This is the first installment of a two-part series on hill training.   Most runners include hill workouts in their schedules, and hill sessions can represent one of the most-productive forms of training for endurance athletes. There’s only one problem: Many runners don’t know how to construct hill workouts properly. Poorly planned hill sessions produce sub-optimal gains in overall fitness.   A collection of great hill workouts is like a key chapter in your overall...

  My first daughter, Cori, was born when I was still an undergraduate at the University of Rhode Island. She was a smiling beauty, so precious and dear to me. I loved her deeply from the first second I saw her (and still do).   When I arrived home from URI each day, I would help with her feeding and bathing, read to her, and make sure she was tucked in safely for the night - or at least for a few hours, in those frequent cases when hunger collaborated directly with the op...

  Educated Runner is very excited to announce the establishment of its first-ever running camp down under – the Snowy Mountains Running Camp in beautiful Australia. This camp totally transforms attendees’ running – and provides a fabulous vacation on top of the running make-over.   The camp is coordinated by Owen Anderson, Ph. D., the founder of Educated Runner, and Kyle Williams, an experienced Australian trekker, runner, and guide who hails from Canberra. Owen and Kyle h...

  The Winter Olympics are over, and somehow the US media missed a key story coming out of the Games. In the rush to check on the day-to-day condition of Lindsey Vonn’s shins, the exploits of athletes from the little kingdom of Norway were ignored.   Such ignorance was a mistake. Norway did astonishingly well at the Games, capturing 23 of the 86 medals awarded (27 percent). That’s a rather shocking development when one realizes that Norway’s population is 4.8 million,...

  There is a geranium in your running program, and it needs to be nurtured.   I came to this realization yesterday after reading Flannery O’Connor’s wonderful and aptly named story, “The Geranium.” By the way, even though Flannery O’Connor never ran a step in her life, few writers have more to say to runners. I’ll explain why in a moment.   The story progression in The Geranium focuses on a troubled fellow named Old Dudley. Now that “Geranium” has appeared four...

  The running pot is simmering in the popular press these days, and the heady vapor which is emerging proclaims that barefoot running provides the pathway to salvation for a large fraction of the running population.   You’re familiar with the claims by now: That barefoot running erases existing running injuries. That barefoot running reduces the risk of future running maladies. That barefoot running is healthier and more natural than shod running. That barefoot runnin...

  Sport began as a religious cult – as a way of controlling and changing the world.   Living in the most-arid regions of Mexico, the Zunis played games which they thought would increase the probability of rain. To ensure a good whaling season, Makah Indians of the Pacific Northwest played the first known hockey contests, using whale bones as both “pucks” and “sticks.” Some of the original tribes of India arranged tug-of-war contests to expel demons and encourage the sun to...

A runner’s choice of foot-strike pattern is likely to have an effect on running economy, competitive performance, and the likelihood of overuse injury. The foot is the only body part which directly supplies propulsive force to the ground during running, and it is also a part of the lower limb which is highly susceptible to injury.   The two most commonly used foot-strike techniques are the rear-foot strike (RFS), in which the heel of the running shoe is the first structure which make...

  Barefoot running is taking off! One reason for this is the increasingly popular story which is being spun about the nature of a barefoot run: According to some “experts” (and of course many non-experts), unshod running decreases impact forces with the ground, reduces the likelihood of injury, and also enhances running economy, a key predictor of performance. Compared with stuffing one’s feet in 800-gram brogans with mattress-like mid-soles, barefoot running also appears to be p...

  On a magnificent Sunday in early September, I took my 12-year-old daughter to the Michigan State Fair in Detroit, and it was one of those times when it is easy to think, "We'll never have a day quite like this again."   And when you also think, just below the surface, that time is passing way too quickly, after all I was just walking my daughter, one-day-old, down the street in her carriage, just home from the hospital, it can’t really be 12 years ago, and now I barely see her and...

  The six weeks after a vVO2max test are often the busiest time in a runner’s life. Shocking that a simple six-minute exam could create such a productive frenzy, but the vVO2max effort can do everything – evaluate fitness, set up stunning workouts, and even establish goal pace for an important race.   The test is straightforward. After a warm-up which fires up your nervous system, on a day when you are recovered and feeling great, run as far as you can on the track in just...

  The full schedule for Owen’s August Running Get-Away in Vermont is now available:   OWEN’S RUNNING GET-AWAY AT THE GOVE HILL RETREAT THETFORD, VERMONT AUGUST 15-20, 2009   “The top performances of the future will, increasingly, result from ‘spirit’ and high intelligence. All things will be found to be possible – when we understand truly the principles, fundamentals, and mysteries of training.” – Percy Cerutty, How to Become a Champion     SCHEDULE FOR T...

The runners coached by EducatedRunner.com have been doing extremely well. A case in point is Ingmar Ekstrand, an intelligent, tough-minded, 63-year-old runner who hails from the beautiful university city of Uppsala, Sweden. Ingmar has life-time PR of 3:10 for the marathon and in the past year has hit 20:43 during a club-run 5K and 3:34:00 for the 26.2-mile event. Before coming to EducatedRunner, he was a confirmed Lydiardite, with weeks filled with 17- to 18-kilometer runs and a n...

