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.

This Week's Athletics Weekly

It's not often that it arrives on a Thursday - it's a pity that it takes a postal strike to get it here on time! There are some good things in here if you don't mind the combination of Paula Radcliffe and Dwain Chambers on the front. There are several interesting two page interviews: one with Steve Jones, one with Tom MacNab on coaching (he used to be a member of Shettleston Harriers and of Bellahouston Harriers as well), Dwain Chambers and a piece on risk assessment by a chap who believes that it is a good thing. There is another two page section in their 'Performance' series under the heading of 'Seven Ways to Run Quicker' which has good stuff about VO2 max, lactate threshold and so on that are all in an easy to read and easy to understand form. The need to learn stuff is not just confined to coaches but athletes can't afford to be ignorant of the sport either and we used to argue and discuss books, AW articles and TV programmes when I was running regularly.

I also got a couple of books today: 'On A Cold Clear Day' about the American who came to Britain to learn how to be a distance runner in 1961 and Haile Gebreselassie' biography modestly titled 'The Greatest' written by Jim Denison. If anyone has already read these then let's hear about it in the Comments bit below.

"You can't learn faster only by having access to your own experience and knowledge, it's a no brainer. You need access to the experience of everybody." Frank Dick