Sacramento Running News

Running may protect that knee

As you know by now, I am always happy to write about scientific studies that support my existing bias.

Here is more science finding that, regardless of what my mother believes, running is actually beneficial to your knees.

Money quote:

In one study, Swedish researchers found that exercise, including jogging, may even be beneficial. Felson describes how researchers took one group of people at risk of osteoarthritis and had them engage in exercise, including jogging. The other group didn’t exercise. After imaging the joints of the participants in both study groups, they found that the biochemistry of cartilage actually appeared to improve in those participants who were running. Felson says that suggests that “running is actually healthy for the joint.”

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This rat may be damaging her heart.

Since it seems you can never really have too much to worry about, here is a nice article about how a life-time of intense training may cause damage to your heart–especially if you are a rat.

Read about it in the New York Times Well Blog.

The obvious point is that 99.99% of Americans exercise too little (or not at all) so this really applies to a vanishingly small segment of the population.

Regardless, don’t tell your mother!

The lazy mouse is an old mouse

A recent article published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that mice that exercised vigorously did not show signs of aging compared to mice that did not exercise.

The study used mice that were genetically unable to repair mitochondria and therefore aged rapidly. The New York Times article on the study reports:

By the time they reached 8 months, or their early 60s in human terms, the animals were extremely frail and decrepit, with spindly muscles, shrunken brains, enlarged hearts, shriveled gonads and patchy, graying fur. Listless, they barely moved around their cages. All were dead before reaching a year of age.

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Here is some good news about the long term prognosis for those of you who are facing possible knee replacement surgery: the long-term prognosis is pretty good.

A long-term study of knee replacement patients, presented last week at the annual meeting of the American Association of Orthopedic Surgeons in San Diego, found that most patients were doing very well 20-years later–even those who had broken all the rules and ran or played tennis.

A majority of the patients could walk indefinitely, and about the same number were “pain free.”

It is important to note that these patients were pretty old, as the average age at time of surgery was 64. So being pain free and highly mobile 20-years later (with one or more knees replaced) is a pretty sweet deal!

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As previously noted here, there may not be very much in the way of actual scientific evidence to support the technology of high-tech running shoes.

Now, similar questions are being asked about orthotics regarding both their value and the science behind how they are designed.

In other words, if a given runner were to go to several different practitioners and have a custom made orthotic built to correct their particular mechanical “issues,” will the practitioners build similar orthotics? (Spoiler: Probably not.)

Their may be some science to back up the use of orthotics to treat certain transient injuries, but not so much for your personal, fundamental, biomechanical oddities.

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Now that your December marathon is done and the baked goods are piling up around the office, are you worried about packing on the pounds over the holidays?

To investigate the impact of when you exercise , a team of sadistic, Belgian researchers put a group of athletes on a horrible, high-fat diet (probably not much different than the standard American holiday diet) and had them not workout, workout before breakfast, or workout after breakfast.

Naturally, the non-exercising group packed on the pounds (those lazy bastards!). But there was a significant difference in the weight gain between the other two groups.

The after-breakfast exercise group, of course, put on less weight than the non-exercise group, but they still gained. However, the pre-breakfast exercisers hardly gained any weight at all.  Their blood chemistry was better too, showing better insulin response.

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You promised yourself you’d get at least eight hours sleep tonight, but you just downloaded the latest Stieg Larson novel to your iPad and now you can’t wait to see what comes next.

You remember you’ve got that hard track workout scheduled for the morning but figure your target marathon is still months away and while you may not be at your peak tomorrow, you can catch up later.

We all know, after all, that sleep is important for top athletic performance and that extra sleep can improve performance and even that lack of sleep makes you fat.

If that isn’t enough to shut your eyes and dream about Lisbet Salander then maybe an appeal to your vanity will do the trick. It turns out that not only does lack of sleep make you fat and slow, we now know it makes you ugly, too.

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What can Plato do for American running?

There was much hope and expectation riding on Dathan Ritzenhein‘s run at the New York Marathon this past weekend.

While Ritz ran faster than anyone I know personally, after his American Record 5K last summer the expectation was something closer to the win, maybe something under 2:10.

Immediately after the race, armchair critics, of course, piled-on and ridiculed Ritz, Salazar, Nike, and anyone who was a) associated with the Nike Oregon Project, and b) not themselves.

Much of the hype was built around Nike’s investment in Ritz’s training and the famed Alberto Salazar’s remaking of Ritz’s running form. The New Yorker has a marathon-length article on Salazar, running form, and Ritz.

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Ben Rapoport figures it all out.

NPR has a story today about rocket scientist, secret agent, neurosurgeon, and rock star Ben Rapoport figuring out exactly how to calculate your carbohydrate needs and how crazy-fast a marathon you should be able to run if only you had enough “grits.” Or something.

There is a calculator, if you are into that sort of thing.

Although it sometimes feels good to take that long, slow stretch before a run, it turns out there’s not much science to support doing that kind of stretching.

NPR has another story on the evolving theories about how to stretch, whether to stretch, and the movement toward active isolated stretching.

I’ve long been a convert to the active isolated stretching camp, so I’m not surprised to be hearing more about it.

The story includes some videos on a couple of active stretches, but this video here will give you a better sense of how they work. The leotard is optional.

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