Gear Review: Hansons Marathon Method: A Renegade Path to Your Fastest Marathon

I'm a believer in the theory of cumulative fatigue. So a couple years ago, when a friend asked for some marathon advice, I suggested de-emphasizing the long run, and instead placing a focus on consistent mileage and quality workouts. I told her that I believed that running marathon paced workouts on tired legs would serve her better than having one disproportionate workout per week that required sacrificing the next several days to recovery. Now, she really had no reason to believe me, since at that point, I had run one marathon and it had not gone that well, and all the plans by established coaches like Pete Pfitzinger and Jack Daniels had 20 mile runs in them (I did run a better one later, and trained for that race using the principle of cumulative fatigue). However, I had some ammo: a Running Times article about a method used by two brothers in Michigan who have had success using the principle of cumulative fatigue to train elite distance runners. The result? She PRed and qualified for Boston. Last year, Luke Humphrey, a Hansons athlete, exercise physiologist, and coach at Hansons Coaching Services, wrote Hansons Marathon Method, which detailed the training philosophy used by the Hansons Brooks Original Distance Project.

Gear Review: The New Rules of Marathon and Half-Marathon Nutrition

Go to any bookstore and you're likely to find a bevy of books on nutrition for athletes. Weight loss this, diet that, paleo here, gluten-free there...it's a pretty confusing landscape for someone who wants to tailor their nutrition first and foremost for running performance. Not long ago, Matt Fitzgerald put out the Racing Weight: How to Get Lean for Peak Performance and Racing Weight Quick Start Guide, which were interesting in that they brought a more performance focus to nutrition books, but they were still primarily about "weight loss" rather than "fueling yourself for performance." That all changes with Fitzgerald's new book, The New Rules of Marathon and Half-Marathon Nutrition.

Gear Review: Faster than Forty

I first heard about Faster than Forty by Mark Gomes and Rick Miller through the LetsRun message boards. Gomes is the 2011 USATF Masters National 800m Champion, and had been brought up on the board once before, in a post about his "NO RUNNING" program that led him to a 4:38 mile at 41 years old. (Don't worry, Faster than Forty is not about the "NO RUNNING" regimen...that came later and is hinted at briefly in the epilogue, but that's it). I checked out the excerpt on their website and found myself intrigued. So, ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, here's the Faster than Forty review!

Gear Review: Training on Empty

About a year and a half ago, a post on LetsRun led me to She was Once a Runner, a blog written by an anonymous runner about her college running career, an experience destroyed by a disturbed psyche and an unhealthy environment filled with her toxic coach, teammates, and parents. Quite different from the usual running books you see, like Running with the Buffaloes and Running for the Hansons, but unfortunately a story that proved to be all-too-familiar with many athletes on LetsRun, who all chimed in with their own experiences as they waited eagerly for updates. When the author stopped updating her blog (she did eventually publish the rest of her story on Smashwords), one poster managed to get in touch with her, posting an interview with SWOAR's author on her own blog, Training on Empty. This poster was Lize Brittin, whom those of you up on their running history trivia may recognize as four-time Colorado state cross-country and track champion, Pikes Peak Ascent record holder, and elite mountain runner. However, Brittin also struggled with an eating disorder, one that would eventually end her elite career (and nearly her life). Training on Empty (the name of her book as well as her blog) is the story of both her fight with the disease and how she eventually managed to overcome it.

An Open Letter to Brooks Re: Launch

Dear Brooks,

It's no secret that the Brooks Launch is my favorite trainer. It's a super simple shoe, no nonsense, no bells and whistles...nothing but function. My friend Andrew recommended it to me a while ago, and while at first, I resisted and bought the Ghost instead because another one of my friends told me it was too soft (and granted, it is pretty soft), I eventually listened to him and realized how right he was. The Launch is a trainer done right. It filled the gap for me when Nike changed the midsole of my beloved Pegasus from Phylon to Cushlon, and may have even eclipsed the Pegs as a shoe that just "works." And man, will I miss it when it's gone.

