Running News Daily
Top Ten Stories of the Week
7/28/2018

Global Run Challenge Profile: Michael Wardian has had very few injuries and here is why

RUN THE WORLD:  "Running is my life and who I am," says 44-year-old Michael Wardian.  "I love running and hope to run till my last days." Michael started running after he stopped playing Lacrosse in college to stay in shape. 

He lives in Arlington, Virginia with his wife and two children.  Michael has accomplished so much. In 2008 he won the US National 100K championships.  In 2006 he won four out of five marathons he raced in 45 days.

He held the world record for the fastest marathon time pushing a baby stroller.  He set a record of running a marathon on an indoor 200-meter track.  He ran the 2012 Olympic Marathon trails clocking 2:21. 

The next day he ran another marathon clocking 2:31.  He ran seven marathons in seven days on 7 continents clocking an average of 2:45 for each marathon (photo). With so many highlights on his resume, I asked him what would be his top two.  

"In 2011 I ran 2:17:49 (PR) at Grandmas Marathon and the same year I placed second at 100k World Championships," Michael said.  He is a vegetarian and works as an International Ship-broker.  

How about injuries?  "I have been very lucky, I have not had many injuries and I think my best secret is to keep moving.  After big events, I do an easy jog, hike or even just walk. It keeps everything moving," says Michael.  

Why did he enter this challenge?  "I think the Run The World Challenge is cool and I hope it gets more people out there," he says.  

He is a professional marathon and ultra marathon runner and has been running since 1996.  He has represented the USA in the 50k and 100k world championships, and has participated in three Olympic Marathon Trials. 

Just recently (July 20-21) Michael placed 11th at the Hardrock 100 clocking 30 hours and 23 minutes for the 100.5 mile very challenging trail race held in Silverton, Colorado.  

(07/24/18) Views: 820
Bob Anderson

Shelby Houlihan runs a big PR to break the American 5000m record, clocking 13:34

Shelby Houlihan, a native of Sioux City, Iowa, who now lives in Portland, Oregon, won the 5,000 and the 1,500 at this year's USA Championships. Her top 5,000 time before Saturday was 15:00.37, which came at the 2017 World Championships in London.  Shelby broke the American women's record Saturday in the outdoor 5,000 meters at the Night of the Athletics track and field meet in Heusden, Belgium.  Houlihan, 25, won in 14 minutes, 34.45 seconds to break the record of 14:38.92, which was set by Shannon Rowbury in 2016 in Brussels, Belgium.  She dominated the field beating runner-up Molly Huddle of the United States by nearly 27 seconds. Huddle ran a 15:01.44 while fellow American Karrissa Schweizer finished third in 15:02.44. (07/21/18) Views: 249

Global Run Challenge Profile: When Roger Wright was 47 he weighed 300 pounds and then he decided to run the Boston Marathon

RUN THE WORLD:  Roger Wright's father ran the 1969 Boston Marathon when Roger was seven."  When I turned 47, even though I could only run 10 yards, I set a goal of running the 2009 Boston Marathon," says Roger.  Starting around the age of 10 or 11 he discovered that he was fat. "As my age increased, so did my weight and by the time I reached 40, I was over 300 lbs at 5'6" tall," he says.  "I tried everything to lose weight (diets, going to a gym, weight watchers, etc) but didn't have the discipline to stay with it. My doctor suggested surgery but fortunately I decided against it at the last minute." Ten months after setting the goal to run Boston he lost 120 pounds and ran all 26.2 miles of Boston "without walking one step."  Two days before the marathon he made a Cystic Fibrosis (a disease his niece Julia suffers from) fund raising video.  "The video got reposted/renamed "The Most Inspiring Video You Will Ever Watch" and ended up going viral (9 millions views right now) and people started recognizing me. I happened to see Meb Keflezighi at the 2013 Boston Marathon expo, he looked at me and said "I know you! You're the guy from the video!". I still smile thinking about that, and everyone else who has reached out and thanked me for being an inspiration," says Roger.  This recognition has helped him keep his weight in check.  "If I put the weight back on," says Roger, "I fear people might use me as an excuse to never start losing weight so I continue to run marathons all over the world (58 full marathons in nine years) to set a positive example that you can change and make it permanent."  Why did Roger join this challenge? "Like a marathon, I constantly seek out challenges to stay in shape and push myself harder. For the Run The World Challenge, I gave Bob a commitment of 35 miles per week. Being a part of the team pushes me harder and so far I have maintained an average of 50 miles per week. When I decided to change my life 10 years ago, it was incredibly hard, but each day I push myself a little harder to maybe make a small difference while I can," says Roger.                                      (07/23/18) Views: 202
Bob Anderson

