Dusting off a pair of racing shoes is a common ritual for serious road runners at the start of the spring.  If you did most of your races last year in your regular training shoes, you might be wondering about the advantages and disadvantages of wearing lightweight racing flats (or simply “flats”) for races or
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In this week’s glimpse inside the training of an elite runner, I want to discuss the theory and practice of supercompensation training. More specifically, putting in massive amounts of training fora short period of time and then going very easy to ensure maximum recovery and absorbtion. If you’ve ever read Once a Runner, the quintessential
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If you have decided to go gluten free, or you’re contemplating it because you believe you may have a gluten sensitivity, you’ve undoubtedly discovered that training on a gluten-free diet is difficult. Carbohydrates are a dynamic and import part of a runner’s diet and avoiding them, especially when it seems like everything has gluten in
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Normally, I save our updated race results for a separate post emailed to just the RunnersConnect team. However, this week I received a fantastic email from one of our runners who ran his first marathon at the LA Honda Marathon last Saturday and I just had to share. This post is from Jeremy Gaudette (if
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It was nearly eighty degrees in Minneapolis yesterday.  Beautiful weather if you’re just enjoying a walk, but downright sweltering if you are trying to get a run in.  Temperatures were much the same in the rest of the country: it seems we’ve vaulted from a mild winter into the heat of summer, and you’ve probably
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The marathon taper is perhaps one of the most nerve-wracking parts of marathon training and often the time you find yourself questioning your fitness and training the most. Therefore, I thought it would be helpful to show you my two week taper in preparation for the Olympic Trials. Hopefully, you can garner some insights for
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Most runners are somewhat familiar with the term Yasso 800′s, a workout that supposedly predicts marathon finishing time from a session of 10 x 800 meters with equal time rest between each 800. However, as a running coach and marathoner myself, I have to take issue with this workout for two reasons. First. we have
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The last twelve months have not been kind for Haile Gebrselassie.  The 38-year-old Ethiopian, hailed by many as the greatest long-distance runner of all time, had to drop out of the Berlin marathon because of an asthma attack, saw two of his world records smashed by a young Kenyan rival, and has not posted a
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Background This is two weeks from my build up to the 2008 USA Olympic Trials marathon held on November 3, 2007.  Perhaps someday I’ll write an article about why a race called the 2008 Olympic Marathon Trials was held in 2007 but I’ll leave it alone for now.  This is two back-to-back weeks that made
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As I mentioned in my previous article on protein, the key to recovering quickly and staying healthy as a runner is matching your protein intake to the mileage you are running. Consuming sufficient protein will help in repairing your muscles after your long, hard runs. Because low protein intake is a common issue in beginner
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