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!
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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.
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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!
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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!
Product: Nike+ iPod Sport Kit
Prices: $30.00 (foot pod & iPod receiver). iPod nano and Nike+ shoes sold separately.
Rating: Very Good 8.3/10.0
Pros: Very easy to use. Good accuracy once it is calibrated. Inexpensive; very good value if you already own an iPod and Nike+ shoes. Power Song feature is great idea. Nike+ online training log free, fun, and incorporates good motivation and community.
Cons: Requires calibration. Requires specific ancillary equipment (iPod nano, Nike+ shoes).
Overall: To use this innovative running tool effectively, you need to regularly run with music (or podcasts), own an iPod nano, and should own Nike+ shoes. Given these “ifs”, it is a great product for the money, and a tremendous motivational tool. The sensor will need to be calibrated, and works best in a Nike+ shoe, but tends to yield fairly good accuracy once these criteria are met. Runners who don’t use an iPod, or who want a richer feature set, should continue looking at more “traditional” fitness monitors.
Design - 9 - Out of the box, the Nike + iPod Sport Kit includes a Nike + iPod Sensor (foot pod), a Nike + iPod Receiver, and an instruction manual. The foot pod goes into the cavity in the left Nike+ shoe. The receiver goes into the bottom port of an Apple iPod nano. If you don’t own Nike+ shoes, the foot pod can be put into a shoe pouch (sold separately for $10), which can be attached to any shoe’s laces. All testing for this review was performed with a pair of Nike+ shoes and a 3rd Generation iPod nano.
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.
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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!
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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!
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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!
Marking a trend of continued growth, road runners and walkers raised $714 million for charity in 2006, USA Track & Field (USATF) announced Monday. The figure marks a nearly 9 percent increase over 2005 and shows continued, steady increases since USATF began its annual charity survey in 2002.
The Nike Women’s Marathon and Half-Marathon was named the 2006 USATF Charitable Race of the Year, while the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation and its GREAT STRIDES program was honored as 2006 Charitable Organization of the Year.
Conducted internally by USATF, the national governing body of track and field, long-distance running and race walking, the study revealed that more than $714 million was raised for charitable causes by runners in 2006.
USATF gathered data from national charitable race series/organizations and a sample of nearly 200 running/walking races, including many of the country’s largest races.
“The continued growth of charity fundraising in the current economic climate shows the dedication of charity runners and walkers to their cause, as well as the strength of road running in this country,” said USATF CEO Craig A. Masback.
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For the past three years, the Nike Women’s Marathon has brought women together in San Francisco for the world’s largest women’s marathon. This year, Nike is adding a new twist to this already distinctive event — the opportunity for women to run together on the same day for the same cause anywhere in the U.S. by registering for the first ever Nike+ Women’s Half Marathon, through Nikeplus.com.
On October 21, 20,000 participants, up from 15,000 last year, from 50 states and more than 18 countries will descend on the Bay Area to run the Nike Women’s Marathon and Half Marathon benefiting the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. Selling out faster than most races of its size - the half marathon selling out in only 10.5 hours and the full marathon in 3.5 days - the Nike Women’s Marathon has become one of the biggest philanthropic contributors among races.
Via a partnership with Team in Training, the marathon raised more than $40 million in its first three years for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society benefiting cancer research and is expecting to exceed the $24 million raised in 2006 for this year’s event, making it Team in Training’s largest beneficiary race in its history.
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If you’re an avid runner, then the Nike+iPod system certainly caught your attention and you may even be a user. Well, what if you could take the iPod out of the picture? Nothing officially has been announced yet, but a visitor to the Nike Store Europe website snapped a screenshot of a new Nike product called Nike Speed+, just before it was removed form the site. Luckily, our sister site Gadgetell picked up on the news.
The wrist-watch can will be able to wirelessly receive distance, pace, and other data from the same old Nike+ sensor that came with your Nike+iPod kit - minus the iPod part, of course. The device will also give users the option to upload the data it captures to nikeplus.com probably for charts and graphs of your pace and such. It is unknown if there will be an accessory for receiving audio updates.
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