The next time you hear about an athlete “juicing,” he may be beetroot juicing.
A pair of recent studies have found that athletes who throw down some beetroot juice before an event tend to do better from an endurance standpoint. In November, a study appearing the Journal of Applied Physiology found that runners who beetroot juiced increased their endurance by 15 percent during high intensity running. And a study just published in the journal Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise finds that competitive cyclists are likewise affected. (Beetroot juice has also been found to lower blood pressure and cleanse the kidneys and gall bladder.)read more
I was emailing with a fellow runner in Charlotte earlier today and happened to mention that I went for a run at 9:30 this morning and it was already unbearably hot/sticky/miserable.
“I don’t know how you did it at 9:30!,” she wrote back. “I ran this morning at 5:30 and it was already 80 degrees!”read more
I wrote the following story for the Charlotte Observer and The News & Observer in Raleigh; it appeared in both papers June 28, 2011. It reruns here, with links.
Yoga helps Darlene Jonas cope with Parkinson’s disease, enables scientist Lynn Conley to sit at his desk for long stretches, lets Bill Glasheen keep playing golf and has helped Nancy Wren cope with the death of her husband. Robin Kneeburg credits yoga with saving her life.read more
“There is a style of yoga that will meet any physical needs you have. It doesn’t matter what age you are; It takes you where you are, and improves you from there.”
That’s not according to the Yoga Chamber of Commerce. That’s according to 61-year-old Nancy Wren of Matthews, who first relied on yoga to help her through pregnancy — and labor — in the 1970s, and more recently used it to cope with the physical demands and stress of helping her ill husband, and then to help her through the grieving process when he died. Wren is something of a poster child for the several-thousand-year-old practice of yoga, which the Mayo Clinic defines as “an alternative medicine practice [that] brings together physical and mental disciplines to achieve peacefulness of body and mind, helping you relax and manage stress and anxiety.”read more
I turned 55 today and celebrated with a 30-minute ab workout.
I had to: According to the National Institutes of Health, while 55 is when males generally start dropping weight (sorry gals, it doesn’t happen for you until around 65), I’m now more inclined to hang on to the weight I’m keeping — in the form of fat — around my midsection.read more
