Advice from Pfitzinger

I haven't read any running books for a while, but I was browsing Run Strong again, a compilation of running advice from twelve running gurus. Browsing chapter 11, on the subject of recovery, I was struck by an apparent contradiction laid out by Pete Pfitzinger. His article lists a series of ways in which to "optimize" one's recovery runs. Regarding daily running frequency (i.e. how often one should run per day) he states

"Many runners introduce two runs per day before it is necessary. If your are preparing for races of 10,000 meters or longer, avoid double workouts until you have maximized the mileage that you can positively recover from in single workouts. Staying with longer single runs builds endurance and gives you more time for recovery between training sessions.

Later, he affirms that

"When your mileage increases to the point at which your recovery runs last more than 50 minutes (or more than an hour during high mileage marathon training), then it is time to switch those days to easy double-workout days. Doing two runs of 35 minutes rather than one 70-minute run is easier on your body and enhances your recovery.

Just how old are you, Mr. Bond?

I just saw Skyfall yesterday. It was a pretty good movie, though I still have a tough time with goofy stunts and improbable villains. Living Daylights is still my favourite Bond movie. On that, I'm in a small minority.  But after 50 years of James Bond movies I wondered how old Bond was (or more accurately the actor playing him) and his 'main' Bond girl.  So I made a list. This plot includes every 'official' bond movie, 23 in all (while skipping the 1967 Casino Royale and Never Say Never Again, etc).

Notice how young Sean Connery played bond, between 32 to 41 (not counting NSNA where he was 53). Roger Moore was 5 years older than Connery in his first movie appearance. This means that except for Lazeny's brief stint audiences were introduced to a yet-older Bond every year between 1962 and 1985. More recently Bond's age has been stabilizing between mid 30s and late 40s. The average age for all Bonds is 43.

Most bond girls -as might have be guessed- are under 30. But not by much; their average age is 29.  There's a slight trend in casting 'older' (relatively speaking), though it's interesting to see that 1964's Pussy Galore continues to be the oldest Bond girl at 39.  

I had no idea Lazeby was only 30 when he joined the franchise (while his female counterpart was 31). That might explain his failure as Bond; he was simply too young! 

Roger Ebert superlatives

From memory (plus a little help from the internets), here are a some super superlative quotes from film critic Roger Ebert, whom I love to read:

An early preview of Life of Pi (2012) "This is the best use of 3-D I've ever seen"

"Fargo (1996) rotates its story through satire, comedy, suspense and violence, until it emerges as one of the best films I've ever seen".

No Country for Old Men (2007) "Many of the scenes in No Country for Old Men are so flawlessly constructed that you want them to simply continue, and yet they create an emotional suction drawing you to the next scene. Another movie that made me feel that way was Fargo. To make one such film is a miracle. Here is another".

Cloud Atlas (2012), "Surely this is one of the most ambitious films ever made."

"Grave of the Fireflies (1988) doesn't attempt even the realism of "The Lion King" or "Princess Mononoke," but paradoxically it is the most realistic animated film I've ever seen--in feeling."

Monster (2004): "This is one of the greatest performances in the history of the cinema."

A tale of the american prison system, Into the Abyss (2011) "may be the saddest film Werner Herzog has ever made."

Come and See (1985): "This 1985 film from Russia is one of the most devastating films ever about anything, and in it, the survivors must envy the dead"

The Passion of the Christ (2004) "This is the most violent film I have ever seen."

The Life of Oharu (1952), "Here is the saddest film I have ever seen about the life of a woman".

I Spit on Your Grave (1980): "A vile bag of garbage named "I Spit on Your Grave" is playing in Chicago theaters this week. It is a movie so sick, reprehensible and contemptible that I can hardly believe it's playing in respectable theatres... Attending it was one of the most depressing experiences of, my life".

Bonus: the only film Ebert ever walked out of, Caligula (1980): "If it is not the worst film I have ever seen, that makes it all the more shameful: People with talent allowed themselves to participate in this travesty".

Confessions

Over the years I've been accused of writing fanciful. Or maybe it's long-winded. I don't know why I write this way, but it could be of fear of running out of things to say. I stare at a blank screen with a thought in my head, then I ask "how can I make this thought a full page, or even a full paragraph?

