Obviously I believe coaching matters. I saw two prime examples this past weekend in soccer. First my good friend Juan Osorio is now coach of New York Red Bulls. I watched their game against Dallas last Saturday. With the lineup New York was able to put on the field they should not have been on the same field with Dallas, but because of their technical, tactical and fitness preparation they won the [...]

Recently, there have been some posts about track and building excitement around winning races instead of just focusing on records. This match race of 600m between Symmonds and Scherer was an awesome idea and if you haven't seen it elsewhere, check it out HERE. [...]

I recently was reading the latest edition of a popular running magazine, and stumbled across a quote from an elite runner, who just medaled at World Champs in Osaka, that perpetuates the myth that distance runners need not lift weights.  The quote rips on lifting for distance runners as the athlete gained twelve pounds of mass during a forced break where her primary cross training modality wa [...]

Here's an ineteresting article I found in the Seattle Times from Blaine Newnham: When Jim Ryun first broke the world record in the mile in 1966,Walter Cronkite interrupted his nightly network show to share the news.Later that year, at age 19, Ryun was on the cover of Sports Illustrated as the magazine's Sportsman of the Year.When Alan Webb finally broke Steve Scott's 25-year-old A [...]

It's not too often that blog posts on ET discuss endurance oriented topics but this is certainly worthy of an exception. Only one week after his American Record mile, Alan Webb today ran a 1:43.84 in the 800m taking 2 seconds off his PR and showing he's got the speed and the race fitness to be a TRUE medal contender in the middle distances for the US. Could he be the savior of American tra [...]

Congrats to Alan Webb for his excellent run in Belgium today. His time: 3:46.91breaking Steve Scott's 25-year old American Record of 3:47.69. That's a serious 'medal-contender' type of time....the first in a long time for American distance runners (at least American born distance runners). Great job Webb. We've now got a pretty awesome 1-2 punch between Webb and Lagat. [...]

I had my annual dentist appointment today. Going to the dentist is a necessary evil…something I’m not too fond of, but something I know is very important to my overall health. Don’t get me wrong, I take care of my oral health diligently; but having someone poke, prod and scrape in my mouth with sharp metal objects and whirring machines is not my idea of fun. While lying back i [...]

I am being dogmatic. There are many better ways to progress someone to being able to squat than using a sissy squat which is only an enabler as mentioned in the earlier post. This was presented as an exercise for middle distance and distance runners, a group for which it is highly inappropriate. See Tracy Fobers blog http://ironmaven.blogspot.com today on the whole article. She critiques the [...]

A friend of mine wrote this to me:"In running and hurdle events from 400m on down we win 17 out of 30 medals. Yet in running events from 800m on up (not including the Marathon), we only have 9 finalists, five of these are in the 10Km. Our highest finisher was Hazel Clarke who was 8th in the 800m final only because there were only 8 spaces in the final. It seems to me that the US has just give [...]

A Correction from Yesterday:The tunnel to the stairs the athletes walk out of is not very long, just fromcall room in the stadium. However there is a 1500 meter tunnel, lined withthree lanes of Mondo and sand pits and all, that goes from the warm up track tothe stadium. Quote of the Day: “I was hoping to have a bottle of vodka to warm me up” from runner up Kotovaregarding the weather d [...]