TheFinalSprint.com (TFS) is honored to present our monthly Success Story award to individuals who have overcome tremendous obstacles, changed their own lives and/or the lives of others through running, sports or fitness.
I am proud to announce that TFS’s January 2008 Success Story, and my guest on Episode 119 of The Final Sprint Podcast is courageous survivor and hall-of-fame track & field coach BEVERLY KEARNEY, head coach of the University of Texas women’s track & field team and founder and president of “Pursuit of Dreams,” a non-profit organization comprised of leaders from athletics, business, and medicine whose mission is to provide the necessary assistance and guidance to individuals in order to fulfill their total mental, physical and spiritual goals.
Coach Kearney uses those same principals in her coaching. Her success in track and field is almost unprecedented. In her distinguished career, she has led her Longhorns to 6 NCAA National Championships and 14 top-three team finishes, She is 3-time NCAA Outdoor Coach of the Year, 2-time NCAA Indoor Coach of the Year and 15-time Conference Coach of the Year. She has coached 14 individual NCAA Champions who have earned a total of 28 NCAA titles, 36 different student-athletes to 51 NCAA national titles overall (individual and relay) and 15 relay-team NCAA Champions.
To top it all off, she recently was inducted to the U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association Hall of Fame. She has accomplished all of her remarkable achievements despite having to overcome incredible adversity, including losing her mother in high school and becoming homeless, and suffering a near-fatal car accident that killed two of her friends. Using her own principles, she is walking now and has coached her young ladies from her hospital bed, a wheelchair, a walker, and now stands and walks on her own. In our interview we talk about all of this and much more!
Listen In
[PLAY] (To Download: Right click and select “save as”)[RSS] Add The Final Sprint Podcast RSS feed to your RSS reader to have the show delivered to you
Host: Jimmie R. Markham | Guest: Beverly Kearney
Producers:Greg Cherniet, Jimmie R. Markham
Music: Ryan Ahlwardt & Darnell Perkins
File size: 16.4 MB | Length: 23:58
Episode Sponsored By: Nike +
Long Live Running!
Nike Plus will improve the way you run. Get feedback from your iPod on pace, time, distance and calories burned.Log into Nikeplus.com to track your progress,
set goals and challenge friends.
Interested in featuring The Final Sprint Podcast on your site, blog or My Space page? Click here to learn how!
Episode 115 of The Final Sprint Podcast, the most listened to running podcast in North America, features my two-part interview with JAY JOHNSON; middle-distance track coach at the University of Colorado, Director of the Boulder Running Camps and now the producer/editor of a new DVD series for runners.
In part two of the interview Coach Johnson talks about his current middle-distance track team at CU and their chances of making the U.S. Olympic team, the resurgence of distance running in the U.S. and how we can compete with the Kenyan runners.
Download the podcast to hear Coach Johnson discuss these topics, what he thinks about Ryan Hall’s recent performance at the Olympic Trials marathon and much more!
Listen In
[PLAY] (To Download: Right click and select “save as”)[RSS] Add The Final Sprint Podcast RSS feed to your RSS reader to have the show delivered to you
Host: Jimmie R. Markham | Guest: Jay Johnson
Producers: Greg Cherniet, Jimmie R. Markham
Musicians: Ryan Ahlwardt, Darnell Perkins
File Size: 19.6 MB | Length: 21:27 MIN
Episode Sponsored By: Nike +
Nike Plus will improve the way you run. Get feedback from your iPod on pace, time, distance and calories burned.Log into Nikeplus.com to track your progress,
set goals and challenge friends.
Interested in featuring The Final Sprint Podcast on your site, blog or My Space page? Click here to learn how!
Episode 114 of The Final Sprint Podcast, the most listened to running podcast in North America, features my two-part interview with JAY JOHNSON; middle-distance track coach at the University of Colorado, Director of the Boulder Running Camps and now the producer/editor of a new DVD series for runners.
In part one of the interview Coach Johnson talks about his role on the 1998 Colorado Buffalo cross-country team that was featured in the cult running classic Running with the Buffaloes by Chris Lear. He also discusses why runners need to be better prepared nowadays than they were when he ran and how his new DVD Building a Better Runner: Building from the Ground Up can help runners do that. He is offering this DVD to readers of The Final Sprint at a 20% discount (see code in graphic at the top of this post).
Download the podcast to hear Coach Johnson discuss these topics, describes the fantastic experience young runners can have at his running camp, Boulder Running Camps, and much more!
Listen In
[PLAY] (To Download: Right click and select “save as”)
[RSS] Add The Final Sprint Podcast RSS feed to your RSS reader to have the show delivered to you
Host: Jimmie R. Markham | Guest: Jay Johnson
Producers: Greg Cherniet, Jimmie R. Markham
Musicians: Ryan Ahlwardt, Darnell Perkins
File Size: 22.4 MB | Length: 24:31 MIN
Episode Sponsored By: Nike +
Nike Plus will improve the way you run. Get feedback from your iPod on pace, time, distance and calories burned.Log into Nikeplus.com to track your progress,
set goals and challenge friends.
Interested in featuring The Final Sprint Podcast on your site, blog or My Space page? Click here to learn how!
TheFinalSprint.com (TFS) is honored to present our monthly Success Story award to individuals who have overcome tremendous obstacles, changed their own lives and/or the lives of others through running, sports or fitness. Past recipients of TFS’s Success Story award include female running pioneer Kathrine Switzer, father-and-son team of Rick and Dick Hoyt, and amputee athletes Oscar Pistorius and Rudy Garcia-Tolson.
I am proud to announce that TFS’s November 2007 Success Story, and my guest on Episode 110 of The Final Sprint Podcast is courageous survivor and running hero GILBERT TUHABONYE.
Born to a Tutsi tribe farming family in Burundi, a small mountainous country in east central Africa, just south of Rwanda, Gilbert grew up in the midst of the centuries-old war between the Tutsi and Hutu tribes. In October 1993, the Hutu classmates at his school, their parents, some teachers and other Hutu tribesmen forced the Tutsi teachers and children into a room where they beat and burned them to death. After nine hours of being buried by the burning corpses of his beloved friends, and himself on fire and seriously injured, Gilbert jumped free of the burning building and ran into the night, the sole survivor of one of the most horrible massacres in the long Tutsi-Hutu war.
Gilbert, who now lives in Austin, Texas, has continued his efforts to try and compete in the Olympic marathon and is the award-winning coach of Gilbert’s Gazelles, a training group consisting of hundreds of dedicated runners of all skill levels. Gilbert has also created the Gazelle Foundation, with the mission of improving life for people in Burundi and offering educational assistance to children in Austin, Texas, where Gilbert, his wife Triphine and daughters Emma and Grace reside. His life story is captured in his book, This Voice in My Heart, a testament to the triumph of the human spirit as Gilbert emerges from the scars of his unimaginable ordeal to live a life of optimism, grace and victory.
Listen In
[PLAY] (To Download: Right click and select “save as”)[RSS] Add The Final Sprint Podcast RSS feed to your RSS reader to have the show delivered to you
Host: Adam Jacobs | Guest: Gilbert Tuhabonye
Producer:Greg Cherniet
Music: Ryan Ahlwardt & Darnell Perkins
File size: 19.8 MB | Length: 26:53
Episode Sponsored By: Nike +
Nike Plus will improve the way you run. Get feedback from your iPod on pace, time, distance and calories burned.Log into Nikeplus.com to track your progress,
set goals and challenge friends.
Interested in featuring The Final Sprint Podcast on your site, blog or My Space page? Click here to learn how!
Episode 109 of The Final Sprint Podcast, the most listened to running podcast in North America, features my interview with marathon legend BILL RODGERS; four-time winner of the New York City and Boston Marathons, 1976 Olympian, former American-record-holder in the marathon and winner of an astounding 21 marathons.
Rodgers, along with his friend and long-time rival Frank Shorter, was instrumental in the creation of the American distance running boom. Although he is about to turn 60, he has no plans to quit running, may run the Boston Marathon again next year, and even wants to be able to emulate his running hero Johnny Kelley by running into his 80’s.
In the interview, Rodgers talks about the early days of his career when he would come home with under-the-table appearance money stuffed in his shoes, his feelings about boycotting the upcoming Beijing Olympics and what he thinks should happen with the World Marathon Majors. He also tells us who is the faster runner nowadays whenever he races Frank Shorter. Download the podcast to hear “Boston Billy” discuss these topics, what he thinks about hot-weather running even after all these years and much more!
Listen In
[PLAY] (To Download: Right click and select “save as”)[RSS] Add The Final Sprint Podcast RSS feed to your RSS reader to have the show delivered to you
Host: Jimmie R. Markham | Guest: Bill Rodgers
Producer: Greg Cherniet, Adam Jacobs
Musicians: Ryan Ahlwardt, Darnell Perkins
File Size: 17.8 MB | Length: 25:59 MIN
Episode Sponsored By: Nike +
Nike Plus will improve the way you run. Get feedback from your iPod on pace, time, distance and calories burned.Log into Nikeplus.com to track your progress,
set goals and challenge friends.
Interested in featuring The Final Sprint Podcast on your site, blog or My Space page? Click here to learn how!
