01.10.08
Posted in Training, Running 101, Coaches at 8:00 pm by Administrator
Endurance Training for Distance Events - Joe Vigil (USA), coach of 2005 Athens World Championship medalists Deena Kastor and Meb Keflezighi, was the Congress Keynote Speaker. Vigil praised the goal of eliminating all barriers to promote and improve Athletics – ethnic, national, financial, racial, economic, etc. The Congress participants exemplified this goal. Athletics is the most important sport of all and endurance training is vital for distance running and other disciplines as well, and this Congress was dedicated to that. His remarks stressed the importance of long term development of aerobic endurance and the improvement of Anaerobic Threshold fractionalization towards 90% (threshold vVO2 in relation to VO2 Max). Read the rest of this entry »
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01.02.08
Posted in Training, Running 101, Coaches, High School at 9:18 pm by Administrator
Hi Coach:
I hope you are excited and ready to begin a great 2008 track season.
There is no better way than getting your whole track and field staff
together and come to the LA84 Foundation Track and Field Clinics.
They are all free to all coaches and interested adults, and they cover
all events in track field; furthermore, all the presenters are great
coaches.
Bring all your coaches, each can attend his or her specialty area or learn
about a new event.
You can all have lunch together or go our afterward for awhile and really plan your track season.
The dates are…
January 12 at Mt. SAC-Beginning/Intermediate Level
January 26 at Mt. SAC-Advanced Level
February 9 at Murrieta Valley HS-Beginning/Intermediate Level
The very best track and field clinic series geared directly toward the high
school coach will begin Saturday, January 12, with the first LA84Foundation
Beginning/Intermediate Level Clinic to be held at Mt. SAC College beginning
with registration at 7:30 AM.
Not only is this great clinic series, which attracted more than 800 coaches
last year, free to all coaches and interested adults who want to attend
but every coach who attends the entire day at each clinic will also receive
a free copy of the LA84Foundation 450 page coaching manual along with a
certificate of completion.
All event areas–sprints, hurdles, distances, throws, jumps, and
vault‹ willhave four hour specific beginning and intermediate sessions;
furthermore, there will be other sessions including understanding the biomechanics
of track and field events, how to teach Olympic lifting for all events,
recruiting potential athletes, developing core strength, dynamic warm-up,
and many other important sessions.
There will be two more great clinics offered: an Advanced Level Clinic
will be offered on January 26 at Mt. SAC and another Beginning/Intermediate
Level Clinic will be offered on February 9 at Murrieta Valley High School.
Once again, all three of these clinics are absolutely free to all coaches
and interested adults. You can pre-register, see the full clinic agenda
for each clinic and get additional clinic information by going to our web
siteŠ
www.LA84Foundation.org
You can also contact Devin Elizondo at the LA84Foundation (323-730-4618) or
our clinic coordinator, Tim O¹Rourke, (626-890-1192) for any additional
information.
Hope to see you,
Tim O¹Rourke
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12.19.07
Posted in Back in the Day, Running 101, Athletes, History at 7:09 am by Administrator
Modest pioneer of long-distance running
By Matt Schudel
Washington Post
December 18, 2007
Ted Corbitt, a distance runner who introduced ultramarathon races to the United States and was a quiet, inspirational force in his sport for decades, has died. He was 88.
Corbitt died of respiratory failure Dec. 12 at a Houston hospital. He also had prostate and colon cancer.
A resident of New York, Corbitt competed in the marathon in the 1952 Olympic Games but made his greatest mark by organizing running groups, pioneering the ultramarathon and developing accurate methods of measuring long-distance races.
As one of the few elite African American distance runners of his time, Corbitt encountered discrimination on the track and off, but he forged ahead with a stoic determination that earned the respect of generations of runners.
While supporting himself as a physical therapist, he spent much of his time in training, often running as many as 200 miles a week.
He worked with many running groups, including the organization behind the New York City Marathon. After helping design the course for the inaugural New York event in 1970, Corbitt, then 51, finished fifth in the race. His time of 2 hours, 44 minutes and 15 seconds was seven minutes faster than his mark in the Olympics 18 years earlier.
“He’s sort of the grandfather of our sport,” Bill Rodgers, a four-time winner of the New York and Boston marathons, said in a telephone interview. “He kicked off the modern running boom in America.”
In 1959, Corbitt organized the country’s first ultramarathon, a 30-mile race through New York and its suburbs that pushed beyond the marathon’s 26-mile, 385-yard limit. (Similar races had been run in Europe since Victorian times.)
Corbitt won that 1959 race and went on to compete in 50- and 100-mile runs, as well as grueling events in which he ran for 24 hours without stopping.
During his career, he competed in 199 marathon or ultramarathon races.
The New York Times called him “the patron saint of the ultramarathon in America.”
