress the period at the end of life when people couldn’t carry out daily tasks on their own. That idea came to be known as the compression of morbidity theory.
Fries’ team began tracking 538 runners over age 50, comparing them to a similar group of nonrunners. The subjects, now in their 70s and 80s, have answered yearly questionnaires about their ability to perform everyday activities such as walking, dressing and grooming, getting out of a chair and gripping objects. The researchers have used national death records to learn which participants died, and why. Nineteen years into the study, 34 percent of the nonrunners had died, compared to only 15 percent of the runners.
At the beginning of the study, the runners ran an average of about four hours a week. After 21 years, their running time declined to an average of 76 minutes per week, but they were still seeing health benefits from running.
On average both groups in the study became more disabled after 21 years of aging, but for runners the onset of disability started later.
Runners’ initial disability was 16 years later than nonrunners, Fries said. By and large, the runners have stayed healthy.
Not only did running delay disability, but the gap between runners and nonrunners abilities got bigger with time.
We did not expect this, Fries said, noting that the increasing gap between the groups has been apparent for several years now. The health benefits of exercise are greater than we thought.
Fries was surprised the gap between runners and nonrunners continues to widen even as his subjects entered their ninth decade of life. The effect was probably due to runners greater lean body mass and healthier habits in general, he said. We don’t think this effect can go on forever, Fries added. We know that deaths come one to a customer. Eventually we will have a 100 percent mortality rate in both groups.
But so far, the effect of running on delaying death has also been more dramatic than the scientists expected. Not surprisingly, running has slowed cardiovascular deaths. However, it has also been associated with fewer early deaths from cancer, neurological disease, infections and other causes.
And the dire injury predictions other scientists made for runners have fallen completely flat. Fries and his colleagues published a companion paper in the August issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine showing running was not associated with greater rates of osteoarthritis in their elderly runners. Runners also do not require more total knee replacements than nonrunners, Fries said.
Running straight ahead without pain is not harmful, he said, adding that running seems safer for the joints than high-impact sports such as football, or unnatural motions like standing in ballet.
When we first began, there was skepticism about our ideas, Fries said. Now, many other findings go in the same direction.
Fries, 69, takes his own advice on aging: he’s an accomplished runner, mountaineer and outdoor adventurer.
Hanging on his office wall is a photo he jokingly describes as me, running around the world in two minutes. In the dazzling image of blue sky and white ice, Fries makes a tiny lap around the North Pole.
Fries collaborated with Stanford colleagues Eliza Chakravarty, MD, MS, an assistant professor of medicine; Helen Hubert, PhD, a researcher now retired Stanford, and Vijaya Lingala, PhD, a research software developer.
The research was supported by grants from the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases and by the National Institute on Aging.
Stanford University Medical Center integrates research, medical education and patient care at its three institutions Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford Hospital Clinics and Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford. For more information, please visit the Web site of the medical center’s Office of Communication & Public Affairs at http://mednews.stanford.edu.
Train Focused, Steve Mackel, ChiRunning® Instructor
Special thanks to “Brown Wrap” for letting me know about this article
Special Free Sunday ChiRunning® Clinic and Yoga for Runners at Glendale Lululemon
Steve teaches “Yoga for Runners” after a long Saturday run
This Sunday, August 10, I’ll be giving a FREE ChiRunning® clinic with a 30 minute run at 8:30 AM followed by my “Yoga for Runners” class at 9:30 AM. This is in conjunction with the new Glendale Lululemon store, in the new Glendale Americana Click Here for Directions
I hear it gets pretty crowded and the entire workout will take 2 hours, so bring your, running shoes, yoga mat or towel, and great attitude. Oh yeah, don’t forget the sunscreen.
As for proper clothing, Lululemon has fantastic clothing for yoga and I’ve love their running clothes.
Train Focused, Steve Mackel – Lululemon Ambassador
P.S. Today is 8/8/08 and a good luck day for many cultures. Good Luck!
Chi Running Shoe: New Balance 800 Midfoot Strike System Shoe Review
Notice: It was a little windy that Saturday, so early in the video there some background noise but it lessens as the video goes on.
After all of Gary’s “in front of the camera” research, the rumor was verified. The “ChiRunning®” shoe know as the NB 800 Midfoot Strike System is out. In his the previous video in this investigative series, you may recall that I received the shoes. Watch Previous Video
The first time I tried them out I took it out on my LSD run for a real trial, 13 miles of pavement and concrete with the Beach Runners. To be fair this is my review after only one run.
Look for my next video on this shoe soon, I am loading up miles on them. Tonight I take them out on the trail for the first time. So much for the nice white outer, yet the trail will be a great test.
Train Focused, Steve Mackel – Professional Running Shoe Tester (kids don’t try this at home)
Founder – Coach Steve
Running Shoe Store of the Month – Jan/Feb 2017
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