As I discussed in a recent blog post, and is worth reiterating here, runners literally have large hearts–specifically, the size of the left ventricle, a condition called left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH). If you’ve ever had an EKG, you can see whether you have LVH: See the two biggest points on the EKG–one pointing up […]
Most people who know me know how passionate I am about running. As passionate as I am about running, I am even more passionate about the Olympics. I admit, I always cry during the Opening Ceremonies. I love the ceremony of it all, the symbolism of the Olympic Rings, the convergence of the very best […]
February is National Heart Month. Heart disease is the number one cause of death among men and women. Everyone knows someone who has had heart disease. My father died of a heart attack when he was 51 years old. My twin brother and I were only eight years old. This is one of my favorite […]
I’ve been talking to a talented runner where I live in San Diego for over a year about working with me as her coach. She waffles back and forth about going through with it. Part of all her waffling is financial; she can’t afford it. But even when I have offered to coach her pro […]
You take approximately 1,000 steps with each foot with every mile you run, so you want every one of those steps to be as comfortable as possible. With all the different types of running shoes on the market and all their bells and whistles, how do you know what you need? The choice is actually […]
Today I ran a hill circuit I created in Balboa Park in San Diego — a variety of bounding and sprinting drills to the top, turn left and jog to recover across the flat portion at the top, sprint down, turn left and sprint and across the flat portion at the bottom, and start the […]
When I was five years old, I was sitting in my parents’ living room after an exhausting day of kindergarten. My twin brother was sitting next to me, drawing a picture. My mother, who was always interested in my brother’s drawing talent (she used to tell him that he should follow his childhood dream of […]
Coach Jason’s Thanksgiving Fact of the Day Ever wonder what the difference is between your turkey’s white meat and dark meat? It’s the difference in muscle fiber types. The dark meat of your turkey dinner is composed of slow-twitch endurance muscle fibers and therefore contains lots of myoglobin (the protein that transports oxygen inside your […]
With 5 weeks to go until the New York City Marathon, I’ve started to include some interval training in my marathon preparation. Once per week, I’m going to the track to push my heart rate to it’s maximum to attend to my VO2max. Sounds like fun, doesn’t it? Given the popularity of VO2max and it’s […]
Do these 5 things to become a better runner: 1. Polarize your training. When you run easy, run very, very easy. When you run hard, run very, very hard. For a distance runner, hard doesn’t always mean faster. Hard can also mean increasing the volume of work performed at a given speed. Running for close […]