The Long Jump

The weather is overcast, with periodic rain, at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City. Seventeen athletes have made it here to the finals of the Olympic long jump. Three athletes have fouled their first jumps as the official calls out, “Beamon, United States.”

All eyes in the packed stands are focused on the favorite – Bob Beamon – who has won 22 of 23 meets he’s entered this season. Yesterday, the American almost missed making the finals, fouling on his first two attempts during the trials. A final attempt “safety jump” brings him to this point in time.

Long and lanky, Beamon strides over to his mark and begins his typical pre-jump ritual. Head down and motionless, he stands on the runway visualizing a perfect jump. Over to the side, mentor and coach Ralph Boston shouts out, “Come on, make it a good one.”

Motionless for twenty seconds, Beamon replays the approach and take-off, watching himself soar through the air. He is confident he will jump far and continually reminds himself, “Don’t foul. Don’t foul. Don’t foul.”

Left foot to his mark, the right foot drops back, pushes off, and his approach begins. What follows are four seconds of controlled acceleration to the board, nine strides of the left foot at world-class speed — little different from his opponents – until he hits the board. Beamon’s eyes focus to the sky, he is instantly over the heads of the officials sitting on both sides of the pit. Mid-flight, Beamon’s face takes on the expression of surprise — or is it shock? Landing, he bounds out of the pit half hopping, half galloping.

Beamon is sure that he has broken the world record.  <continue reading…>

The Winner’s Creed

If you think you are beaten, You are;

If you think you dare not, You don’t;

If you’d like to win but think you can’t, It’s almost a cinch you won’t;

If you think you’ll lose, You’ve Lost;

For out in the world we find: Success begins with a person’s will. It’s all in the state of mind;

Life’s battles don’t always go to the stronger or faster hand;

But sooner or later the person who wins is the one who thinks ‘I Can’.

Author Unknown

Learn To Run

New York! New Year! How about a New YOU?

Want to learn to run? Now sure how? Whether you don’t know how to run or can run 2-3 miles and want to go farther, Fleet Feet’s No Boundaries: Learn to Run Program is for you.

Want to run a Spring Half or Full Marathon? Whether you’ve done a 1/2 or full or can run at least 15-20 miles/week and want to up your game – Fleet Feet’s Distance Training Program is for you.

Fleet Feet’s No Boundaries Learn To Run program is a beginning 5K or 10K running program designed to guide you safely and effectively into becoming a runner while learning valuable information on healthy living.

Click the pic below for more information.

Shin pain – 3 common causes

My basketball-playing teen has sore legs. They told him at his school that it is shin splints. My husband says this is common, and that my son can play through the pain. This boy never complains about anything. He is complaining about his legs.

The complaint: having lower leg pain in the shin-bone area. The shin is the lower leg bone, the bone between the ankle and the knee. Its real name is the tibia. Shin splints is just another way of saying that there is pain the region of that bone. It’s not a diagnosis.

The precise cause of shin pain ought to be determined. Howev3r, most of the causes result from overuse, and their treatment involves rest and taking anti-inflammatory medicines, like Aleve, Advil and Motrin. Moist heat also helps. And often a change of shoes is required. The boy should definitely not “play through the pain.”

Medial, tibial-stress syndrome is one big cause of shin pain. Leg muscles adjacent to the shin pull on the bone’s covering, the periosteum. That inflames the periosteum and produces pain. If your son bends his foot upward [dorsal flexion] and that increases the pain, that’s a sign of periosteal inflammation. People with this syndrome often have a foot that rotates too much to the big-toe side when the foot hits the ground. A change to a shoe that prevents this rolling over prevents inflammation.

Stress fractures of the shin bone are another cause of shin pain. Again, this situation comes from too much use with too little rest for repair. The pain of stress fractures is usually limited to a single point on the bone. Rest is important. If the bone doesn’t have a chance to heal, a true break can result.

