Optimal Training

Excellent article on Phoebe Wright of Tennessee

This article about Phoebe Wright, walk-on member of the University of Tennessee's world record setting DMR team and recent SEC 800m champ, is one of those articles that all young runners should read.  I learned about Wright a little when I started researching my US Trade Values column, and she's been one of my second-tier favorites ever since.  This article gives some insight into why she's been able to achieve the level of success she's reached.  Lots of good quotes, too

The Marathon Coverage Manifesto: The Six Key Principles to Covering a Major Marathon

I don't know about you all, but if you stayed up until 4:30am like I did to watch the London Marathon, you were probably thoroughly entertained by the races and thoroughly appalled by the coverage.  Given that Boston last week wasn't much better, I decided maybe it was because they just don't know what we're looking for. 

The result: I wrote up my Marathon Coverage Manifesto: Six Key Principles for Covering a Major Marathon.  A snippet:

We were reminded yet again that marathon commentators and TV coverage still haven't figured out how to cover a marathon.  That's what I'd like to turn my attention to today, as nobody should have to sit through such a painful experience as distance running fans were subjected to this past week by Universal Sports.  Around the world there was fist-clenching, hair-pulling, head-shaking and much gnashing of teeth.  It was bloody grim.

Something needs to be done.  Marathons should not be enhanced by the mute button.  I know I'm not alone in feeling this way, because LetsRun devoted their real-time blog to bashing the Boston announcers, and the Science of Sport pretty succinctly summarized all that was wrong in the London broadcast.  To relive the damage in its gory details, there is also this LetsRun forum thread.  I'm not sure that I can solve this at 4:30am while I've got one eye on the computer screen, but I'm going to give it a shot.

Continue reading here to get the details around all six principles and some specific examples of what I hope to never hear again!

Update: Call me commish!  Some love from Runnersworld!  Thanks Peter!

Building the best runner isn't easy

I told my sister about a forum post on LetsRun about why Africans are so fast.  I think it was this one.  (There are so many, and it was a while ago...)  Anyway, people were putting forth a number of different arguments, centering on mental toughness, eons of adaptation at high altitude, smaller calf size...pretty much the gamut of possible explanations.

She took that and came up with this doodle.  I kinda like it.  See more of her quirky doodles at Pee Yoo!

The Rotterdam Shift

Boston was quite a race to watch, with the men and women using markedly different tactics.  The women jogged 20 miles and then started racing, while the men started racing about 20 seconds into the race.  I was particularly pleased that both Ryan Hall and Kara Goucher were both in the mix and had an impact on the final outcomes.

As for the men's tactics, I wasn't surprised because I believe the marathon has undergone its third major shift of the past decade, what I call the Rotterdam Shift.  I can't think of any scenario in which a major men's marathon will ever go out slow again.  I might have argued that a strong headwind could have created that scenario, but Boston had that and they still went out pedal to the metal.  No, the days of tactical marathons are over.  They are now wars of attrition.

In my most recent article, The Rotterdam Shift, I detail what brought us to this point, and look at the Boston results through that light.  As usual, here's a snippet:

In my mind, Rotterdam wasn't just an aberration.  It wasn't just a fluke where Duncan Kibet and James Kwambai ran surprisingly fast world class 2:04:27s.   (And let's not forget Abel Kirui--before Rotterdam, could you imagine a guy running 2:05:04 and NOBODY talking about him?) 

Rotterdam  ushered in what's destined to be a new era of marathoning.  Prior to that race, 2:04 was the realm of the few, the "chosen," the Gebrselassies, Tergats and probably someday the Wanjirus, Bekeles, Sihines, and Tadeses .  You weren't supposed to be running that fast unless you had proven world class 10,000 meter speed.

Then three second-tier Kenyans went out and ran it.  That marked, in my mind, the third important shift in the world of men's elite marathoning within this decade.

I hope you'll read the rest of the article to learn why I think men's marathoning will never be the same.  And why London just might be the most exciting marathon we've seen yet!

Do you need running shoes?

You may or may not have seen this article: The painful truth about trainers: Are running shoes a waste of money?  A friend of mine posted it to Facebook with a comment that he was going to go return his shoes.  Surely he was joking, but still, it got me to read the article and it's really a fascinating read. 

This article spawned what I call a "thought thread".  It made me look at something in a different context and follow the connections to see a new picture.  I'm sure the picture I'm viewing is far from complete, but it's new for me and that made the article a success.

America has a health crisis in that more and more people are suffering from diseases such as diabetes, heart disease and obesity.  Along with a healthy diet, the best preventive measure for this is exercise.  Running is great exercise, arguably the most natural and effective exercise there is.  So people should be running more.  For most people, running shoes facilitate running.  Part of that is marketing (we think we need them), part of it is culture (everybody else wears them), and part of it is geographical (people who live in cities, etc.).  So in that respect, running shoes could logically be treated as a kind of medical device.  Even more interestingly, the article alludes to running shoes actually causing more injuries in runners.  So maybe they should be tested as a safety hazard as well...  Should the FDA be testing running shoes (or would that be another department)?  Has Consumer Reports ever tackled this?

I wonder what would happen if the running shoe companies were subjected to some rigorous scientific testing to determine just how beneficial their products are.  My hunch is that the results wouldn't be quite so dramatic, probably more in line with the last section of the article.  Running barefoot would be found superior, but the use of shoes would be found beneficial for most runners, and the overall benefits experienced by runners would outweigh the injury costs experienced by those who run.

