This Week's 'Athletics Weekly'

If you read AW too often you can get punch drunk I think but this week's has a couple of good articles that make it worth buying or even looking at in detail in the shop! There is advice on how to stay flexible using some static stretches. There are several uses for stretching in this way but the main one for me is to help athletes keep their range of mobility and to reduce the chances of injury. That's not to say that they should be part of an outdoor training session - warm up exercises should be more dynamic than that. To do a jog or easy run first then stop in a field or at a track to do some static stretching in a Scottish winter is kind of silly - if you want or feel you need to do some static stretching, go indoors or put on an extra track suit first. It is a good article and well worth a look.

Frank Horwill (who is always good value) has an article on diet and weight and there is one on relay running which, although it is in the athletics basics section, omits the simple fact that 'the baton lives in the middle of the lane', something drilled into every young sprinter likely to be in a 4 x 100 team. If it is pased in the middle of the lane, and the outgoing runner's hand is in the middle of the lane, then they well meet up at some point! Some Team GB sprinters foul up simply because the baton is all over the width of the lane. Anyway, have a look at this week's issue, dated November 13th.