Sacramento Running News

Mary Cain wins!

The USA Indoor National Championships wrapped up this weekend in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and the star of the show was a high school junior.

Sunday, Mary Cain became the first high school athlete to win an indoor national title since Allyson Felix won the 200 meters in 2003.

Cain’s winning time of 5:05.68 was not particularly fast, but she led from the start and the final laps were blistering fast. Treniere Moser finished second in 5:06.55. You can watch the race yourself here.

Meanwhile, Lea Wallace, a former Sacramento State standout, now running for the Sacramento Running Association’s Elite Team, finished fourth in Sunday’s women’s 800 meters event.

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Oscar Pistorius from 2007 (Source: Wikipedia)

Oscar Pistorius, best known for being the first paralympic runner to make the finals in the Olympics, was charged in the shooting death of his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp.

Read about it in The Telegraph.

Big news in science!

You should be aware of two important, running related studies that have come out recently.

The first analyzes why running in the rain and cold is miserable.

And the second tells us about how ultrarunners are different from normal people.

Read and be amazed!

Kim Conley leading the field. at this year’s XC Nationals (Photo by Clay Shaw)

By John Schumacher

Olympian Kim Conley, who runs for the Sacramento Running Association’s Elite Team, earned a spot in the World Cross Country Championships with a second-place finish Saturday in the U.S. Cross Country Championships in St. Louis.

Conley, a former UC Davis standout, ran with winner Shalane Flanagan for six kilometers in the 8k race before Flanagan pulled ahead in the final 2,000 meters. Flanagan finished in 25 minutes and 49 seconds, with Conley crossing the line in 26:06 and Deena Kastor grabbing third in 26:41.

“It was very fun to race Shalane for as long as I did as she is someone I have looked up to for many years,” said Conley, who joins the U.S. team heading to Bydgoszcz, Poland for the world championships on March 24.

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By John Schumacher

Hungary’s Adam Kovacs and Turlock’s Kimberly Cloud came to the Super Bowl Sunday 10K Run eager to get in good, fast training runs to help them reach their 2013 goals.

On a cool, fun-filled Sunday morning, Kovacs and Cloud wound up winning individual titles in the fourth annual race to kick off Super Bowl festivities.

Kovacs, 26, won the men’s race with a 30-minute, 39.8-second effort. Vacaville’s Cheyne Inman, a member of the Sacramento Running Association’s Elite Team, finished second in 30:58.3 with Sacramento State’s Matthew Frazier third in 31:37.1.

Cloud crossed the line in 38:20.6, ahead of Sacramento State teammates Justine Rea (38:58.0) and Emily Johnston (38:58.1).

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Amy Halseth wins the 50 mile race. (SRN photo)

The green grass and warm sun of spring still seem far away on these cold and damp Valley mornings. But there are harbingers of happier times!

There are occasional, cheerful, sunny afternoons that remind me of how much easier it is on these old bones to run when it’s warmer, and how much easier it is to get out of bed when it’s daylight already when I wake up for work.

One such harbinger of spring is the Jed Smith Ultra Classic, put on by the Buffalo Chips Running Club each February since I was a wee lad in short trousers. (Actually, since 1979.) For as long as I can remember, it has been the first race in the Pacific Associations Ultra Grand Prix.

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You’ve got to plan ahead!

Time to mark up your calendars for 2013! We’ve added in about 200 races for 2013 to the Sacramento Running News event page, so have at it!

We’re still waiting for many races to post dates for 2013. Some we can figure out. Some are more difficult. We’ll keep adding and updating as time allows.

If you see an error, or want to add a race to the calendar, send me a note to Editor@sacramentorunning.com.

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Your brain needs exercise.

Gretchen Reynolds at the New York Times Wellblog, writes about a study looking at whether the brain benefits of exercise persist. 

Not for long, apparently.

Researchers took two group of rats. One group exercised for a few weeks and the other did not. As we would expect, the exercising rats did better in memory and anxiety tests.

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Olympic gold medalist Billy Mills shares some memories with the crowd. (SRN photo)

If you had wandered into the Sheraton Hotel this past Saturday evening, you might have wondered at who this good looking group of people was. “Are they celebrities?” you might wonder. We’re a bit far from Hollywood for a gathering of movie stars but the room was indeed packed with celebrities of a certain type.

If you were an old, Sacramento runner like me, you would have delighted in seeing hundreds of your friends and competitors dressed for a party.

It was, of course, the first annual SRA Running Hall of Fame Award Banquet, where Olympic gold medalist Billy Mills headlined a talented group of eight runners being inducted into the Sacramento Running Association’s Hall of Fame in front of a packed house of area runners and their families. The Master of Ceremonies for the event was KCRA television anchor, runner, and SRA board member Deirdre Fitzpatrick.

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There has been a lot of hype about barefoot running and how shoes change the body’s natural mechanics.

Much of this makes sense, but the jury is out as to the significance of these mechanical changes with regard to performance and injury.

If running barefoot is a bit much for you, perhaps a “minimalist shoe” might help you achieve the mechanical benefits with fewer of the risks. Perhaps.

Then again, perhaps not.

A study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine investigated this question, comparing the mechanics of highly trained runners in minimalist shoes, barefoot, and traditional shoes. The findings are a bit surprising. Read the rest of this entry →