Running a marathon can be an extremely frustrating experience. Frustration occurs during this great race when there is a gap between actual performance on race day and expected performance.   One “solution” could be to eliminate expectations and simply focus on the actual effort during the race. A key problem with this is that expectations can be great motivators during pre-marathon training. In addition, having a goal pace for the marathon (an expectation) improves the qua...

The spring marathon season is kicking into full-swing, which reminds me that this race depends on mental strategizing (for success) more than any other popular race distance. You can burn a 5K without thinking, but in the marathon pensiveness is always going to come to the fore at some point, and it can hurt you or help you as you negotiate those 26.2 miles. The right mental mind-set for the marathon revolves around what I like to call FFRR & DSD – Focus, Fatigue-Relief, Relaxation...

VAK training can transform your running.  VAK refers to the practice of stating your running goal verbally – and then experiencing the achievement of the goal Visually, in an Auditory fashion, and Kinesthetically.   For example, your goal might be the achievement of a certain finishing time in a marathon. To begin a VAK training session for this goal, you would simply make yourself very comfortable, relax, close your eyes, and say, “I am going to finish the Boston Marathon in 2:...

About 65 percent of endurance runners get injured during an average training year, and research reveals that the injury rate may be even higher in individuals training for a marathon.   Some running advocates say that 65 percent may not be so bad, because the lower-limb damage rate for sedentary individuals is probably even higher (hypothetically due to a lack of coordination and muscular strength among sofa spuds). If 80 percent of couch potatoes are hurt during an average 12-month ...

Endurance runners sometimes ask why it is beneficial to go to the trouble and expense of having a coach.  They’re thinking that it might be just as good (or maybe even better) to forgo the weekly or monthly tutoring of a real-live human mentor and to follow a high-quality “canned program” instead.  After all (the thinking goes), if you’ve got a great schedule to follow, isn’t that enough, especially if you are the kind of runner who doesn’t need or like “hand-holding?” What is forgo...

Usain Bolt’s gold-medal-winning and world-record-setting 9.69-second performance over 100 meters at the Beijing Olympics was an astonishing surge of “running lightning.” Let’s take a look at how he accomplished it. In contrast to the other sprinters in the race, who took about 44 steps to cover the 100-meter distance, Usain required only 41 steps. His step length averaged 100/41 = 2.44 meters per step. Everyone else hovered around 100/44 = 2.27 meters per step, a 7-percent dimi...

Iliotibial band syndrome is the most-common cause of lateral knee pain in endurance runners, and the troublesome condition can account for up to 12 percent of all running injuries.   The iliotibial band, a slab of muscle and connective tissue which runs down the outside of the leg from the hip to just below the knee, tends to impinge on a lateral projection of the femur at the knee just after foot strike occurs. Repetitive rubbing of the iliotibial band on the femoral projection can ...

Coming off the  plane in Detroit, Meshack did not look like an elite runner. His David-Niven mustache suggested  suavity rather than sinew, and his gentle gaze seemed to hold very little competitive  fire. Shockingly, too, the lines on his face and the small hints of alopecia suggested that  he was a vintage athlete, perhaps the kind of fellow who was nearing the 40 mark. But he was my runner, the first  Kenyan I had brought to the states for my budding business as a...

If you are like many runners, you have probably wondered whether you could improve your biomechanics – and whether that improvement might upgrade your performances and decrease your risk of injury. Before I address whether that is possible, let’s take note of the fact that biomechanics is the study of the forces which act on the body during running, especially with regards to the muscles and skeletal system.  Kinetics is a branch of biomechanics which studies the forces and motions which...

One of the great mysteries of running is why elite African endurance runners have greater fatigue-resistance, compared with runners from the rest of the world. What do we mean by fatigue-resistance?  It is simply the ability to sustain a high-quality pace. If you tell an elite African runner to run as far as possible at an intensity of 90 percent of maximal aerobic capacity (VO2max), he/she will often be able to race a half-marathon at that level of effort.  But, if you provide t...

VO2max is not a German rocket or a type of hair treatment: It is your maximum rate of oxygen consumption.  Even though it is actually a rate of oxygen use (often expressed in milliliters of oxygen consumed per kilogram of body weight per minute), it is popularly referred to as maximal aerobic capacity. VO2max has a bearing on your endurance-running performances, because oxygen acts as an electron catcher during energy producing metabolic processes which happen inside your cells.  Wi...

If you are like me, you need quick energy from time to time – before a workout, when your tank is feeling a little low or perhaps after a session, when you’d like to take in some carbs for recovery. Often, we turn to energy bars at such times.  Expensive they may be, but they do often pack carbohydrate and protein wallops, and many of them throw in things we seem to need, like vitamins, minerals, and even healthy fats (omega-3s).  Consuming an energy bar seems to be an easy way to f...