The E=MC2 of running

In spite of the fact that the furthest run this year has only been around 7 miles, I foolishly thought it would be a great idea to enter a 10 mile race. Here's my view of how it went. 

This Saturday was the North West Road Relays in Heaton Park in Manchester. It was a great event, this is a report about how it went and some thoughts on running relays. 

It was the final week of our Parkrun challenge and the theme was 'run like a Kenyan'.  If you want to support the club in Kenya then the is the link https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/Elgon-running-club?utm_term=WnX2B4kJR

Just a short update on this week's Parkrun challenge - crazy hair. Instead of my normal Parkrun location of Birkenhead Park, I ran in Cambridgeshire at Wimpole Estate Parkrun, so I was the only one with crazy hair. Also an update on our amazing athletes competing in various events around the world

This week's Parkrun challenge was to run an epic sprint finish. I'm not sure that mine was entirely epic, certainly no Usain Bolt but it was a least both a sprint and a finish. I had the opportunity to run in a new pair of Brooks Adrenaline GTS running shoes so I talk about that, and finally I talk about the sprint in the World University Games and the controversy surrounding that. 

This week's Parkrun challenge should have been to run in the rain! But it wasn't, it was to run at a Parkrun that you hadn't been to before. I planned to go to Chester, I'd sorted out the route there, worked out where to park and was all set for my tourism Parkrun. This episode is about how week 3's challenge went.

This week we were getting ready for Alex and Emily getting married next Saturday so we had to dress up as if we were going to the Hen Night or the Stag Night. In this week's episode I talk about how it all went and a few thoughts that came out of that. 

Maggie gives a bit of an update on her running and why it's been a while since the last episode but mainly this week's podcast is mainly about the crazy Warriors Parkrun Challenge and how she got on in week 1. Just to say, it was a lot of fun. 

I ran my first race in ages on Friday, a 5k in a lovely village near Chester. This is my race report - tune in to find out how it went. 

School sports day - you either love it or loathe it. I'm more in the latter category, perhaps because my kids aren't all that athletic and I'm far too competitive. It can be fun though and then there's the parents race. The question is though - as a serious athlete, should you bother taking part?

I found a really interesting article looking at bone injuries in adolescent athletes. The group that did the study took a group of boys and studied them over 4 seasons taking lots of measurements to assess bone growth and skeletal maturation. I discuss their findings and my thoughts on what it means for those of us who are coaching young athletes.  The link to the abstract can be found here 

In episode 7, I featured a story about an ultramarathon runner called Jo Zakrzewski who had completed a 48 hour race running an incredible 255 miles. However, she was less of a hero in a recent 50 mile race. 

I also feature some marathon musings from the recent London marathon and my own exploits and plans.

Iten is known as the runner's paradise. It is the place that you go to if you want to learn about why many of the best long distance athletes in the world are Kenyan's and it's the home of many of the world's best long distance athletes.

But Iten has a darker secret. In late 2021, Agnes Tirop was found murdered, with her husband/manager/coach implicated in this murder. Within 6 months, another female athlete, Damaris Mutua was found strangled in the home of her boyfriend.

In this episode I talk about how influence, power, love and money can be a toxic mixture in the coach/athlete relationship and discuss two recent articles that I thought made me start to think about this more carefully
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2023/mar/31/laura-muir-jemma-reekie-split-from-coach-after-training-camp-exit-olympics-athletics
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/04/17/why-were-two-female-olympians-killed-in-kenya

I set myself a goal to run every day this year, and so far, I have achieved that goal. I also set myself a goal to run at least 30km each week, and again, I have managed to achieve that. However, what I haven't done is much speed work and so I wasn't sure how I would get on running 5km at parkrun. Would I be able to maintain a good pace? Would I die after running the first km too fast? I felt fairly confident that I could run around 4.45 per km but could I run quicker than I had done in training without having done any speed specific training? Would my lack of focused 5km training be my downfall? Find out in this week's episode.

Following on from World Athletics announcing that transgender athletes would be banned from international female competitions, UK Athletics has following suit and made a similar ruling. In this episode, I talk about this decision. I also provide an update on how my running is going. 

In this week's episode, Maggie talks to her friend, Jen Young, about some of the joys of parkrunning and we compare notes on their running experiences

I'm joined this week by Ronan Kearney, coach and founder of Warriors Pentathlon and Athletics Club. In this episode we discuss the benefits of getting young athletes involved in activities other than just running and how to bring fun back into running. We also talk about laser run, pentathlon, biathlon, fell running and other sports that might contribute to running. 

In this week's episode I spoke to friend and fellow scientist, Michelle Ma, about her experience of running. Michelle would not describe herself as an elite runner and has never competed in a running race (since school) - so what motivates her to run?

We discuss some of the benefits of running, our favourite places to run in London, whether it's better to run with music or without and a host of other topics. 

I was very excited to be joined by Dr Eoin Everard for this week's episode. Eoin is a biomechanics specialist and chartered physiotherapist from Ireland, he's also a pretty phenomenal runner being 5 times National Champion, sub 4 min miler and sub 30 min 10k runner.

I wanted to ask him about the benefits, or not, of static vs dynamic stretching as part of a normal running workout. However, we ended up talking about a whole host of other stuff too from running style, preventing injury, running mentality etc. The interview was packed full of really useful advice which was both practical and achievable. I hope that you enjoy listening to Eoin as much as I enjoyed talking to him.

You can get a download of his free book at https://everardpilates.com/books/ 

This Saturday was the National cross country championships and, for English athletes, this meant a trip to Bolesworth Castle near Chester. In this episode I talk about my highlights from the race (as a spectator not a runner) and I also talk about heart rate and the effect of different resting heart rates on running performance.