France’s Xavier Thévenard disqualified at Hardrock 100 with less than 10 miles to go

Race leader Xavier Thévenard of France was disqualified from the Hardrock Hundred Endurance Run early Saturday morning. He was less than 10 miles from the finish line in Silverton. The 30-year-old broke Rule 5 of the Hardrock 100’s Executive Rule Summary that reads: “No stashing of supplies along the course and no accepting aid except within 400 yards of a designated aid station.” The Hardrock 100 is a 100.5-mile ultramarathon through the San Juan Mountains in Southwest Colorado. This is the 25th running of the event that features 66,000 feet of elevation change. After admitting to the violation, Thévenard was given the option to finish the race in Silverton as an unofficial finisher, but he opted to drop out and was not seen in Silverton as other finishers came in Saturday. Oregon’s Jeff Browning, 46, was crowned the winner in a time of 26 hours, 20 minutes, 20 seconds. He called it a “bittersweet” win because of what happened to Thévenard. Thévenard is the first runner to ever be disqualified from a Hardrock 100. (07/21/18) Views: 71

All eyes on Xavier Thévenard for Hardrock 100

Xavier Thévenard, a 30-year-old from France, headlines a men’s field that has changed drastically since the lottery was first drawn in December. Montana’s Mike Foote, a two-time Hardrock runner-up, withdrew from the race a little more than a week out from the start, making Thévenard the favorite if his body and mind hold up during the grueling 100.5-mile race through the San Juan Mountains. “It was tough when I got the email from Kilian a couple weeks ago,” Hardrock 100 race director Dale Garland said. “What it did to the men’s field was kind of blew it up in terms of being in the front.” While Foote and Jornet won’t race, Jeff Browning, a 46-year-old from Oregon, was a late addition from the wait list. He will join Troy Howard, a 45-year-old from Golden, as the top contenders to Thévenard. Thévenard finished third at Hardrock in 2016 in a time of 23 hours, 57 minutes, 10 seconds. That was the year Jornet and Durango’s Jason Schlarb finished as co-champions in a hand-in-hand finish. Since then, Thévenard hasn’t slowed down a bit. He was fourth at Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc (UTMB) in 2017 and is coming off a fifth-place finish at the 45-mile Transculvania race in May. (07/20/18) Views: 69

Multiple world and Olympic champion Kenenisa Bekele is set to run the TCS Amsterdam Marathon

The Ethiopian distance runner owns the second-fastest marathon performance in history on a record-eligible course, having clocked a national record of 2:03:03 to win the 2016 Berlin Marathon. His time is just six seconds shy of Dennis Kimetto’s world record. Bekele, who will be contesting his first marathon on Dutch soil, will be up against Lawrence Cherono, who won last year’s Amsterdam Marathon in a course record of 2:05:09. Cherono also finished one place behind Bekele at this year’s London Marathon. “Kenenisa Bekele is one of the world's best long-distance runners,” said race director Cees Pronk. “We are incredibly proud that Bekele will be lining up at the start on Sunday 21 October. Bekele decided to run in Amsterdam because he has experienced the expert organisation of the event and knows first-hand that the athletes always come first.” (07/23/18) Views: 65

Why do 90 percent of Runners miss training time every year due to injury

Gretchen Reynolds, writing about running for The New York Times, claims that studies estimate that “90 percent of runners miss training time every year due to injury.” What causes the injuries? To answer that question researchers have examined and then blamed an assortment of causes from running longer distances, being too heavy, over-striding, wearing the wrong running shoes, wearing no shoes and going barefoot, weak hips, following a wrong diet, and rough pavement to run on. Researchers at Harvard Medical School, to get more reliable answers to the runners’ injury question, decided to examine the history of a group of long time runners who have never experienced an injury. What were they doing that kept them from never getting hurt? The study was published in December in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. The researchers recruited 249 experienced female recreational runners. They had one thing in common—they all struck the ground with their heels when they ran. Most runners are heel strikers and, according to Reynolds, heel striking is believed by many running experts to cause higher impacts than landing near the middle or front of the foot. The study focused on young women so researchers would not have to control for gender in the results. The researchers tracked the runners for two years. During that time, according to Reynolds, more than 100 of the runners sustained an injury that was serious enough to require medical attention. Another 40 reported minor injuries, while the rest remained uninjured. Twenty-one of the runners not only did not become injured during the two-year study but they also had not ever had a prior running injury. The scientists compared that small group’s impact loading with the pounding experienced by the seriously injured runners. They found that the never-injured runners, as a group, landed far more lightly than those who had been seriously hurt. This was true even when they controlled for running mileage, body weight and other variables. Reynolds noted that “the finding refutes the widely held belief that a runner cannot land lightly on her heels.” Irene Davis, Ph.D., a Harvard professor who led the study, said, “One of the runners we studied, a woman who has run multiple marathons and never been hurt, had some of the lowest rates of loading that we’ve ever seen.” (07/21/18) Views: 58

