City Coach | Coach Cane's Blog

Fat Rabbit Sprint Tri Results

Tremendous job by Lauri Young this weekend at the Fat Rabbit Sprint Tri.  She not only won the 50-54 AG, but would have won most of the age groups, and finished 7th overall. 

Philadelphia Triathlon Results

Terry Moore finished 59th our of nearly 2,000 at his hometown race, the Philadelphia Triathlon.

Flat As a Pancake

Nice work today as Jeannine Bardo dominated the 45-59 AG, and Michael Borden finished strong at the Flat As a Pancake tri.  In addition, due to injury (and by design) Lauren Dewey dropped out after the ride, but was well on her way to a strong race. 

More results tomorrow.

NSTB100 History

Now that we've completed four of these stupid things, I was trying to keep track of who has ridden when.  Here's what I remember.

2009 is unfortunately fresh in our memories.  Wet and gritty.  Leanne, Gary, Michael and I finished the full 100

2008 had great weather and big crowds in the park.  It was also our fastest NSTB100.  Leanne, Johanna, Jeannine, Killer, Tom, Shane, Ari Maisonave, Larry Lewis, and I finished on the lead lap

2007 was wet and kinda sucked.  Dave Duhan, Ari Maisonave, Brian O'Connell, Geoff, Leanne and I finished the whole thing.

2006 is where it gets kinda fuzzy.  I remember that it was a Thursday night, the weather didn't suck, and they were shooting a movie with Jodie Foster and Terrence Howard.  Shane was popular because he brought us food.  Riders who finished all 30 fun-filled laps included Johanna, Lou and Yvonne (who i hope will return to us one day now that I have paid the kidnappers), Rod McClave, Pete Baiamonte, D. Mark Carter,  Lloyd and of course Leanne and me.  We have the infamous photo of Johanna sleeping at her desk the next day, but precious little other documentation.   Any other recollections? 

NSTB100 v4.0

Jonathan: I hate myself right now
Group: Take a number

That pretty much sums up No Sleep 'til Brooklyn version four.  We assembled at Ride Brooklyn and then at the park at 7p.  The lineup was Shane, Michael, Leanne, Geoff, Gary, Tom and yours truly.  Tom pulled us for most of the first two hours or so, as we got thoroughly soaked.  Pete from RB joined us for several laps and Scott arrived fresh from the Mt. Washington road race and hammered the second half of the ride. 

Between a deep puddle across the entire road at the bottom of the park, and the occasional heavy rain, we were wet and gritty for the whole ride, but still managed to average 18.6 mph.  Someone got the idea that we should hammer the last lap, so we banged out a 9:15 as we finished the 102 miles.  Leanne and I are still the only brave idiots to have finished all four NSTB100's, and we were joined by Gary and Mike for the entire 30 laps.  Shane managed to flat three times but only lost three laps to the group and rode strong. 

Thanks to Sarah Wenk and Elizabeth Grace for coming out to say hi and try to feed us, as well as Killary and Jen for delivering our supplies.  No one is ever more popular than the person who delivers Mountain Dew at mile 70.

Just 364 days until NSTB100 v5.0.

But Wait, There's More

Jeannine Bardo has earned Honorably Mention in USA Triathlon's All American Rankings for 2008.  Nice work Jeannine.

And You Thought I Was Rough

Last night I had a brief conversation with a friend about yoga.  I half-jokingly said that I prefer exercise, and she looked at me as if I had just said that I hate puppies and rainbows.  (She then made some valid points in defense of yoga.) In truth, I do feel that some yoga practices are unsafe, and that there is quite a bit of hyperbole in the claims that are made by some yoga proponents, but I also recognize that there are some benefits to it.  I began to to a little research for a quick blog posting when I found Barnaby Harris at Fuck Yoga.  Here's his story:

"It started as a joke. My ex-wife was extremely passionate about her yoga practice. As a gag for her birthday I made each of us a fuck yoga t-shirt. She refused to wear hers. I wore mine for thirty-nine straight days and was stopped everywhere I went. A write up in The New York Observer and a photo in GQ Magazine got it rolling. An appearance on Sex and the City made it interesting...Jackie Gleason didn’t do yoga, either did Jackie Robinson, Eleanor Roosevelt or any Pope ever...Yoga has survived for thousands of years and will survive for thousands more. It’s just that it has gone unopposed for too damn long"

Once I'm done sending fan mail to FY, I'll get back to doing a little reading, and will post a slightly more balanced opinion.

