Treadmill To Boston

Is your tap water better than Gatorade?

2009-03-23T20:31:00.000-07:00

As an addition to yesterday's post I was curious about the sodium content of the area. Since I run most of my races in New York City, I specifically looked for the sodium content of NYC water. The New York City
2007 Drinking Water Supply and Quality Report (pdf) states a sodium content of 332 mg/l which is slightly less than the 389 mg/l of Gatorade. So New York Road Runners: Skip the Gatorade, drink tap water!

By the way: I forgot the link to yesterday's study. Here it is...

Study sponsored by Gatorade shows that Gatorade is better

2009-03-22T16:06:00.000-07:00

A recent study published in the International Magazine of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism compared commonly used drinks while exercising. It is named Rehydration After Exercise in the Heat: A Comparison of 4 Commonly Used Drinks and intelligently preselected Gatorade, apple juice/mineral water mix (aka Apfelschorle in Germany), and San Benedetto mineral water. The results were compared to Evian water. To anticipate the result: It showed that four hours after rehydration, the subjects were closest to pre-workout conditions whenn drinking Gatorade. That is quite a surprising result in a study that says "This study was supported by the Gatorade Sports Science Institute." in its acknowledgement.

If you look at the design of the study you will find its main flaw when looking at the sodium-content of the compared drinks. San Benedetto has 6.8 mg/l, Evian has 5 mg/l, and Gatorade has 380 mg/l. They did not say which water they used for mixing the apple juice/water mix. So the water they used was all low-sodium water, which is good if you have hypertension, but definitely not for rehydrating after a workout in the sun.

The conclusion for me is that I will mix my Apfelschorle in the future with a sodium content similar to Gatorade. And that is fairly easy if you can read a nutrition table.

NYRR 8000 Aftermath

2009-03-15T19:25:00.000-07:00

It is always good to know where you stand and it is even more important to make realistic estimates based on your actual results. So first of all, here is the data.

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That was 8 kilometers of fun running in Central Park, the weather conditions were cold (almost freezing) but it was sunny and there was no wind.
I found an estimate that says that you can run a marathon at a pace of one minute per mile slower than your 10k pace. I assume that I could have held the pace for two more kilometers, so I just added one minute to my pace to estimate my marathon time. So at the moment I guess that I could run a marathon in about 3 hours 46 minutes if everything worked perfectly.

What you can expect from me (and what you cannot)

2009-03-12T21:32:00.000-07:00

First of all, let's face the truth. I am already quite athletic and run regularly since beginning of last year. And I already ran two half marathons this year, both in about 2 hours straight. So this will not be one of these fables where a fat guy decides to become the fastest runner in the world because his doctor told him he will die at the age of 30 if he does not stop eating.
Nevertheless I think it is a challenging task interesting enough to report about it. There are so many facets about running a marathon, especially if you never did it before. You can expect posts about all areas around preparing for a marathon. This includes, but is not limited to the right nutrition, correct (and wrong) habits, good (and bad) training, and the fact that we all are human beings and not machines.
I will not bother you with posts about how cranky I felt at today's workout or that I cut my toenails. I do not believe in the saying "a problem shared is a problem halfed", it only works if you provide a solution. And that is one thing you can expect to read here in the future: Small and simple solutions to the many problems when preparing for a marathon, I mean, THE marathon.

I will run the Boston Marathon

2009-03-08T23:22:00.000-07:00

I never ran a marathon in my life, but I will qualify for the Boston Marathon within the next 3 years. Yes, that is right, 3 years. This year I will run my first marathon, next year I will run marathons until I break 3:10, and on Monday April 18th 2011 I will run the Boston marathon.