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Owen Anderson, Ph. D., started the web site, www.educatedrunner.com to give runners of all ages and ability levels factual information about training, sports nutrition, and injury prevention. Anderson’s goals include dispelling the many myths associated with running training and giving runners practical tips which can immediately be put to work to improve their fitness and performances.
Owen Anderson is the author of three books - Lactate Lift-Off, Great Workouts for Popular Races, and Aurora. Lactate Lift-Off unravels the mysteries and dispels the myths surrounding the physiological phenomenon called “lactate threshold” and shows athletes exactly how to optimize lactate-threshold velocity, a key predictor of performance. Great Workouts for Popular Races describes the training sessions which are needed for optimal performance at competitive distances ranging from 800 meters all the way up to 100K. Aurora helps athletes find the inner strength and courage which are required to reach their performance goals and also provides a bounty of practical information about training.
Owen is currently working on a fourth book for Human Kinetics Publishing entitled The Science of Running. This 700-page, 45-chapter volume will serve as the ultimate reference for runners who are interested in upgrading their training and performances.
Owen has traveled to Kenya on five separate occasions to study the training techniques of the top Kenyan runners, and he has assisted such notable Kenyan runners as Tegla Loroupe (quadruple world-record holder) and Sammy Lelei (59:24 PR for the half-marathon, 2:07:03 for the marathon) with their training programs. He has also coached Benjamin Simatei (winner of the Park Forest 10-Mile Race in Chicago, Illinois), Antony Maina (bronze-medal winner at the Kenyan National Armed-Forces Cross-Country Championships), Leah Malot (African 10-K champion), and Catherine Dugdale (seven-time Welsh cross-country champion and United-Kingdom representative at the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne Australia in 2006).
Owen has been a regular contributor to National Geographic Adventure Magazine, Running Times Magazine, Runner’s World, Shape, and RunningFitness Magazine (in the United Kingdom). Noted British coach Frank Horwill (advisor to world-record-setter Sebastian Coe) said, “Owen is a brilliant and lucid writer on all topics related to running.”
Owen earned a B. S. in Zoology from the University of Rhode Island, where he was named the most outstanding undergraduate student in 1975. As a graduate student at Michigan State University, Owen was awarded a National Science Foundation fellowship so that he could pursue his physiological research; he received his doctorate in Zoology/Physiology from MSU in 1983. In 1992 he was named the most outstanding running journalist in the United States by the Road Runners’ Clubs of America.
Anderson is the developer of the “neural system” for training endurance runners, a program which de-emphasizes training volume, focuses intently on high-quality running and strength workouts, and has as its goals the expansion of maximal running speed and the optimization of running-specific strength and coordination. He has given seminars and clinics throughout the United States and in England and Japan on this topic, and his articles on training have been published in Spain, France, England, the Netherlands, Germany, Japan, Australia, and the United States. Owen speaks three foreign languages (French, Italian, and Swahili) and very much enjoys spending time with his children.