Quick Review:
Comfortable. Lightweight. Good feel.
Has just enough protection to take the bite out of stepping on sharp objects; pointy rocks, fallen branches, pieces of glass, etc. But flexible enough to feel like you’re almost barefoot.
Takes some getting used to just to get them on your feet, slipping your toes into each “finger”. They fit like driving gloves—a bit snug, but flexible enough that you can forget they are on your feet.
The shoes give you good feedback on your gait with the trade off that they are less forgiving of mistakes. It’s kind of like taking your car and lowing the suspension, stiffing the shocks, and using racing tires – you get a better feel of the road and, consequently, can respond to it better and (for most people) makes it more fun to drive. The downside of driving a race car is, your car no longer skids in the corners if you make a mistake—it snaps out of control. Potholes aren’t absorbed by the suspension—they’re transferred to the seat.
If you strike your heel (like I usually do), the jolt is no longer absorbed by the inch+ of cushion on your shoe and dispersed throughout—the strike is sent as a jolt up your leg into your hips. The upside is that you know—immediately—to plant your foot under you (not in font).
It forces you to be deliberate about your running gait with the idea that eventually the proper gait will become habit/natural for you.
I’ll go out on a limb and say they are not for everyone and are squarely aimed at the serious, and more technical, runner. But, like a sports car, there is a “fun” factor.
I think the biggest surprise to me is how thin the sole really is. You feel *everything* -- cracks in the sidewalk, small rocks, twigs. This also means I have to start with low mileage on these shoes—it’s not really a replacement for everyday running shoes at this point.
More to come....
Saturday, April 10, 2010
Trying out my new running shoes...
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Good news from the world of coffee…and, um, running…
Coffee Lessens the Pain of Exercise
That cup of coffee that many gym rats, bikers and runners swill before a workout does more than energize them. It kills some of the pain of athletic exertion, a new study suggests. And it works regardless of whether a person already had a coffee habit or not.
Caffeine works on a system in the brain and spinal cord (the adenosine neuromodulatory system) that is heavily involved in pain processing, says University of Illinois kinesiology and community health professor Robert Motl. And since caffeine blocks adenosine, the biochemical that plays an important role in energy transfer and thus exercise, he speculated that it could reduce pain.
So the researcher, a former competitive cyclist, divided 25 fit, college-aged males into two distinct groups: subjects whose everyday caffeine consumption was extremely low to non-existent, and those with an average caffeine intake of about 400 milligrams a day, the equivalent of three to four cups of coffee.
Unexpected results
After completing an initial exercise test in the lab on a stationary bike to determine maximal oxygen consumption or aerobic power, subjects returned for two monitored high-intensity, 30-minute exercise sessions.
An hour prior to each session, cyclists - who had been instructed not to consume caffeine during the prior 24-hour period - were given a pill. On one occasion, it contained a dose of caffeine measuring 5 milligrams per kilogram of body weight (equivalent to two to three cups of coffee); the other time, they received a placebo.
During both exercise periods, subjects' perceptions of quadriceps muscle pain was recorded at regular intervals, along with data on oxygen consumption, heart rate and work rate.
"What we saw is something we didn't expect," Motl said. "Caffeine-naïve individuals and habitual users have the same amount of reduction in pain during exercise after caffeine (consumption)."
The results are detailed in the April edition of the International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism. Co-authors included Steven P. Broglio of the University of Illinois and Sigurbjorn A. Arngrimsson of the Center for Sport and Health Sciences, Iceland University of Education.
"Clearly, if you regularly consume caffeine, you have to have more to have that bigger, mental-energy effect," Motl said. "But the tolerance effect is not ubiquitous across all stimuli. Even brain metabolism doesn't show this tolerance-type effect. That is, with individuals who are habitual users versus non-habitual users, if you give them caffeine and do brain imaging, the activation is identical. It's really interesting why some processes show tolerance and others don't."
Regarding the outcome of the current research, he said, it may be that tolerance to caffeine plays no role in the way it diminishes pain during exercise.
Motl said one of the next logical steps for his research team would be to conduct studies with rodents in order to better understand the biological mechanism for caffeine in reducing pain.
"If we can get at the biological mechanism, we can begin to understand why there may or may not be this kind of tolerance."
Will it help you win?
Motl previously has conducted other studies on the relationship between physical activity and caffeine, and considered such variables as exercise intensity, dose of caffeine, anxiety sensitivity and gender. A future research direction might be to determine caffeine's effect on sport performance.
"We've shown that caffeine reduces pain reliably, consistently during cycling, across different intensities, across different people, different characteristics. But does that reduction in pain translate into an improvement in sport performance?" he said.
Meanwhile, the current research could prove encouraging for a range of people, including the average person who wants to become more physically active to realize the health benefits.
"One of the things that may be a practical application, is if you go to the gym and you exercise and it hurts, you may be prone to stop doing that because pain is an aversive stimulus that tells you to withdraw," Motl said. "So if we could give people a little caffeine and reduce the amount of pain they're experiencing, maybe that would help them stick with that exercise."
10 Things You Need to Know About Coffee
5 Things You Must Know About Pain
Top 10 Mysteries of the Mind
Original Story: Coffee Lessens the Pain of Exercise
Saturday, April 19, 2008
MUST DO 26.2 WORKOUTS
When preparing for a marathon, make sure you fit these two workouts into your training
By Amby Burfoot
PUBLISHED 07/17/2007
Mile Repeats
In a fascinating article in Marathon & Beyond in 2002, veteran marathoner Dan Horvath plotted various workouts against his subsequent results in 30 marathons over a 12-year period. The most effective workout? Mile repeats. Horvath would typically run 6 x 1-mile at his 10-K race pace once a week. It turned out that the faster his mile repeats prior to a given marathon, the faster his marathon time. Mile repeats are a modified form of tempo training.
Yasso 800s
This deceptively simple workout has been used effectively by thousands of runners over the last decade. The goal, after several months of working up to it, is to run 10 x 800 meters in the same minutes:seconds as your goal time (in hours:minutes). If you want to run a 3:40 marathon, for example, you run your Yasso 800s in 3 minutes, 40 seconds. This workout isn't based on physiology; it's just a very tough effort that's got a mathematical appeal to it.
