As Caleb Masland pointed out yesterday in his post on varying pacing in workouts, many runners tend to run too fast, too often in their training. This can lead to burnout and eventual injury. Caleb discussed how and why elites vary their training paces across a broad range, and how, in contrast, amateur runners often […]
Running History: Video of Roger Bannister’s sub-4:00 Mile
May 7, 2014 By 4 Comments
Yesterday was the 60th anniversary of Roger Bannister’s sub-4:00 mile. In an interesting article titled “A Faster Human: Are We Unique In Our Ability To Get Better?,” NPR shared a great video of that famed run narrated by Sir Roger himself. It also included a video of Hicham El Guerrouj’s world record setting mile run […]
Lord Spencer’s Shoes: The First “Specialized” Running Shoes Ever Made (from 1865)
June 14, 2012 By 9 Comments
In Chapter 4 of Tread Lightly, my co-author Bill Katovsky covers the history of human footwear use, and describes the evolution of the running shoe. An essential resource for the writing of this chapter is a 1980 book aptly titled “The Running Shoe Book.” Written by Peter Cavanagh, a scientist who has contributed more than […]
Running History: Is This 1885 Article On Shoes and Running the Original Born to Run?
Every once in awhile I like to poke around Google Books for old articles on running. I recently found the article below by W. Mattieu Williams in an 1885 issue of the publication Knowledge – it reads as if it could be an outline for Christopher McDougall’s book Born to Run. In the article, Williams […]