Anyway, even more interesting would be knowing which shoes (and shoe companies) are putting out the most "dangerous" shoes for runners.  If anyone has any better articles on this, please let me know.

The Future of Track and Field Websites

My most recent article has finally been posted at Runner's Tribe: The Future of Track and Field Websites.  It is the "part 2" to my article about Trackshark closing down: Value on the Internet: Another Look at Trackshark.  In this article, I go into detail about the Freemium model for websites, and discuss the types of sites that will create value in the future.  Here's a snippet:

The leading proponent of "free" content is probably Chris Anderson, author of The Long Tail.  He's writing a book about the new economics of "free" as we speak.  And he's absolutely right that in today's economy there is incredible value in "free" given the reach of information.  As he wrote in an article titled Free! Why $0.00 is the Future of Business:

"From the consumer's perspective...there is a huge difference between cheap and free. Give a product away and it can go viral. Charge a single cent for it and you're in an entirely different business, one of clawing and scratching for every customer. The psychology of "free" is powerful indeed, as any marketer will tell you.

This difference between cheap and free is what venture capitalist Josh Kopelman calls the "penny gap." People think demand is elastic and that volume falls in a straight line as price rises, but the truth is that zero is one market and any other price is another. In many cases, that's the difference between a great market and none at all."

This is exactly the reason why track and field websites have continued to remain free.  By  being free, their content is more likely to be linked to by other sites.  Even more importantly, they can focus on creating great content rather than selling great content.  By providing free content, reader numbers go up and advertisers are more likely to pay good money.  It's no wonder this model is used by the vast majority of sites, especially those creating news and opinion content. 

But what happens when advertisers stop getting returns?

Click here to get my answer, and read about the specific sites I expect we'll see more and more of in the future!  As always, I look forward to any feedback, especially if you know of a site that's already doing something I mention in the article.

If only perseverence was enough

My sister weighs in on the Nature vs Nurture argument with her doodle titled, "If only perseverance was enough".  There is some truth to this notion that can't be denied.  John Godina was never going to be Ryan Hall.  But I have to wonder if we don't sometimes assume the other guy is a race car simply because he's running race car times.  It's very easy to overlook how much effort someone else is putting into their success. 

You can see more of her "stinky doodles" at her website, Pee Yoo!  I've recently helped her set up her website, and we'd love some feedback.  Comments, ratings, and forwarding them to friends is greatly appreciated!

 

Value on the Internet: Another look at Trackshark

I've just published the first of two articles on running websites and where I think they are headed.  My interest in this topic was spurred by Trackshark's announcement that it was closing, but I wanted to hold off on commenting until I'd had a chance to do some reading and put my thoughts into perspective.  This first article is an overview of "value" on the Internet, with a special focus on Trackshark.

The article starts with the premise that ads will not be sufficient to support businesses online, and that it will be necessary for sites to expand their revenue streams.  I then take a look at the different ways that sites can create value, including eight (or is it twelve?) "generatives" that add value to content online.  Finally, I end with another look at Trackshark specifically through those "generatives".  Here's the intro:

It's been a few weeks since Trackshark announced it was closing.  The news was certainly a surprise, but I also can't say that I'm experiencing a major sense of loss as a result.  I sometimes used it to locate meet results, and they occasionally produced content that inspired me to write, but I was never a regular on the site.  Still, I'm inspired by the work they did and the approach they took to covering the sport.  I'm convinced that they raised the bar for all other companies hoping to gain a share of the market for online track coverage.  (And I've heard they may be coming back yet...we'll see.)

The bigger question Trackshark's closing posed to me was this: what can running sites do to generate stable revenues?  Let's start with an assumption that advertising revenue is as good as it's gonna get, and that there is no room for improvement.  Why assume that?  Because I don't want to get into coulda woulda shoulda's about banner ad placement and search engine optimization.  I'd rather talk about the bigger picture. 

Frankly, I agree with Eric Clemons that the online advertising model will not be sufficient to support the continued creation of content on the web .  Ads as we know them (banners, text ads, those damn pop-ups) will be blocked or ignored at an increasing rate, causing advertisers to pay less for their placement.  As that happens, content providers will have a harder and harder time providing free content.  I know this goes against The First Law of the Internet (Internet users will never pay for content) but it's inevitable. 

You can read the entire article here.  And please feel free to leave a comment.  I'm hoping to incorporate feedback into the follow-up article I'm working on now.

Paul Tergat on why Africans dominate

The Irish Times posted a great article about why Africans dominate distance running.  It's centered around an interview of Paul Tergat, one of the greatest runners of all time.  There are a number of interesting quotes from it, but the one I think I'll call out isn't so much about why Africans are better, but about how Tergat got into running:

“After school I joined the military, and one coach said ‘hey, young man, in the running, you are good’. He changed my life. No one in my life ever told me I was good. Growing up we struggled just to get something to eat.

“So when somebody tells you that you are good, that you have potential, it will change your life. It gave me the motivation, to believe more in myself. And I started to push myself.”

I encourage you to do two things.  First, read the article.  It's worth it.  Second, if you know someone who has the potential to do well in anything--it doesn't have to be running--make sure they know it.  Just tell them.  Sometimes that's all it takes to get them on the path to greatness.