Athletics Weekly, 14/01/10

This week's 'Athletics Weekly' has a lot of interest in it - well of interest to me anyway. First of all there is extensive coverage of last week's races in Edinburgh with some first class photographs. The 'Performance' section is a good feature and this time round there are five different articles in it. Roy Stevenson from Seattle University has three pages on winter conditioning for runners using indoor weights machines: it is well illustrated with the starting position and the end position for all eight exercises described. It is similar to what we used to do in Braidfield conditioning gym and it would be very useful if such a facility were again available to Donald and his troops. There is one by their distance running guru David Lowes which asks the question is big weekly mileages the way forward for everyone? It clearly is not but while Colin Youngson and some other excellent marathon runners could not manage 100 mpw comfortably they always did a steady 80 miles a week. Many of the guys who take the David Lowes headline on board will not be doing anything like the 'only 80 mpw' that many consider low for marathons. There is an article on plyometrics, Frank Horwill has two columns on why zinc is important in the diet of athletes and finally in this section Andrew Hamilton investogates whether runners are wise to use anti-inflammatory medication for aches and pains. All are well worth a read but remember not to lose your critical faculties.
There are also two pages of letters, seven pages of results and the usual small news items at the start of the magazine. It currently costs £2:95 but remember they have a website where many of the items are a week late in appearing but a surprising amount of the current week's stuff is available.