A third common cause of shin pain is compartmental syndrome. The muscles of the lower leg are sheathed by tight tissue, like sausage covering. Overused muscles swell. Too much swelling compresses the muscles’ arteries and leads to leg pain. Pronounced swelling is an emergency that calls for surgical intervention.

by Dr. Paul Donohue

Section V Track Unveils New Web Site

Coach Yen has been busy building a new web site for Section V Track & Field. Much easier on the eyes, and a much easier web address to remember! Enjoy!

7 Tips for the High School Track Athlete

Note: Although this article is written by a runner and is directed towards runners on race day, the same thoughts apply to throwers and jumpers on meet day. Put these 7 tips to work for you and focus-in on improvement and success!

1) For morning races, always eat something on race day. Some toast or a bagel with some peanut butter is an excellent race day breakfast. A POWERBAR is another good choice. Be sure to drink 8-10oz of water with breakfast 2-3 hours before race time.

2) Try to avoid soda or sugary drinks on days when you have races – they will NOT help your performance. Water works best. Even Gatorade should be diluted with water. Did you know that Gatorade isn’t helpful unless the race is longer than 1 hour?

3) Runners have worries. Every runner on the starting line usually asks “does my ankle hurt?”, “is my knee aching?” or “am I getting a cold?” Don’t worry – when you out-sprint another runner to the finish, somehow, that all seems to go away.
Even when you don’t feel your best, you must still give your best!

4) Before your races try to relax (relax??). Yes, Relax. Repeat to your self, “I’m strong, I’m fast, I’m well trained” – repeat this in your head again and again. Pretty soon you’ll start to feel better. If that doesn’t work, scream real loud and start to wave your arms. You won’t run any faster, but you’ll definitely feel better.

5) The 1st half of a race, most run poorly. Some go out too fast, some too slow, and some are skilled enough to get it just right. Understand – the success of your race isn’t determined by how you start, but how you finish. It’s the 2nd half that counts. The track season is a race itself, so finish strong.

6) After your performance, assess what you did well. Under-achieving athletes ALWAYS focus on what they did wrong. High achieving athletes often focus on what went right and can’t wait to repeat it. Even in a less than optimal performance, always find what you did correct, and focus on that!

7) If you choose to focus on what went wrong, here is what you can do: Make 2 lists, the 1st list is of the things that you can control, while the 2nd list is of the things you can’t control. Throw the 2nd list out. Now take a look at what you’re left with. That’s where your work lies!
I’ve never finished a run and thought, “that was a waste of time.”

by Coach Frank Pucher
Frank Pucher is a former 2x All-Conference Distance Runner and NCAA XC Qualifier for East Stroudsburg University. A 6x Boston Marathon Qualifier, he owns a Sub-3hr PR in the Marathon and a ½ Marathon best of 1:15. In addition to being the personal coach to many outstanding athletes, Frank is also the owner of Fitness 121 Personal Training in Livingston. He is one of the few Coaches/Trainers to receive certification as an Endurance Performance Specialist from The National Endurance Sports Trainers Association (NESTA). Frank is also certified by The American Council on Exercise and The Cooper Institute of Aerobic Research in Dallas, TX. Visit his websites: TheRunCoach.com and Fitness121Online.com.

How to prevent stress fractures

Stress fractures are one of the more pernicious injuries in sports, afflicting the experienced and the aspiring, with no regard for competitive timing. Last year, Tiger Woods managed to win the U.S. Open despite suffering from stress fractures in his left leg (as well as other leg and knee injuries), while the great British marathoner Paula Radcliffe struggled through the Beijing Olympics Marathon on a leg barely recovered from a stress fracture, one of several she’s suffered. The International Association of Athletics Federations, the world governing body for track and field, recently described stress fractures, with a kind of grim resignation, as “the curse of athletes.”

But studies published in this month’s issue of the journal Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise offer hope that, at least for runners, simple alterations in their stride or in the strength of their legs might reduce their risk for the most common type of stress fracture.

