Optimal Training

Runner's Tribe's new website up and "running"

Oh, I love a good pun.  But I love a bad one even better.

Big news for all of us at Runner's Tribe, as the new website is officially up and running as of today.  My mom realized it went live before I did, as I left old links in my last post.  Way to go, Mom!  Runner's Tribe fan of the day!

The back end is built by Flocasts, the founders of Flotrack, and anyone who follows track and field knows that the folks over there certainly know what they are doing!  There are a lot of new features built in, including an automatically generated "15 Most Popular" articles list, in which a few of my articles showed up.  Nice!

One unfortunate circumstance is that a lot of old links were broken in the creation of the new site.  As such, many of the links to my old articles on this blog won't be valid anymore.  I'll try to update those, but in the meantime, here's the new link to my archive of feature articles:

One Small Step

I hope you'll all drop by to take a look and let us know what you think!

Relating to Greatness (+ Pre-Nats thoughts)

Update: Runner's Tribe rolled out its new site, but it broke my links!  The links have now been updated, and I encourage you all to go check out the new look at Runner's Tribe!

The NCAA Pre-Nationals weekend marks the first weekend where the best start to separate themselves from the rest.  Pre-Nats saw most of the top teams compete, but there were others, including men's favorite Oklahoma State, who opted for the Chile Pepper Invitational instead.  The big star of the Pre-Nats meet was Jenny Barringer, who dominated some of the best runners in the country en route to a huge victory.

Her coach, Mark Wetmore, had some interesting stuff to say about Jenny coming back, and it inspired my latest column at Runner's Tribe.  Here's a snippet:

Wetmore was asked in a Flotrack interview what it means to his team to have her return for this cross country season.  He said:  "First of all it takes a couple of hundred points off our score immediately. Secondly, they've gone from the point of being awed by her to just respecting and emulating her. Their training in the last year has come up a notch. They don't aspire to beat her right now, but a year ago they didn't even aspire to be like her and now they do." 

Sometimes the hardest thing to do to a great athlete isn't beat them, it's relate to them. 

How often have you talked about a great athlete and heard people use words like "freak", "machine", "out-of-this-world", "bionic", "superhero", "robotic", "cheat code" or "Kenyan"?  These words don't just serve to differentiate a person, though.  They emphasize that what makes them different is something we don't have and we can't match.  Be they mutant, alien, programmed for destruction, or simply from the Kalenjin tribe, the sport, we are told, is just different for them.

We have a natural bias toward talent in this country, and maybe throughout the world.  We love talent, we love the idea of talent, and we love to identify and worship talent.  And when we've found a talent to love and worship, we do so by ascribing all of their success to their amazing talent.  It's the highest honor to be described in words like the above, words that serve to separate you from the world of mere humans...

I also consider five cross country thoughts from NCAA Pre-Nationals weekend:

• The Big Three Represent: Chris Derrick, Luke Puskedra, and ... Colby Lowe?
• How good are the Stanford men?
• Can Colorado compete with Washington's women?
• How good is Jordan Hasay?
• Who was missing The Fifth Element?

Continue reading here.

Half the Distance

The World Half Marathon Championships are coming up this weekend (as are the Chicago and Melbourne Marathons), and it got me thinking about the half marathon.  My recent article at Runner's Tribe takes a look at a race that has been historically underappreciated, but that has grown into a major event over the past few years.  I pulled some interesting stats as well, so if you'd like to see how the half marathon has progressed at an elite level, there's some good stuff in there for you.  Here's a snippet:

If there's one race that's been historically underappreciated, it's the half marathon.  With its Phidippidian roots, the full marathon has long been the cool guy at the road race party.  And with their track equivalents, shorter time requirements, and easier logistics, 5k and 10k have ruled the road race circuit for years.  This has meant the half-marathon has, until fairly recently, been the Steve Erkel in the family of road races.  Always there, never popular.  But not anymore.  I'd say it's now at least the Theo Huxtable to the marathon's Fresh Prince of Bel Air.  (Oh, where did the '80s go?)

It's always been hurt by its lack of inclusion in the Olympics or World Championships.  I can see why they opted not to include it in the Olympics, but I don't see why it isn't included in the World Championships.  I'd like to see it there.  Of course, I'd like to see cross country in the global championships, too.  Who needs the 1500m, really?  (Kidding!)

The half was never legit.  It was basically run as a tune-up race, rarely for its own sake.  Batting practice before the official game, so to speak.  Now, it's become legit.  There are a couple things driving this, I think.

Click here to read the full article.