Stanford School of Medicine tracked 500 runners for 20 years and here is what they discovered

Regular running slows the effects of aging, according to a new study from the Stanford University School of Medicine that has tracked 500 older runners for more than 20 years. Elderly runners have fewer disabilities, a longer span of active life and are half as likely as aging nonrunners to die early deaths, the research found. "The study has a very pro-exercise message," said James Fries, MD, an emeritus professor of medicine at the medical school and the study's senior author. "If you had to pick one thing to make people healthier as they age, it would be aerobic exercise." The new findings appear in the Aug. 11 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine. When Fries and his team began this research in 1984, many scientists thought vigorous exercise would do older folks more harm than good. Some feared the long-term effect of the then-new jogging craze would be floods of orthopedic injuries, with older runners permanently hobbled by their exercise habit. Fries had a different hypothesis: he thought regular exercise would extend high-quality, disability-free life. Keeping the body moving, he speculated, wouldn't necessarily extend longevity, but it would compress the period at the end of life when people couldn't carry out daily tasks on their own. That idea came to be known as "the compression of morbidity theory." Fries' team began tracking 538 runners over age 50, comparing them to a similar group of nonrunners. The subjects, now in their 70s and 80s, have answered yearly questionnaires about their ability to perform everyday activities such as walking, dressing and grooming, getting out of a chair and gripping objects. The researchers have used national death records to learn which participants died, and why. Nineteen years into the study, 34 percent of the nonrunners had died, compared to only 15 percent of the runners. (07/20/18) Views: 52

Bazeley and Murrin are set to battle for the 2018 Tely 10 crown

Jennifer Murrin won the 2017 Tely 10 title, has won the race four times, and is the current course record holder, having set a new standard two years ago at the 2016 Tely 10.  Kate Bazeley regards herself as somewhat of an underdog entering tomorrow’s 91st race.  Bazeley — who has posted three of the five fastest female times ever recorded in Tely 10 history — feels she’s a dark horse in this year’s race. She missed last year’s race following the birth of her third child in early July. “The comeback has been a bit slow, and I’ve had this setback (glute injury). But I’m not counting myself out at all. I do think it’s going to be exciting to get out there and mix it up.  “The last few times I’ve ran, I’ve sort of found myself out there alone. I don’t anticipate that this year.” While Colin Fewer is all but assured his 11th Tely 10 men’s title, the women’s championship is up for grabs. (07/21/18) Views: 46

A strong women's elite field is set for the Bix 7 this weekend

Three of the elite runners in the women’s field are from Illinois. The best known of them is Chelsea Blaase, who is from the small town of St. Joseph near Champaign and had a great career at the University of Tennessee. She was fifth in the NCAA 10,000 meters in 2016 and seventh in 2017 as well as placing fifth in the Bix 7 last year. Kelly McShea, from Lisle, ran collegiately at Illinois State and Kristen Heckert, who lives in Bolingbrook and teaches algebra at Plainfield South High School, competed at Illinois-Chicago. The women’s runner who has had the most past success in the Bix is Kenya’s Caroline Rotich, who won the race in 2011 and has placed in the top three on three occasions since then. She is not the only woman in the field who has run well on the streets of Davenport, however. Margaret Muriuki won the race the only previous time she ran it (in 2012), Ethiopia’s Buzunesh Deba was second in 2013 and Monicah Ngige has a pair of top-10 Bix finishes on her resume.Sydney Devore had a highly successful high school cross country career in Lakeland, Florida, but gave up running after suffering an injury as a freshman at the University of Florida. She resumed her career in 2015 and at the age of 26, is now an up and coming competitor on the U.S. scene. She attempted a marathon for the first time earlier this year and won, turning in the fastest time in four years at the Pittsburgh Marathon. (07/25/18) Views: 45