Doing it with celebs

The New York City Marathon participants include everyone from professional elite athletes to professional musicians, models and film stars together with middle-eastern middle aged amateurs.
Cool-Running’s list of 25 Celebrities Who’ve Run a Marathon.

Finished week 15 with 44 weekly km & a 24k long run. Upcoming this Friday, the first 30k run…

Have a fabulous week!

LA 1984

With the upcoming Olympics; One of the legendary examples of determination (and marathon agony…) was in the LA Summer Olympics 1984. I was 14 and I remember this scene as if it was yesterday.

Her time of 2:48:45 would have won the gold medal in the first five Olympic marathons

On the rocks

Closing week 16, 44 weekly km with a 22k long run. Relatively easy week, but the weather… oh the weather…
With the hot & humid Tel-Aviv summer (close to 30C at 6am!...) and in the quest for knee recovery I started experimenting with a ice baths.

Recipe:
- fill the bath with cold water about 20cm height.
- Add 20kg of ice - 13*1.5L bottles I’ve pre-frozen
("why is our entire fridge filled with bottles?!?!")
- Strip the plastic (cutting the bottles bottom)
- Wait 20 min for the water to get freezy
- Get in…

The shock and the agony are beyond words. 12 minutes later my legs felt amazingly refreshed. Highly recommended, This would definitely become a part of my routine...

Paula Radcliffe, World Record Marathoner after a race

The science behind it (From RUNNING TIMES):
"Ice baths offer two distinct improvements over traditional techniques. First, immersion allows controlled, even constriction around all muscles, effectively closing microscopic damage that cannot be felt and numbing the pain that can. Ice baths treat both injury and soreness. The second advantage involves a physiological reaction provoked by the large amount of muscle submerged. Assuming one has overcome the mind’s initial flight response in those first torturous minutes, the body fights back by invoking a "blood rush." This rapid transmission circulation flushes the damage-inflicting waste from the system, while the cold water on the outside preserves contraction. Make sure not to stay in any longer than 15 minutes; 10 minutes is usually sufficient. There is a strong consensus among the running and scientific community that all of those can be effective in both minimizing and recovering from running injuries."

Have a cool week!

Perspective

As you probably know, I will be running the NYC Marathon this November with Fred's Team to support The Aubrey Fund for Pediatric Cancer Research at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center

I would like to share with you words written by Linda Hanna, a Fred’s team runner. Linda lost her son Sean to cancer last year

What Can Cancer Do

It can teach you to celebrate the ordinary

It can encourage you to live a life of passion and compassion
It can promote new dreams
It can humble you and enhance your humanity
It can heighten gratitude
It can challenge you to become adaptable
It can expand your heart and increase your capacity to love

- Inspired by Sean Hanna
- Written By Linda Hanna

Tearful but triumphant, Fred Lebow, founder of the NYC Marathon, crossed the finish line of the New York City Marathon with Grete Waitz in 1992. Weak from his battle with cancer, Fred struggled but finished and said, “Running the marathon is the best way I know to fight this disease”. Fred died in 1994, The cause of death was brain cancer.

The over achievement paradox

"High expectations are the key to everything." said Sam Walton the founder of Wal-Mart. Totally agree!. Careful/cautious/protective/conservative expectations approaches not only kill the fun but are directly reducing the potential results. Don’t get me wrong, throwing goals & numbers that you don’t think you can hit is not “setting high expectations”, this is simply stupid forecasting. But setting (especially for yourself) goals that are lower than what you think you can achieve is a crime.

The “Make big promises; over achieve” works with everything: sales, children, wife, analysts… everything. Everything except the marathon training plan. I learn and re-learn this exception over and over again. DON’T OVER ACHIEVE YOUR TRAINING PLAN!
After defining a customized training plan, making sure it complies with the basic rules such as: Increase the total weekly mileage by no more than 10%; no tough interval workouts during rest/recovery days; a training day is not the race day, don’t go “all out”. The most important thing is to stick with it. Not only actually doing the plan but making sure not to run more/faster/harder than defined. When running the weekly long run at the planed marathon pace you should never increase your pace. Going for a 10km easy recovery run and changing it to interval training because I though I felt extra strong had a price in a form on my right knee in ice.. The instinct of “I will do better that the plan – will get better results that I planed” can be lethal in the marathon..

Week -17 plan, 20km wknd long run and a total of 40 weekly km.

Extreme corner - Dean Karnazes Runs 5 marathons in 24 Hours on a treadmill over Times Square

Credit – the amazing picture of Beza Nababa Photographed by Razi Livnat during the Amsterdam marathon