On the eve of the Boston marathon, Dr. Rebecca describes some exciting developments for running in our city.
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Dr. Rebecca Breslow describes some of her favorite running routes in the Boston area in honor of those traveling here this week for Marathon Monday.
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Deadlifting may well be one of the single best exercises for runners, and if you don’t, you should! Most runners could benefit from strengthening their posterior chain – the muscles in the back of us like our glutes and hamstrings. These help propel us forward, and are necessary for good speed and stability while running. The deadlift can also help with core strength and stability. Mastering it can give you a key tool to use in your strength-training repertoire, so here are some tips to help you succeed.
Read MoreAs an athlete approaching the age of 40, I frequently have to pull out all the stops to keep myself feeling limber and prepared for my training. It seems awareness of the importance of self-care is growing, as illustrated by the increasing number of articles I’m seeing in publications like Runner’s World, Running Times, and Competitor on the subject. The concept of “pre-hab” seems to be all the rage, and I hope to get into this in more detail in future posts as it is a topic of great interest to me. As a start, though, I’ll tell you about some toys I’ve collected over the years to help me in my pursuit of approximating that 18-year-old body that probably could have handled the training I want to do a whole lot better than this 39-year-old one can.
Read MoreWith some basic proficiency in self-massage techniques you can help yourself out by preempting overuse injuries, or by working them out as they are starting to occur. In my view, self-massage should be a regular part of a runner’s daily routine. Prior to a run, it can be used to even out asymmetric muscular tensions that occur because of all the non-running things we do in our lives: sitting at a desk, commuting in the car, carrying squirming toddlers around, etc. These imbalances affect our running gait, which can cause strain over thousands of steps. After a run, it’s a great way to make sure everything feels healthy, and to help things recover if they don’t.
Read MoreA few weeks ago it was February vacation week here in the Northeast, which for my family meant our third annual trip to the Canyons Ski Resort in Park City, Utah. I did some running while we were there and marveled as I always do at how challenging even a 30-minute easy run seemed at 6,800 feet elevation. On our second day there, returning from a run winded, sweaty and beat, I was teased by the bellmen hanging out in front of our hotel. “Tough run?” one asked me. When I agreed, he reassured me, “Don’t worry, you’ll be able to go home and run marathons after a few days up here!”
But was that really true? Was I really getting any training benefit from the six days we spent in Park City, a mile and a quarter up in the sky?
Read MoreI once saw a post on Facebook that said something like, “The first 3 miles of my run were the best….said no one, ever.” How many times have you spent those early miles waiting for a tight muscle to ease up or gritting it out until you finally hit your groove and stop feeling so flat?
We’ve discussed warm-ups here before: last spring, our esteemed leader, Salty, wrote an informative post about the race day warm-up with some excellent tips for the race or hard work-out situation. Going a step further, I think a warm-up can be helpful if included before any run you do. A good warm-up can get rid of the kinks while pumping up your heart-rate so when you set off on your run you’re feeling loose, light on your feet and ready to go, right from the beginning.
Read MoreTalk to any runner and they will likely have a strong opinion on most topics related to training, racing, and injury prevention. The topic of static stretching is no exception: whether or not to stretch before a run or only after, how long you should do it, and lately, whether you should ever stretch at all.
However, it is important to keep in mind the recipe for staying healthy and performing well is as individual as the number of runners out there, and you need to pick and choose the ingredients that will work the best for you. So here I present to you some information on the now controversial practice of static stretching – and I hope it helps you decide whether or not it should be in the mix for you!
Read MoreThere are so many great things about late spring-early summer running. To name a few: warm, long days without the slog of summer humidity. Secure footing after months of dodging patches of black ice and deep mounds of snow. The start of racing season. The blast of colorful vegetation that is springtime … and the watery eyes, runny nose, and sneezing that for many of us is part and parcel of this time of year.
But don’t worry, you don’t have to blow your PR because you were blowing your nose! I present to you some tips to navigate the spring allergy season.
Read MoreCan your menstrual cycle cause or worsen injuries? This post reviews the literature on the subject.
Read MoreEvery coach has their favorite interval workouts, and the intricacies of each involve targeting specific physiologic effects. This post was written after I completed USA Track & Field Level One Coaching School, and the introduction to coaching “The Endurance Events” lecture clarify some things about interval training for me, which share here.
Read MoreWith fall racing season now in full swing, many of us are ramping up our workouts accordingly. But when your training plan calls for you to run at 1-mile pace, or 3K pace, or 30 seconds faster than 5K race pace, what does this translate to for you, especially if you’ve never run a race at that distance? Time trials might just be the tool you need to establish a baseline for your fitness and fine tune your training.
Read MoreThis concept of achieving a personal best can become tricky when you’re an older athlete. For some who started focused training later in life, many PRs may still lie ahead because you weren’t training or keeping track when you were younger. However, if you ran competitively in your youth, you may never again be able to run the same absolute time over a given distance, regardless of how well your training is going. If you are a runner in your 30s, 40s or beyond, especially if you are on the speedier side, you may frequently find yourself racing against open runners who might be many years younger than you, and thus have a distinct competitive advantage. At times, this can feel disheartening. Read how age grading can help with this!
Read MoreSquatting isn’t easy for a lot of us in this country. We don’t do it much once we leave our childhood years, and when we try as adults we either barely get down, or fall over while we’re trying. Then in the gym we load our squat exercises with heavy weight while our knees cave in, our feet pronate and turn out, and our torsos pitch forward – sounds like an injury waiting to happen, right? Or maybe we just avoid it entirely, and use the leg press machine instead, isolating our quad muscles but completely neglecting the contribution of our core or our glutes. This post details how this is helpful to our functional movement as runners.
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