Although he was not a coach and seldom appeared in the media, Corbitt helped popularize his sport as president of the Road Runners Club of America, which he helped found in 1958, and the New York Road Runners Club.
In the 1960s, he was at the forefront of the important but tedious task of accurately measuring the distances of running routes. He helped develop a technique that employed a calibrated bicycle wheel with a counter that recorded each revolution of the wheel.
“Long-distance runners have to be very strange people,” Corbitt once said of his lonely passion. “You have to really want to do it. You don’t have to win or beat someone, you just have to get through the thing. That’s the sense of victory. The sense of self-worth.”
Corbitt was born in Dunbarton, S.C., on Jan. 31, 1919. He was a track star at the University of Cincinnati, where he received a bachelor’s degree.
Because he was African American, he was sometimes not allowed to compete in meets in the South and Midwest.
He served in the Army during World War II and received a master’s degree in physical therapy at New York University in 1950. He spent many years as chief physical therapist at the International Center for the Disabled in New York and taught physical therapy at Columbia University and NYU.
He often ran to his office from his home, sometimes completing the 31-mile circuit around the island of Manhattan on the way. He estimated that he had been stopped more than 200 times by police, who were not accustomed to seeing a black man running through the streets of New York.
Corbitt lamented his poor showing in the 1952 Olympics, when he finished 44th in the marathon, but he went on to hold the U.S. records for the 25-, 40- and 50-mile runs.
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11.05.07
Posted in Training, Running 101, Road Races, Coaches, Clubs at 6:47 am by Administrator
Planting the Seeds of Success
Teamwork keeps the Hansons-Brooks Distance Project ticking
The Hansons-Brooks Distance Project team meets every morning at 7:30 at either Rochester Hills Duck Pond or Stony Creek Metro Park in Shelby Township, MI. None of the 14-man team is allowed to skip or reschedule. “We don’t have rules,” says Hansons-Brooks co-founder Kevin Hanson. “We have levels of expectations. Everyone meets in the morning at the same time every day whether they are running the same loop or not.”
The concept of “team” is part of what makes the Hansons-Brooks Distance Project such a professional outfit. In this respect, the group mirrors the most successful running systems in the world, the Japanese, Kenyan, and Ethiopian. Not coincidentally, each morning in Addis Ababa, the top Ethiopian runners gather at 7:30 at the national stadium. The Hansons have taken the seeds that have generated the greatest successes in distance running and planted them in suburban Detroit. Read the rest of this entry »
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08.27.07
Posted in Running 101 at 6:37 pm by Administrator
Distance running is the only sport I know of in which one can say “long and hard” to a female teammate and not intend it to be a sexual innuendo. Yes, in case you were wondering, I am a runner. It is, sadly, my life; it is my obsession and my passion. I am not joking, while I was writing this speech I was also watching running videos online.
click HERE for the rest of the speech.
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08.20.07
Posted in Running 101 at 11:09 pm by Administrator
NORMAN, Okla. — It is one of the oldest forms of sport in humanity – perhaps the oldest. In terms of participation, it is the most popular athletics contest anywhere on the globe. In terms of publicity, it isn’t even on the map.
Cross country is the most basic form of sport. One competitor races another competitor, or one team races another team, over a course with the winner being the first to finish. It differs from road racing or track running principally in the course, which is generally a natural-terrain layout of grass, mud, woodlands and water; and scoring. The cross country “season” in temperate regions is run during autumn and winter when soft ground conditions prevail. Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted in Training, Running 101, Kenyans at 11:04 pm by Administrator
Start runs very slowly but accelerate until at the end you are running very, very hard.
Run sessions very, very hard.
Follow runs with a full range of stretching, drills, sit ups and medicine work.
Watch TV at all times between training except when eating or reading.
Take a nap if there is nothing on TV.
Eat ugali as much as possible. Does your sweat carry the feint smell of maize? If not eat more ugali.
When you walk, walk slowly. Very slowly.
Run only on grass or tracks. Walk to the park rather than running there. Remember to walk slowly.
Make your tea using milk instead of water and add sugar in the kind of quantity you would normally add milk.
Do not train in the rain unless absolutely necessary.
Get a Great Night’s Sleep with the Sleep Number® bed, only at Radisson Hotels & Resorts.
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08.08.07
Posted in Training, Running 101, BHS, High School, Mr. Noise Challenge, The Colonel, Driller Noise, DWPW at 4:02 pm by Administrator
DMPW means driller miles per week.
i know i sound like a broken record but mileage is the key to success. sure some run fast without it but high mileage will make you faster.
between xc and track, christopher ran about 40 mpw and took almost 8 minutes off his 10k time (51 to 43). he didnt run fast but he did run long.
i made an excel file tracking our weekly mileage this summer:
click HERE
send me your totals!
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