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1. A $300 Running Shoe? APL Streamline Review:
What You Need To Know
Weighs 9.2 oz. (261 g) for US M9.0 / 7.3 oz. (207 g) for US W8.0
Two-piece APL FutureFoam midsole is one of the best EVA-based midsoles we’ve ever tried
Surprisingly well-done shoe (though there are some misses)
It’s a $300 shoe. But don’t write it off (unless you can somehow turn that into a tax break).
ROBBE: When we first were asked to review the Athletic Propulsion Labs (APL) Streamline, I thought: “Oh, cool, another lifestyle brand trying to do a running shoe. This should go well.” Nevertheless, we reached out because why the hell not, and they were more than willing to send their shoe into our meat grinder. I’ll be honest, I was primed to put a handful of miles in this and denounce it as wannabe garbage from the get-go.
And that was before I found out they cost $300.
But that was before I actually ran in the shoe, which changed my entire perception about it. Because holy shit, a lifestyle brand actually made a very, very good running shoe. Not without its faults, but we’ll get into that later.
So who is APL? I’d never heard of them (though apparently, a lot of people have), which may be due to the fact that we live on the East Coast and they are Los Angeles-based. Also, I don’t follow basketball, but apparently they created quite a buzz when the first shoe they ever made was banned by the NBA, because it essentially had a spring in the toe. And this was like six years before any Vaporfly controversy.
More...from Believe in the Run.
2. PB in the heat? It's all in the mind...
Jonny Brownlee is a legend of triathlon. A three-time Olympic medalist with European, Commonwealth and World Championship titles to his name.
But, for many, the abiding image of the 31-year-old is being unceremoniously dumped by his brother, Alistair, over the Cancun World Series finish line in a desperate bid to win the 2016 world title.
Jonny needed victory in Mexico. Despite Alistair’s best efforts, Jonny finished second, leaving him four points behind overall winner Mario Mola. Heat exhaustion had sent Jonny zig-zagging down the Mexican finishing chute. Determination proved no match for Jonny’s rise in core temperature.
Brownlee readily admits racing in the heat is a weakness of his so he prepared for the hotter climes of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics by creating a heat chamber at his Leeds home – more precisely, in his conservatory.
"It’s four electric heaters, a treadmill and a stationary bike," Jonny told The Times’ journalist Sam Munnery back in 2019.
More...from Precision Hydration.
3. High AQI: Is it Safe to Exercise Outside?
Is training outdoors safe when the AQI is high? Here are the answers to your most pressing air quality questions — including when to exercise indoors.
With wildfires raging and the UN reporting that climatic disruptions will likely continue to worsen, an end to this summer’s poor air quality is probably wishful thinking. For athletes who want to continue training outdoors in a healthy, sustainable manner, it’s important to understand the health risks of training when air quality is poor. Here are the answers to some of your most pressing questions — including when to exercise indoors.
What are the health risks associated with poor air quality?
Wildfires heavily impact air quality, even for communities far removed from the fires themselves. Wood smoke contains many toxic materials — in the form of particulate matter and gases — that can be dispersed for hundreds and even thousands of miles away from its point of origin.
Amongst the general population, studies have estimated that air pollution causes up to seven million premature deaths annually. Air pollution worsened by wildfire smoke has been known to exacerbate respiratory and cardiac diseases, like asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). It’s even been associated with the onset of various inflammatory and rheumatic ailments, including inflammation of the lungs after inhalation.
More...from Training Peaks.
4. Adapt powerlifting techniques to get the benefits of weight training minus the strain:
If you want to get strong, you have to get comfortable with the idea of moving heavy weights. Powerlifting – a sport in which the goal is to lift as much weight as possible in a squat, bench press and deadlift – is the surest way to achieve that end. But problems arise when people apply the techniques specific to this sport to every aspect of their training.
To the untrained eye, all forms of weight training look the same. Bodybuilding, Olympic lifting, powerlifting – you lift weights up, you put them back down. Rinse and repeat until your hour is up. But this is not the case. As I’ve said in previous columns, there are different techniques and protocols for different goals, as well as different rep and loading schemes for building maximum muscle versus maximum strength. There are different tools too, of which the barbell – the standard implement of powerlifting – is but one.
More...from the Globe and Mail.
