There’s nothing like good news from the scientific community to spur interest in a given exercise: We’re all open to the latest magic bullet when it comes to getting in shape or improving performance. We’re even more susceptible when that magic bullet includes the promise of health minus hurt. Which is why a study appearing last week in the journal Nature suggesting that running barefoot may help prevent injury has caused the sports medicine community to respond with an optimistic cringe.
Category Archives: Health
The barefoot runner: Coming in from the cold
In the midst of Saturday’s snow and ice storm, Jon Hayden of Holly Springs went for an 18-mile run wearing a pair of $5 water shoes from Walmart. The water shoes, a thin glove of rubber and mesh intended for a hot summer day at the beach, were a concession: Hayden, a marathoner, prefers to run in his bare feet.
Four carrots to get you to spring
I love carrots, crave them. Couldn’t press on without ‘em. If I can’t envision a carrot in the distance, I’m hard pressed to roll out of bed and go for an early morning run or ride, let alone in 20-degree weather. So today, a few carrots to motivate you through the cold challenge of winter.
One word: Greenways
On this morning’s ride at Umstead with Alan and Tim, the conversation ranged, as it will on a good ride, from “Avatar,” to dinosaur dung http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coprolite to, of course, biking. Alan and Tim are strong riders, and you might expect their end of the discussion to focus on training, technique, gear. And there was some of that. But what really got Tim going was a 25-mile Carolina Tarwheels group ride he’d done on Raleigh’s greenways.
Happy nuts, frozen nuts and other things I learned from “O”
The joke at our house (at least I think it’s funny) is that when the latest “O” arrives, I exclaim with mock surprise, “Oh, look! Oprah’s on the cover.”
This morning, the February 2010 issue showed up on the kitchen table. I was waiting for the coffee to finish, I didn’t feel like going out in the rain to fetch the Sunday paper, so I started thumbing through. Here’s what I learned: