Just in case you didn’t read every one of the newsletters we sent in November, we are once again bringing you the most-clicked stories from the last four weeks. It’s our way of making sure that you don’t miss any of the content that your fellow runners/readers loved the most. Friends don’t let friends miss important running advice. Cheers!
Y’all know the deal. 360+ days per year, we pound the table about supporting our local specialty run shops. But for big occasions like Black Friday and Amazon Prime Days, it would be pound-foolish to ignore the online deals. So once again, we scoured the interwebs to curate a collection of products for runners that check two boxes: 1. High quality & 2. A good deal. To see our list of The Top 10 Black Friday Deals for Runners, please check out our website. We found steals and deals for Garmin watches, NordicTrack treadmills, Coach Trax’s favorite running headphones and lots more. See the Top 10 list here.
As an added bonus, our sister company, MarathonFoto, is offering their best discount of the year. If you use the code BF2024, you can get 20% off your photos from last week or from last decade. If you haven’t checked out their archives recently, it’s a fun trip down memory lane. MarathonFoto has nearly 300 million photos in their archives, so if you’ve run a half or a full marathon in the last 25 years, chances are good they have some great shots of you.
#DealMeIn
Are Blue Zones a white lie? They’re the areas of the world with the highest life expectancy, with more folks who live past 100 than anywhere else. Or so we thought. One researcher thinks people are fudging the numbers: “Dr Saul Newman has uncovered the “secret” to living to 110.” Newman describes the data for Blue Zones as “hilariously flawed.” His main concern is that it’s hard to actually verify the age of people currently living to 100. That’s because many of them would have been born when record keeping was far less diligent. Not only that, but Newman says a lot of the supposed centenarians have passed years ago; their families report them as living in order to continue collecting pension payouts! Perhaps the magical powers of Blue Zone behavior have been exaggerated, but there are still plenty of longevity experts who think we can learn from these regions. To see why, take a look at the “Top 10 Blue Zones in America for 2024.” These particularly healthy areas share a few commonalities. They all put an emphasis on natural, frequent movement. Things like regularly walking to work or working in your garden are ways to stay consistently active. They also eat a ton of fruits and veggies, which have exceptionally high nutritional density. For more on that, check out “Eat the Rainbow: A Comprehensive Guide to Colorful Nutrition for Runners.” Finally, they have a strong sense of community. Families live together in multigenerational households, city layouts are conducive to safety and socialization, and there are spaces for community gatherings like a place of worship.
#LongevityLies
Does faster digestion lead to faster running? If you’ve been afflicted by tummy trouble in the middle of a race or a long run, you know how it can slow you down. Luckily, there are steps you can take to protect your gut from complications, according to this new piece: “How to Digest Food Faster, Naturally.” The most straightforward method to improve digestion is to eat better foods. For starters, that means avoiding fast foods that are high in fat and sodium. Fats can take a long time to digest, meaning you’re better off getting energy from carbs right before your race or workout instead. Then, there’s the question of fiber – it’s essential for proper digestion and gut health, but it can also sit in your stomach for quite a while. By eating plenty of fiber well before race day, and lowering your intake in the meals right before your run, you can have the best of both worlds. What you eat before a race is important, but so are the foods you snack on during your event. If anyone knows how to eat and run, it’s ultra runners, and this story provides an excellent list of digestion-friendly foods: “Common Foods for Marathons, Ultramarathons and FKTs.” You’ll find everything from fruits, candies, chips, and other snacks laid out at an aide station, and there’s no one-size-fits-all answer to your race-day fueling. Ideally, you should experiment with different kinds of foods and energy gels during training to determine what works for you while eating on the go.
#PitStopPitfalls
Given the name of our publication, you won’t be surprised to learn that we’re big fans of running mile repeats during our workouts. We’ve always felt there was something magic about the mile, both as a competition distance and training tool, and today, we’re happy to see some validation of our belief in: “How to Run Mile Repeats: Boost Your Speed + Endurance with Targeted Intervals.” You can incorporate mile repeats in multiple ways – run them at race pace to dial in your upcoming event speed, tackle them at threshold pace to boost your stamina, or push beyond race pace for pure speed gains. How long should you rest after each? That depends on your goals and intensity level during the interval, but a slow jog between 100 and 400 meters is a good place to start. If you’ve already mastered the art of mile repeats, you might want to try their slightly shorter cousin, the Yasso 800s workout, which is one of the “3 Great Marathon Predictor Workouts,” according to McMillan Running. Named after running guru Bart Yasso, these workouts suggest that running 10 x 800m intervals with matching recovery times (for example, 3 minutes and 30 seconds with 3:30 recovery) could predict your marathon time in hours and minutes (3:30). The workout can be a solid way to check your progress and build confidence, and that’s why Greg McMillan recommends doing it 2 or 3 times per marathon training cycle.
#RepeatPerformance
They say the strongest steel is forged in the hottest fire, and that’s why the most resilient runners welcome adversity. Nobody enjoys setbacks, but ultrarunner and philosophy professor Sabrina Little says they’re a key component of our development as athletes. That was one of her main takeaways when she asked: “What Does It Mean To Be Resilient?” Sabrina says our resilience grows when we cultivate the virtues of perseverance, tenacity, and patience in the face of hardship. It requires us to be active and thoughtful in our recovery when things go south, and by addressing our weaknesses through this process, we can come back stronger than ever before. A resilient mindset can be a powerful tool, but it can only take you so far, according to this thoughtful piece: “Is ‘grit’ overrated in explaining student success? Harvard researchers have a new theory.” Researchers looked at several dozen leaders in various fields, and what they found was that oftentimes, success came at a point where they “gave up” their original path in order to settle into a better fitting goal or methodology. According to their research, success is about balancing persistence with the ability to find the path of least resistance. The bottom line is, researchers haven’t totally quantified how important “grit” is to success, but that won’t stop us from taking this Grit Scale Quiz to find out where we stand.
#FullOfGrit
They say that life imitates art, and we saw a recent clip that felt like it was ripped right out of a scene in Forrest Gump. In it, a young runner named Piper is cheered on by her dad as she comes down the home stretch of her first race. Well, dad’s encouragement might have been a little too intense, because she keeps running right past the finish line after securing the win. We see more gold medals in Piper’s future as an athlete, but until then, we’re content to watch this super cute video of her not-so-humble beginnings.