Episode 108 of The Final Sprint Podcast,
the most listened to running podcast in North America, features my interview with ANNA WILLARD; a standout at Brown and then the University of Michigan as well as one of the U.S. favorites for the first ever women’s Olympic steeplechase.
In the interview Anna talks about her exceptional year, record-setting performances at the Penn Relays, her first IAAF World Championships and the fatigue caused by the spring track season at Michigan.
Download the podcast to hear Anna discuss these topics, as well as, why she believes winning the steeplechase at the U.S. Trials may require an American record, how special it would be to compete in the first ever Olympic women’s steeplechase, waiting until to March to begin her 2008 season, and much more!
Listen In
[PLAY] (To Download: Right click and select “save as”)[RSS] Add The Final Sprint Podcast RSS feed to your RSS reader to have the show delivered to you
Host: Adam Jacobs | Guest: Anna Willard
Producers: Greg Cherniet, Adam Jacobs
Musicians: Ryan Ahlwardt, Darnell Perkins
File Size: 13.7 MB | Length: 20:02 MIN
Episode Sponsored By: Nike +
Nike Plus will improve the way you run. Get feedback from your iPod on pace, time, distance and calories burned.Log into Nikeplus.com to track your progress,
set goals and challenge friends.
Interested in featuring The Final Sprint Podcast on your site, blog or My Space page? Click here to learn how!
Product: Suunto Running Pack (T3, HRM, and Foot POD)
Price: $269.99
Rating: Good 6.7/10.0
Pros: Accurate, stable HR monitor; POD is non-obtrusive and lightweight; POD works indoors and outdoors in any terrain or tree cover; 15-day training log built into T3 watch; Training Effect is great concept.
Cons: T3 watch is difficult to use with a steep learning curve; Need to continually recalibrate food POD; Foot POD accuracy can be variable, especially if position on shoe has shifted.
Overall: This is a nice concept, as the accelerometer (POD) will work indoor/outdoor and with any sky visibility, unlike GPS units. The heart-rate monitor is among the best I’ve ever used, and is in itself a great product. However, the T3 watch is not user-friendly. In addition, although sometimes the speed/distance readings are extremely accurate, too often they become systematically erroneous. The Suunto Running Pack would be a good buy for those who do a lot of indoor or trail running and/or want a training log within the watch itself. Others may want to consider adding Suunto’s GPS POD and/or just opt for a completely GPS-based training device.
In the growing world of athletic speed/distance monitoring, runners are presented with two primary choices: GPS units (ie - Garmin 305, Timex Bodylink, MotionLingo Adeo) or accelerometers (ie - Suunto Foot POD, Polar Foot Pod, Nike+iPod). I have trained with several different fitness GPS units and had variable success, and “foot pods” provide an intriguing alternative because they can be used indoors, under any sky condition, and boast of potentially high accuracy. I had the opportunity to try out the Suunto Running Pack (T3, HRM, and Foot POD), and put it to the test over three rigorous weeks of training.
Read the rest of this entry »
Product: Timex IRONMAN Bodylink System
Price: $275.00
Rating: Very Good 8.3/10.0
Pros: Accurate; stable GPS; good battery life; intuitive and easy to use; great watch features; good value
Cons: Data-logger & PC upload functionality not included; GPS external from watch; HR monitor unstable at times
Overall: This device is effective because it is easy and it works. GPS initialization is fast and reliable; GPS connection and accuracy is very stable. It’s best for runners who want to hit the road quickly and view results immediately. Analysis and mapping junkies may want to defer to a GPS unit that automatically comes with computer linkage - but otherwise, when it comes to reliability, value and simplicity, the Timex Bodylink is hard to beat.
Out of the box, the Bodylink comes with a beefy manual, the performance watch, the heart rate sensor, the speed + distance sensor (GPS), and an adjustable strap for the mounting the GPS on your arm. Despite neglecting to read any of the ample instruction manual, I had the watch and GPS figured out within minutes and was out the door. Before I even hit the road, the primary strength of the Bodylink System was evident: it’s ease of use.
Read the rest of this entry »
It’s everywhere; on TV, in magazines, on thefinalsprint.com! Exercise can improve your life - its positive, its fun, and it’s good for your health . . . or is it?
A recent study published in The New York Times suggests that there may be a link between distance running and skin cancer.
Lead author of the report, Dr. Christina Ambros-Rudolph, told The New York Times that 210 marathoners, and a control group of 210 non-runners, had their skin examined by dermatologists. Any and all spots or skin damage were recorded. What the results showed was quite interesting:
Read the rest of this entry »
© 2006-2008 The Final Sprint, LLC | Privacy Policy | Design by The Blog Studio
The Final Sprint, LLC is owned and operated by Adam Jacobs
The Final Sprint