5. I found comfort in exercising – the one thing I used to hate:
If this time last year you had told me that an exercise bike would be my salvation, I’d have insisted your crystal ball was broken. I’d have protested that I’m not an athlete by any stretch, not even in my imagination. My co-ordination is lacking, my endurance is spotty and my speed is set squarely on tortoise.
In Grade 7, my physical education teacher watched me, eyebrow raised, as I tried to jump up and touch a marker on the wall. I huffed and puffed and stretched and wheezed, all to no effect.
“You’re doing pretty well in my class,” he said, piquing a nascent and long-cherished wish that I was, after all, a budding star. Then, the crushing caveat. “For someone with no ability whatsoever.”
More...from the Globe and Mail.
6. Understanding Hormones for Female Performance with Dr. Nicky Keay:
Today's episode is a conversation about the importance of hormones for performance and health with sports endocrinologist Dr. Nicky Keay. We chat about hormones affected in RED-S, low energy availability, and even peri-menopause; what to monitor and how they affect us; and exciting updates on the use of Artificial Intelligence in understanding and tracking our hormones.
Listen to the podcast on Female Athlete Nutrition.
7. Return to work creates exercise boom for least active:
We wanted to understand how the exercise habits of people who were forced to work remotely during the pandemic were impacted by returning to the office full-time.
To do this, we surveyed 2,494 people who were working remotely during the pandemic about their exercise habits before and after returning to work.
Key findings:
Returning to work in the office full-time, after being forced to work remotely during the pandemic has resulted in:
59.52% of non-exercisers are actively exercising an average of 2.64 times per week since returning to work
People who exercised 1-2 times/week have increased exercise frequency by 125.93%
People who exercised up to 3 times/week have increased exercise frequency by 38.57%
People who exercised 4+ times/week have decreased exercise frequency by 14.16%
Respondents who have returned to work full-time reported on how this pandemic-related event has impacted their exercise frequency.
More...from RunRepeat.
8. Sports Science Is Changing How Female Olympians Train. It Could Help You, Too:
Until a few years ago, elite Colorado track and field athlete Annie Kunz used to feel fatigued — even during her warmups. And then there was the constant hunger: Sometimes her stomach would growl in the middle of practice. She felt like she was always thinking about food, always restricting what she ate, avoiding whole categories — like carbohydrates — completely, because she thought they were unhealthy. Add to that awful, debilitating cramps when she got her period. Kunz, who is representing the U.S. Olympic team in the women's heptathlon this week in Tokyo, just didn't feel like she was performing at her best much of the time.
Any of the above could be signals of an underlying health problem and could also affect her performance. But Kunz says she rarely, if ever, discussed these issues with her coaches. They've almost always been men, Kunz says, many of whom just weren't used to broaching topics like weight, hormones, and menstrual cycles with their female athletes.
More...from GBH.
9. Long-distance runners: Food to fuel your training:
Don’t load up on carbs or down litres of water the night before a long run.
Food is never far from the mind of a runner training for the marathon. Whether it is the pre-run breakfast, mid-run snack or post-run recovery lunch, thoughts are always on the next meal. But with an array of nutritional products, extensive marketing and plenty written on the subject, it can be a daunting task for a first-time marathoner to weed through the sales pitches and work out what food or sports supplements are right for their body in training.
A personalised menu
There is no perfect diet for a marathoner. Having trained runners to take on the marathon for more than 12 years, no two runners have made the exact same food choices. Everyone has different preferences, schedules and sensitivities. Anyone who has already been on the marathon journey has learned, possibly the hard way, what foods agree with their body.
More...from the Irish Times.
10. Softtop offers a new take on keeping cyclists dry:
Dedicated bicycle commuters may not let a little rain stop them, but that still doesn't mean they like getting rained on when they ride. The Softtop, from German manufacturer RainRider, is one of the latest gadgets that's designed to help keep them dry … or at least, drier.
Made of coated polyester fabric and transparent UV-resistant polyurethane, the Softtop is attached to the user's bicycle via a quick-release mount on the handlebars, along with two hooks on either leg of the fork. It holds its tensioned bowed shape via a set of flexible aluminum and carbon fiber rods, not unlike a tent. Mesh vents in front help keep it from fogging up.
When the cyclist is riding, the Softtop shields them from rain coming from above, in front, and somewhat from the sides. If they're making a brief stop, the top half of the device can simply be folded down and back, getting hooked into place against the bike's rear rack. That way it won't get blown around (at least, not as much), plus it will help keep the parked bike dry.
More...from New Atlas.
