Runner’s Life Newsletter

Highlights and stories from July 7 — July 20, 2024

Jeff Barton

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Runner's Life

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4 min read16 hours ago

Welcome to the Runner’s Life newsletter!

If you’ve missed previous Runner’s Life newsletters, you can find the archive here.

Below are the most recent editions of Amby Burfoot’s weekly newsletter titled Run Long, Run Healthy, where he publishes short summaries and links to the Internet’s most recent and scientific reviews of running information so you can learn how to be better at running.

Amazing Injury-Comeback Discovery; Run Faster With This ONE Form Fix; 2 New Ways To Beat Knee Pain

Top Training Tips (From Kenya); 6 Reasons To Eat Like A Tour de France Rider; 5 Key Marathon Lessons

Previous editions of Run Long, Run Healthy newsletters can be found here.

Featured Stories

Beyond “Runner’s High” by Sara Gómez Trillos

I just ran my first race and didn’t die in the attempt.
Up until six months ago, when my coach suggested that I start running, I had never run more than 100 meters in my entire life. Ok, maybe I’m lying. There was that one time when I left my leather jacket at a coffee shop, panicked, and ran back as fast as I could — very on-brand if you ask me. Before then, I was forced to run in school as a child and teenager. I vaguely remember my P.E. teacher making us run laps on the track. There was a tiny shed at the far end of the loop where I used to hide after my first half-lap and wait for the rest of the group to finish before I joined them. I spent my teenage years in between books and classes, planning and participating in the Physics and Philosophy Congress at school. A serial overachiever, the only class I ever almost failed was P.E.

‘Why did I start running?’ — I’ve asked myself this question at least a dozen times, more often than not in the middle of a training session. Perhaps it’s true that as you approach 30, you are either married or training for a marathon. Or perhaps I needed something to add to my mini existential crisis as I left behind the life I had built for 10 years to go back home, or I’m just getting good at doing the things I thought I’d never do.

Read more here.

Men Run Away From Me by Patricia Vicary

It happened again last weekend.
And it happened a few weeks before that.
In fact, it’s happened so many times now that I have to accept it’s not just my imagination.
When I‘m gaining on a guy in a race, when it looks like I’m just about to pass him — he speeds up. First, there’s the unmistakable double, triple, or quadruple take. Then the furrowing of the sweaty brow, followed by the increase in his pace as he strives to put daylight between us. More often than not, I’ll catch back up to him, when his pace drops and I’m once again on his heels (not literally, I’ve never clipped anyone’s shoe during a race). Then the pattern repeats. Back and forth we go, engaged in a competitive pas de deux that I hadn’t planned on partaking in.
It’s especially noticeable in situations where the guy has already passed me once. That, I can understand — I also get a bit annoyed if someone I’ve worked hard to pass reappears, threatening to overtake me. All that work, and for what? So yeah, at that moment, I might dig a little deeper and try to get them behind me for good. But even though I don’t enjoy people passing me, I’m usually too wrapped up in my personal goals to worry much about my overall race position.