I stare in wonder how a person sits down and writes a book. A full book, with hundreds of pages of thought. I try to write what comes to my head, but moments of panic make me draw out simple ideas into a very weak tea indeed. My favorite books are the ones you can open to a single page and get as much as you need. Like DNA, or a fractal.

Running questionnaire

Cross country season is upon us. At least for those in school. Pity how XC is focused on high school and university. Us older folks must subsist on a diet of road races.

Back when September meant a new season, I was curious what newbie university thought about running in general.  When I was running XC (in grad school) I saw a lot of different backgrounds in people. And in later years I remember instances when teammates didn't have many answers. Once, on the bus ride home after a race, one guy said he didn't know why we ran many of the workouts we did.

Around that time I thought if I was a coach I'd want to know what thoughts people had about running. So I made up this questionnaire for some future use. Naturally it never saw the light of day. Until now! Sort of.

Questionnaire

1) How many kilometers did you run per week, on average, during the summer?

a) ________kms              b) don’t know               c) don’t care    d) did other sports

2) How many kilometers do you want to run this fall?

a) ________kms              b) don’t know               c) don’t care

3) After university how much do you expect to run?

a) ________kms              b) don’t know               c) don’t care             d) Probably won’t be running by then

4) What do you think is your weakest link to running faster? (you can circle more than one)

a) speed         b) endurance               c) body weight       d) technique    e) injuries   

f) health         g) other________________________

5) How many pairs of running shoes do you own?   ______________

6) What’s your favorite running distance/event?__________________________________

7) If you were forbidden to run forevermore, what would you do instead?

a) Mope          b) study more           c) play more ____________ (e.g. baseball, ultimate…)

d) more socializing          e) read more                  f) other_________________________

8) How many hours of sleep do you get per night (including naps)?__________

9) How many years have you been running “competitively’?_______________

10) Have you ever heard of the following people:

            Jack Daniels               Y          N

            Arthur Lydiard           Y          N

            Bill Bowerman           Y          N

11) What are your thoughts on vitamins and supplements?

12) If you knew a teammate who cheated (drugs, manipulation of results etc), what would you do?

13) Why do you want to compete on a running team?

(i.e. do you want to win, enjoy competing no matter the result, enjoy team atmosphere,  other benefits)

14) What injury, if any, do you frequently experience while running?

15) What's your favourite running/sport book/movie/documentary, if any?  

Fun with Physics, part 2: foot impact forces

This post is a sequel to a previous post about the invariance of running energy expenditure with respect to distance. The topic I wish to cover here is a back-of-the-envelope estimation for total impact force of a running step. In other words, how many G-forces does your body experience with each footstep? Before I get to this question I will recap some of the previous post below.

What I said before was, using some actual physics equations (hence the title), was that faster running does not burn more calories per kilometre*. I derived the following formula

using the assumptions 1) that each step from one foot to another follows the usual symmetric parabolic arc and 2) there is no wind resistance and 3) the take-off angle of each step is 45 degrees (which is a poor assumption but in this simple-minded case gives an energy minimum for running under the given goal of minimizing energy cost). I changed the 'equal' sign in the original equation to a 'less-than' sign, since the true energy cost of running is lower, at about 0.97 kcal/(kg*km). A more complex model would make some approximations of energy transferred using a spring/level system, but I'm not going down that rabbit hole. The ratio of my predicted vs actual calorie cost is 1.17/0.97 = 1.21. Hence I overestimated the cost of running by 21%, which is not bad for a ridiculously simple inequality (containing only the gravimetric constant g).

Ryan Hall

Sometimes the mainstream media can surprise me. Here, for instance, is a piece on Ryan Hall by the New Yorker written in 2008 on the eve before his Beijing Olympic appearance. It goes into some depth. With a long article like this, you can savour the details a simple bio piece would skip. 

I was trying to recall what he had done by August 2008, and I forgot his sub one hour half marathon PB was set in 2007, almost five years ago. How time flies. Now with two Olympic appearances under his belt he's been at the top of American running now for quite a while.