Running Blog

Today I ran the Christmas Relay 4.5 mile run around Lake Merced. I've been a little out of shape and was asked to anchor the B relay for the Excelsiors running team.  My goal was to pace myself as evenly as possible over the terrain. For those of you unfamiliar with the course the first 1/2-1 mile ascends a hill of around 50 feet then drops down into the second mile. My Power splits were as follows....  You can quickly see I started the race up the first hill a little enthusiastically running 318 Watts which is 12 watts higher than the race average 306 Watts.  You can see down the hill I backed off to a more realistic 308 Watts and settled into that pace for another mile or two. Running with Power helped a great deal here by smoothing out my efforts of the slight rollers on the course. The first mile enthusiasm probably cost me a few watts in mile 4 when you see I dropped my pace to an average of 294 Watts.  Then with the finish line in sight I powered up the last hi...

Jill has been running her regular hilly route for the last 2 years. It has a few gently rolling hills which she powers up every week and some downhills that she cruises down. Jill keeps her pace very even across the terrain but ends up tired at the end of her training week and feels unable to really go hard for track workouts.   WHY? Lets take a closer look...... Jill is a super clever runner so she decides to investigates running with Power. She downloads the new Power2run App and sent a friendly email to the coaches at Inspyridon. After a short discussion Jane sets her Aerobic training zone based on a recent 5k race effort and sets her training power Alert to 260 Watts. This means she will be notified every time she runs harder than 260 Watts. This is the wattage that Jane starts to enter her anaerobic training range. We reccommend avoiding anaerobic runs on base training aerobic running days so that you can focus on hard efforts of hard training days.  Jane decides to run b...

On November the 6th Wouter Hoogkamer, Shalaya Kip, Jesse, H. Frank, Emily M. Farina, Geng Luo and Rodger Kram published an article establishing the new Nike vapor fly shoes as 4% faster on average for a group of runners (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40279-017-0811-2).    But what does a 4% improvement in running economy really mean for an average runner? Let me give you an example using Bob.  Bob is an average runner with a 20 minute 5k personal best and Bob weighs 175 pounds. Lets assume Bob is in tip top 20 minute 5k shape and signs up for the latest flat and fast local 5k. Bob will be pacing using his Power2run App at exactly 320 Watts. Even Power will give him his fastest possible finishing time. How much faster will Bob run in his new $250 Nike Vapor Fly shoes? From the publication we know that Bob will run with 4% greater running economy. That translates into a nearly 15 Watts energy saving. We estimate Bob will need to produce 320 W's to run his 20 mi...