11. How Exercise May Help Keep Our Memory Sharp:
Irisin, a hormone produced by muscles during exercise, can enter the brain and improve cognition, a mouse study suggests.
An intriguing new study shows how exercise may bolster brain health. The study was in mice, but it found that a hormone produced by muscles during exercise can cross into the brain and enhance the health and function of neurons, improving thinking and memory in both healthy animals and those with a rodent version of Alzheimer’s disease. Earlier research shows that people produce the same hormone during exercise, and together the findings suggest that moving could alter the trajectory of memory loss in aging and dementia.
More...from the New York Times.
12. Olympic Marathoner Ryan Hall Shared the 7 Most Important Things to Do the Night Before a Big Race:
The record-breaking runner has been coaching his wife, Sara, ahead of her race in Eugene today.
Ryan Hall made history as a runner, becoming the first American to break the hour barrier in the half-marathon. Since retiring from pro running in 2016, he has packed on the muscle and is now able to deadlift more than 500 pounds—while still holding onto his record as the fastest American runner of all time in the half and full marathon categories.
Hall's wife Sara, meanwhile, continues to kill it as an elite distance runner; she was the first American in over a decade to reach the podium at last year's London Marathon. Today, Sara is competing in a half-marathon race in Eugene, and in a post shared to Instagram last night, Hall broke down the seven most important things that they have both learned over the years about how to best prepare for a long-distance race.
First off, Hall recommends lying down rather than sitting wherever possible. "Sitting creates all kinds of tightness and kinks that you want to avoid pre-race," he says
More...from Men's Health.
13. Reggie Miller: Athletes Are Not Robots:
By Reggie Miller,
NBA Hall of Fame, Oly
mpian, MTB Racer, CTS Contributing Editor
I’ve heard the clichés a thousand times, maybe more: “Get your head into the game, be mentally strong”. “Focus on what you’re doing and block everything else out”, and my favorite, “Put your thinking cap on and execute”. Now, I’m not saying these are all bad; it depends on timing, usage and who’s delivering the message. But with the conversation on mental health and the awareness that surrounds it from some of our beloved sports superstars like Simone Biles, Naomi Osaka, Michael Phelps, Jenny Rissveds and Kevin Love, to name a few, I’m here to say this: ATHLETES ARE NOT ROBOTS! Yes, we train hours and hours a day, sacrificing blood, sweat and tears to be the best at our craft. Yes, we have access to the best doctors, trainers, and coaches that money can buy, but at the end of the day athletes have the same mental challenges as anyone else in highly stressful environments.
More...from CTS.
14. Marathon lessons from Molly Seidel: train slow to run fast:
The Olympic marathon bronze medallist dedicates the majority of her training to easy running, and so should you.
With the Fall marathon season approaching fast, many runners across the country are already deep into their marathon training programs. If you’re like most of us, you were inspired by the athletes’ performances in the Olympic marathon, most notably by American Molly Seidel’s surprise bronze medal finish. Thankfully, the elite runner tracks her training on Strava, and when looking at her stats there is one major takeaway: to run fast, you need to train slow.
Physiologist and Colorado-based endurance coach Alex Couzens broke down Seidel’s training stats on his Twitter page, and the results may come as a surprise to many runners. Out of her typical 193-kilometre training week, she only ran three per cent of that volume at 5K pace or faster — that’s less than seven kilometres. She only ran another 13 per cent (about 25 kilometres) at race pace, and half of her total training volume was dedicated to slow, easy running.
More...from Canadian Running.
15. What should you eat during the hours before training and races?
Deciding how to approach nutrition in the few hours before a training session or race is one of the great fueling challenges for athletes. To help you hone your own pre-workout food intake, I've drawn on my MANY years of experience of honing my own strategy and looked at what scientific evidence says about what, how much and when you should eat before exercise...
Should you eat immediately before exercise?
I’m definitely a “Lark” to use a term borrowed from Matthew Walker’s brilliant book ‘Why We Sleep’. Because of my natural chronotype I have a tendency to start the majority of my workouts well before 7am, and occasionally before 6 (to the annoyance of my wife if my alarm is set too ‘loud’).
One knock-on effect of being an ‘early bird’ is that I tend to do most of my training on an empty stomach (except for a mandatory coffee) because both the thought and practicalities of eating anything significant before getting out of the door is quite unappealing at that time of day.
More...from Precision Hydration.
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