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Lead Stories: Saturday, September 6, 2008

Jon Rankin: Training to Become An Olympian
(Elite Athlete Blog - Entry #2)

Posted December 19th, 2007 at 1:00 PM by Jon Rankin

Section: News & Results, Track & Field, Olympics, Elite Athlete Blogs, Jon Rankin

Welcome to the official blog of rising U.S. track & field star
Jon Rankin; the inaugural member of TheFinalSprint.com’s
Elite Athlete Blog Series. Make sure to check back every other Wednesday for Jon’s latest entry.

Hi everyone. I hope this entry finds all of you happy and healthy this holiday season. I am writing this entry while I sit on my bed feeling terribly sore. Yesterday, December 17th, twenty of us athletes from the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista, CA experienced something that will forever change our perspectives on mental toughness and limitations: we spent the day going through the BUD/S Navy Seal training course

The day started off with all of us getting up at 4:30 AM. We departed at 5:10 AM for the Naval Special Warfare Training Center in Coronado, CA. We couldn’t arrive late because to keep the instructors waiting would have made an already-hard day that much harder. They would already be yelling at us and putting us through the worst day, psychologically, of our lives. So we left really early to avoid being late and start off on the wrong foot.
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Q&A: Are hot tubs and saunas helpful or harmful?

Posted November 1st, 2007 at 8:15 PM by Hariz Siddiqui

Section: Health & Fitness, Injury & Rehab, Exercise

For many years I have believed that heating muscles in a whirlpool or sauna after exercise interferes with muscle contractions and hampers muscular endurance.

However, a study from the University of Otago in New Zealand shows that taking a sauna after workouts for three weeks helped athletes to exercise longer to exhaustion (Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport, Sports Medicine Australia, August 2007).

Trained runners sat in a humid sauna for 30 minutes at 89.9 degrees centigrade immediately after exercising, 12 times in three weeks. They then ran as hard as they could on a treadmill for about 15 minutes, to exhaustion.
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Understanding the
Need For Sleep

Posted September 27th, 2007 at 3:00 PM by Lisa Cieplechowicz

Section: Health & Fitness, Exercise

Most athletes know all too well the intense feelings of fatigue and exhaustion that tend to follow intense workouts and training sessions. Frequent naps and long-night sleeps become common for the individual used to pushing their body to perform physical feats. But why exactly is it that strenuous workouts lead to such drowsiness while other forms of exercise can actually help boost our energy levels?

According to a recent article from The New York Times, this is one issue that is still unresolved. Though much research has been dedicated to the topic of sleep, there is a significant lack of studies on the effect intense exercise such as endurance running can have on an individual’s sleeping patterns.

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Those Middle Age Running Pains

Posted May 25th, 2006 at 2:31 AM by Arthur Rosen

Section: Running & Training, Motivation, Training Tips

Right now, as I write this, everything hurts. Limbs, organs, even my blood is in pain. I have just finished running the marathon and although there were 37,000 others pounding the streets doing exactly the same as me, I can’t believe that anybody feels the way I do right now. I feel so much worse than anyone, than everyone else. Alongside me were people from every walk of life. The website for the NYC Marathon listed every runner’s profession: there were teachers, accountants, lawyers, actors, military personal all going through a uniquely unpleasant experience. And watching the competitors struggle all around, fighting exhaustion, cramp and dehydration as they ran further than the body is built to run, there was something very familiar about the procession of self-inflicted agony. The marathon takes on so many different meanings. It is about making a public statement of sacrifice, telling the world that you are tough enough to sustain significant pain.

Looking around me as I staggered and occasionally walked along the course, particularly the Queensboro Bridge that felt unending, it seemed to be only people of a certain age who needed to make such a statement. I didn’t spot many who were under 30 (though maybe that is because everyone looks old after they have run 26.2 miles). Statistics tell us that the average age of the non-elite marathon runner is 41. In the past, the onset of middle age was marked by a sudden interest in gardening or golf, as if one could compensate for declining personal fertility by growing things instead or hitting a little white ball while a cigar dangles from your mouth. Now we challenge the ageing process by doing the most unnaturally strenuous physical activity, just to prove that we still can.

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