Gear Review: The Ultimate Beginner's Running Guide: The Key to Running Inspired

For people new to the sport, running can be somewhat intimidating. As nice as the idea of telling them to "just go run," might be, the truth is people want more information, as evidenced by the growing number of books and websites devoted to beginner runners. The question, of course, becomes which of these books and websites are worth reading, and which are not? When author Ryan Robert contacted me about his book The Ultimate Beginner's Running Guide: The Key to Running Inspired, I admit that I was skeptical. I had no idea who Ryan Robert was, and I was a little worried his book would be yet another beginner book that rehashed all the same tired information that was in every single other beginner book. However, upon reading the book, I was pleasantly surprised.

Gear Review: Kara Goucher's Running for Women: From First Steps to Marathons

Kara Goucher has become one of America's most recognizable runners, and for good reason, with accomplishments such as a third place finish in the 10,000m at the 2007 World Championships and a recent 5th place finish at the 2011 Boston Marathon. While not every great athlete makes a great coach (and not every great coach was a great athlete), it's unlikely that someone like Goucher would be able to get as far as she did without picking up some knowledge along the way. In Kara Goucher's Running for Women: From First Steps to Marathons, Goucher passes some of that knowledge along to the reader, giving a lot of information that I can honestly look at and say "I wish someone told me that when I started running!"

Gear Review: Born to Run

Many runners have a certain running book that they've found stands out for them. It's the book they open when they're looking for inspiration or motivation. For me, that book was Running with the Buffaloes. Once a Runner was a close second, but the story of the University of Colorado's cross-country team just hit a little closer to home and was just a little more powerful for me. Today, many runners have found that "their book" is Christopher McDougall's Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen. I initially had no interest in reading that book, having already read a lot of barefoot and minimalist literature a few years prior, and having talked to a few too many people who were convinced that running barefoot would cure everything from overpronation to ovarian cancer. Then a few months ago, I attended the wedding of one of my college teammates. My old assistant coach was there, and one of the things he asked me was whether I had read Born to Run. I told him no and explained why it didn't really interest me. He told me to give it a chance, that it's not 300 pages of "Shoes are evil" rants, and that he had enjoyed it. So, with an open mind and only a couple years late, the review that you've all been waiting for: Born to Run.

Gear Review: Running for the Hansons

 

You don't graduate from Bucknell University without being at least somewhat of a Hansons fan. My first exposure to the Hansons-Brooks Distance Project was in 2003, my freshman year, when I somehow managed to make the travel squad to a cross-country meet in Detroit (I have no idea how that happened...I sucked freshman year!). My coach, Kevin Donner, had previously coached Brian Sell at St. Francis University and took the opportunity to introduce him to our team. Additionally, one of my teammates, a fellow freshman, had run for Sterling Heights High School in Michigan, and had been coached by Kevin Hanson, one of the two founders and coaches of the Hansons team. Then, a few years later, my best friend and college running partner Molly Pritz was accepted to their program (to be fair, she's gotten a lot faster since college, and training with her post-collegiately often involved me getting dropped). At this point, anyone who ran for the Bison kind of becomes a Hansons fan be default. So when I heard that Hansons runner Sage Canaday was putting out a book about his experiences with the team, I ordered myself some reading material.

Gear Review: Running Books (Training)

In a past post, I mentioned the value of having a coach guiding your training. Unfortunately, that is not a possibility for everyone, for various reasons. Luckily, there are several books on the market today that can help provide guidelines for structuring a training program. These books are even useful for those runners who have a coach, since it never hurts to understand why you're doing certain things, and depending on your coach, the knowledge will give you an opportunity to ask questions and make suggestions concerning your training. Different books, of course, are for different purposes and different audiences. The person who would be best served by No Need for Speed: A Beginner's Guide to the Joy of Running would be completely overwhelmed by Lore of Running, while someone who eats up the latter would be bored to tears by the former. In this post, I will lay out some of the more popular running books in order to help you decide which books might be most appropriate for you.

Gear Review: Daniels' Running Formula

Say the name "Jack Daniels" to any serious runner, and they'll assume you're talking about the world-renowned coach and exercise physiologist, not the whiskey. While Daniels himself is only able to coach a limited number of athletes, he has written a book to make his training philosophy available to world. I've read a lot of running books, yet one of my absolute favorites is Daniels' Running Formula.