Flex This

As I was flipping channels from TMZ to The Real Housewives of New Jersey (I love the way they tawk), I accidentally stumbled upon CNN.  Some talking head said something about a senator "flexing his political muscle".  Since I obviously have no concern for national politics, you're probably wondering why this caught my attention.  Because you can't flex a muscle.  You contract a muscle, and you flex a joint.  I suppose Mr. TV Guy can be forgiven, but if you want to see that little vein in my temple bulge, sit me next to a so-called health professional who misuses the term. 

And the Winner Is

Earlier this week we announced the Name This Race contest to rename the Dash and Splash.  Aside from my well documented gripes with the NYRR, I think the reason why I enjoyed this so much is that it reminded me of my days back at the Bronx High School of Science.  (Yes - they let me in, no - they didn't make an error when grading the entrance exam.)  Each year we would sell pool passes to the incoming freshmen.  Of course there was no pool at Bronx Science.  Now NYRR had you register for the Splash & Dash and then pulled the rug out from under the entrants, renaming it The Dash because the pool doesn't open for another two weeks. 

While we had a couple of clever entries, including "Dash and Splat" or "Dash and Crash", I felt that Shane's entry,  "The We're The Only Game In Town So Suck It 5 Miler" appropriately captured the spirit.  I'd be happy to give Shane the whistle as promised, but I forgot to order it, so I'll give him something else.

Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain

As I mentioned yesterday, the good folks at New York Road Runners have on more than one occasion caused my hair to hurt.  Though they're not as consistent in their ability to agitate me, the paper of record - the New York Times - is doing their best.  They've gotten me with ridiculous hyperbole in articles suggesting that the average gym denizen and casual runners need to worry about overtraining.  They've gotten me with the inability to understand research methods and statistics when they promoted the idea that treadmills burn more calories than other gym equipment or that you don't lose weight swimming. Now they've upped the misleading and misguided ante with "Why Walk Breaks Help You Run".  The author, Tara Parker Pope, shows a remarkable combination of arrogance and ignorance as she parrots Jeff Galloway's and spews them as if they are fact. 

Considering the fact that Galloway's methods are dismissed by most running coaches and sports scientists, perhaps the title of the NY Times article did not need to be so definitive. (Then again, when did the Times last allow for an opinion that differed from theirs?)  Galloway and the article's author provide nothing but anecdotal evidence to support their claims that the walk-run method can lead to faster times or decreased injuries.  Making matters even worse, the author chimes in and criticizes any and all attempts to refute her with online comments, yet still refuses to provide proof.  She (and Galloway before him) have been asked to substantiate their claims with more than anecdotal evidence, but as usual they provide none. 

If you wonder why I am so offended by Galloway, here's a little background.  When asked about the benefit of running on softer surfaces than concrete, Galloway wrote "Asphalt is softer than concrete and treadmills are softer than both.  FICTION.  While some people say they feel the difference among the surfaces, after coaching more than 250,000 runners, I haven't seen any difference in rate of injury or fatigue when running on asphalt, concrete or treadmills.  You can reduce the impact on your body on any surface by taking enough walk breaks from the beginning." So he claims to have coached a quarter million runners, and to not notice the difference between surfaces, but we're supposed to treat him as credible.  (Guess which surface I'd like to drop him on.)  (For the record, I understand the argument that running on soft surfaces may not be best for all runners, and there seems to be some scientific as well as anecdotal evidence to suggest that asphalt is better for runners with soft tissue injuries.)

Galloway always dodges the science that clearly proves that walking slower and then having to overcome that by running faster is less efficient than running at a steady intermediate pace.  Pete Pfitzinger explains it well.  "The most efficient way to run a marathon is to run at very close to an even pace, because running portions of the race much faster than an even pace causes a build-up of lactate (hydrogen ions are the actual culprit) and other metabolites that make you slow down. If you run a portion of the race slower than the optimal pace, then by necessity you must run another portion faster than the optimal pace (which causes a build-up of metabolites that make you slow down), so the net result is a poorer performance. Walking a portion of a marathon would require you to run other portions of the race much faster to run a given total time, so it would be detrimental to your result. While this may seem obvious, apparently there have been quotes attributed to Jeff Galloway suggesting that walking would somehow improve elite marathon performance."

Galloway even claims that even elite runners can benefit from his method, though only MOP and slower runners seem to be available to back him on this.  A while back he claimed that Ronaldo da Costa used walking breaks in one of his marathon wins.  That sound you hear is Mr. da Costa laughing and refuting Galloway's lies. 

A while back I slammed Galloway's hyperbole at another message board and was quickly rebuffed by one of his defenders who said that since I've never run a 2:16 marathon like Galloway, I'm clearly not as knowledgeable as he.  Being a fan of irony, I appreciated that comment, since Mr. Galloway didn't take any walking breaks in his Olympic marathon.