Ultramarathon Daily News, Thurs, Dec 22
Ultramarathon Daily News
Here’s an excellent piece by Matt Hart in NatGeo about Tim Olson’s and Anna Frost’s journey across Bhutan in their quest for a FKT on the Snowman Trek. I hadn’t realized what they were doing and the altitude they were dealing with…yikes!
Did you hear the latest URP episode? I asked Ethan to join me as we chatted with Mario Fraioli as we looked back at 2016 and tried to predict what will happen in 2017 in the sport of trail and ultramarathon running. Industry trends, who to watch, roles of sponsors, best performances, and a whole lot more. What did we miss?
We gushed quite a bit about Caroline Boller’s recent record…here’s Runners World’s coverage.
Read this: The Ten Commandments of Winter Running. Re-read number seven.
What did Sarah accomplish in 2016 (off the trails?) Will someone please infiltrate the dance studio and get some footage…please?
No ultramarathon news whatsoever: Jello Biafra will be spinning old tunes at some weird dance party in Denver in January. Please, someone go and report back.
I know that Sage, Tim, Vlad, Nuria, Laney, Jamil, and others won’t be there. They’ll be at the super-stacked Vibram Hong Kong 100 on the same day.
The focus on the final 1% has created a dire problem. If we head down this route, we quickly run out of room for improvement. There are only so many mythical breathing methods, dietary supplements, or even legitimate final touches that we can perform before we reach our limit. That’s the thing with the details, the final 1%, by definition, they don’t account for much. There’s not much room to grow. We quickly max out our returns.
—SAVE THIS: Forget the hacks, nail the basics.
Canadian gym asks ultramarathon runner (yes, I ultrasignup’ed her…creepy, right?) to “cover up” when she’s on the treadmill. This is either really bad PR for the gym, or a really brilliant marketing move.
Some good commentary on the perils of ultrarunning’s rapid growth from Doug at Rock Creek Runners.
Hmmm. Here’s an interesting discussion about PED use in colleges—not for athletics, but for studying. Malcolm Gladwell throws a pretty hefty number out there. So the question is where’s the outrage among the non-Aderall junkies that those with TUEs are juicing for exams? Aren’t these students just seen as doing whatever they can to succeed? Some strange parallels brought up by, of all people, Lance Armstrong.
Six lies runners will tell you. Pretty good!
This case has a lot of discussion points. To start, liability waivers for races are important and courts have decided both ways. But ahead of that, who’s ultimately responsible for–in this case, a triathlete’s–welfare during a race? Any attorneys want to weigh in?
What’s it like to run a 200 mile race around a park in Washington? Kathy tells a great tale right this way.
…and with that, the unofficial last URP Daily News post of the year. Maybe a bit next week, but kids are off school, my wife is on vacation, and I’ve got a lot of winter products to review so I’m getting up to higher ground! Thanks again to everyone for being part of this strange community and for making this possible. Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Happy New Year…