In one of the studies, undertaken at the University of Minnesota, researchers recruited 39 competitive women runners, ages 18 to 35, and started measuring them. In particular, the scientists wanted to examine the size and shape of their shinbones, or tibias. About half of all stress fractures occur in the tibia, studies show. When you run or jump, that bone is pulled and bent. Sometimes, microscopic fissures form. In most cases, these tiny cracks heal quickly. But, sometimes, continued activity overwhelms the bone’s capacity to recover. The cracks grow and combine into a fracture.

The Minnesota researchers wanted to see whether the shinbones of the runners with a history of stress fractures were weaker than those without. Earlier studies suggested that this would be the case. But few studies have examined the size of the runners’ calf muscles. Bones tend to adapt to the muscles around them; puny muscles can mean puny bones. The Minnesota scientists, using a new machine that examines bone in three dimensions and measuring the runners’ leg muscles, found that, surprisingly, the injured runners’ bones were as strong, in relation to their muscle size as the bones in the uninjured runners. But the injured runners had significantly smaller calf muscles and therefore also slighter bones. The primary difference, the researchers concluded, between the women who suffered stress fractures and those who hadn’t was the size (and presumably strength) of their calf muscles.

This finding should be encouraging to anyone who has had a tibial stress fracture or would prefer not to. “It does seem as if strengthening the calf muscles may be a very easy way” to reduce fracture risk, says Moira Petit, an associate professor of kinesiology at the University of Minnesota and an author of the study. In addition, she said, “our data suggest that you don’t have to strengthen the muscle by much.” A small increase of bulk, achievable by, for instance, rising up on to your toes and sinking back to the floor 10 or 12 times every day, might be enough. Adding even a small amount of calf muscle “serves two purposes,” Ms. Petit says. First, “the strength of the bone will usually increase” in response to the added muscle. And, as a bonus, the new muscle “can absorb more” of the forces generated when you run. So even as the tibia strengthens in response to the new muscle, it also is subjected to less shock. “Really, there’s no downside to this,” Ms. Petit says.

Her results, though, may apply primarily to women; she’s studying male runners, but so far, she says, isn’t seeing the same relationship between their calf-muscle size and bone strength. The other study in the current Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, however, did focus on men and their stress fractures, although, in this case, the lead researcher suggests that the findings would be true in women as well. In the work, from Iowa State University in Ames, computer modeling was used to predict what would happen to stress fracture risk if runners changed their strides. The researchers attached reflective markers to the bodies of 10 former or current collegiate-level cross-country runners and had them run repeatedly down a runway nearly 30 meters long, making sure to step onto a force plate that measured how hard they were striking the ground. During successive runs, the men were asked to shorten their natural strides, while maintaining their pace. The scientists entered the data into computer programs that calculated just how much force was being applied to the shinbone under different striding conditions. The researchers determined that reducing stride length by about 10 percent seemed to reduce the stress on the tibia enough to lower the risk of a stress fracture.

Why, though, should shortening your stride affect your tibia at all? “Think of it this way,” says Brent Edwards, lead author of the study and now a post-doctoral research fellow in the Department of Kinesiology and Nutrition at the University of Illinois, in Chicago. “If you spend less time in the flight phase of running” — meaning in the air — “you’ll hit the ground with less force.” On the other hand, you’ll hit the ground more often. But in Mr. Edwards’s models, the reduction in pounding from an abbreviated stride outweighed the shock from a few additional strides per mile.

Even for those of us without a biomechanical expert in the house, gauging a 10 percent reduction in stride is not difficult, Mr. Edwards says. “Ten percent is about as much as you can shorten your stride without it beginning to feel quite uncomfortable,” he says. And absolute precision isn’t necessary. “Seven or eight or nine percent is fine,” he says.

Neither Ms. Petit nor Mr. Edwards suggests, of course, that any, single prevention approach will end all tibial stress fractures. “There are so many elements involved,” Ms. Petit says. Training, hormones, genetics, diet and shoe choice probably all play a role. “But if there’s something easy and benign that you can do to lessen the risk,” she asks, “why not?”

~written by Gretchen Reynolds