Lukas Verzbicas: Boy Wonder...

Following up on the 30 Dec 2009 Post...

Just trying to keep up with Lukas on the internet is hard...imagine trying to go running with him!! I think I would need a  mountain bike!!!

The teenage star sets his sights on the Olympics

By Brian Metzler

As featured in the May 2010 issue of Running Times Magazine

Lukas Verzbicas is living the American dream.

You know -- come to America, be virtuous in what you pursue, put in endless hours of hard work and you will reap your just rewards.

The 17-year-old Lithuanian transplant and once-in-a-generation running talent has done just that, following the plan with an unyielding competitiveness and relentless commitment not often found in teenage athletes.

Just three and a half semesters into his high school career in suburban Chicago -- a span in which he ran fewer than 20 cross country and track races -- Verzbicas had already cemented his place among the greatest high school runners in U.S. history.

With a commanding win at the 2009 Foot Locker Cross Country Championships on Dec. 12 in San Diego and several national track records already under his belt, the lanky, 133-pound aerobic wunderkind has shown all the potential to be the next great American runner. At least to many U.S. running fans, who have been not-so-quietly living their own American dream about Verzbicas, purporting the notion that he might be the second coming of a prodigy like Gerry Lindgren, Steve Prefontaine or Dathan Ritzenhein.

And he might be, except that the next great American runner is not just a runner. In fact, the possibility exists that Verzbicas will give up the sport in its singularity before he's scheduled to graduate in 2012 -- at least temporarily -- so he can focus on triathlon.

"I have a better chance to make the Olympics in triathlon than I do in track and field, at least for 2012," says Verzbicas, who is a sophomore at Carl Sandburg High School. "I'm training for that now, and if I keep working hard, I'll get there. That's what I'm thinking right now, but it depends on how everything goes over the next few years. I might still be a runner in the future. We'll see."

COMING TO AMERICA When Verzbicas arrived in New Lenox, Ill., a small but growing town in Chicago's south suburbs, in the summer of 2002, he was a precocious 9-year-old who, like most Lithuanian kids, loved basketball. But he spoke only a little English and didn't know much about the American way of life, except that he was living near the city where Michael Jordan became famous and that there were McDonald's restaurants everywhere.

His mother, Rasa Verzbickiene, 47, and stepfather, Romas Bertulis, 51, had been track coaches in Lithuania -- Rasa, a former national record-holder at 3,000m, assisting distance runners, and Romas, working with decathletes -- but temporarily left young Lukas to live with his grandmother in Kaunas for two years as they tried to forge a better life in the U.S.

Still, although he was always prancing around a track and field stadium as a young boy, imitating the athletes his parents were coaching, Verzbicas never had the chance to compete for himself and knew nothing of his latent endurance talents. "I wasn't much of an athlete when I came here," he recalls. "I really just wanted to play basketball, but I wasn't very good."

Wanting to find something for him to pursue and noticing that he appeared never to get winded on the basketball court, Verzbicas' parents signed him up for a low-key 5K race when he was 10. When the starting gun went off, so did he. Although he had done no training prior to the race and lacked any comprehension what a sensible pace might be for 5K, let alone any understanding of how far 5K really was, his competitive instincts took over and compelled him to chase the leaders, hitting the mile mark in under 5:30.

Because time or pace meant nothing to him, he didn't blink an eye or think twice about how hard he was breathing. He just kept running fast with runners two and three times his age, fueled by the simple and almost primal notion that he could and he felt like he should. But, talented or not, he was still a kid, untrained, untested and unsure, the combination of which sent him into oxygen debt and he crashed hard somewhere before the 2-mile mark.

"I walked the last mile," he says with a laugh. "I'm not sure if I even won my age group, but that's how I got started."

For the complete story please visit:

http://runningtimes.com/Article.aspx?ArticleID=19585&PageNum=1

Go Get'Em!!!

We are all African...

THE GENETIC PLAYBOOK

AT THE CENTER of our every cell lies the twisting ladder of the double helix. A mere four molecules—adenine, cytosine, guanine and thymine—pair off three billion times to make up our DNA, the instruction manual for our bodies. Twenty-five thousand sections of each DNA ladder are especially important. They are genes, and it is they that actually tell the body how to build itself.

In April 2003 an international consortium of scientists announced the completion of the Human Genome Project. After 13 years of work (and 200,000 years of modern man), the project had mapped the human genome; all 25,000 regions of DNA that contain genes had been identified. Now researchers knew where to begin looking for the biological foundations of many of our traits, from hair color to hereditary disease to athleticism.

But even if scientists know where the most important parts of the manual are located, they don't necessarily know how to read them. In fact, the precise functions of most genes, including many so-called sports-performance genes, remain mysterious, and thus talk of splicing DNA to create the perfect athlete is a bit premature.

Already, though, scientific research gives us a fuller picture of how we evolved into athletes, and it suggests that some things that appear to be largely genetic (such as East African dominance of distance running) might not be, and that other things that seem entirely voluntary (such as an athlete's will to train) might in fact have an important genetic component.

Scientific studies that associate particular genes with athleticism are published literally every month. These genes exist, in differing versions, in all of us, from All-Pro to average Joe. As the study of performance genes accelerates, more assumptions about sports and genetics will no doubt prove false, and new answers will reshape our view of why and how some people become NFL running backs or Olympic swimmers while others struggle to pass phys ed.

The findings are already raising ethical, social and even economic questions. Yet even as the research explains many of our athletic differences, it may reveal more important biological truths about us as a single humanity.

WE ARE BECAUSE WE RUN

IN OUR GENES we are all distance runners. Let's start at the cusp, just before humans became the earth's marathoners. Two-and-a-half-million years ago, our ancestors lived in the trees of the East African woodland, foraging for fruit and digging up tubers. They were wide-hipped, hunched and hairy, and the giants among them were all of five feet tall. But their world was changing dramatically. Their forest home had begun to give way to hot, dry savanna, with few trees and with grass short enough to give sight lines that stretched until the earth curved away. Our forebears saw for the first time the hordes of wildebeest and antelope that filled the plain.

Gradually these ancient, mostly vegetarian primates dropped from the trees and went looking for steak. Initially they might have used vultures as their guides, racing hyenas to scavenge the leftover brains and bone marrow of dead antelopes. For the first time in history a two-legged mammal had reason to run long. Those who could jog in the punishing equatorial heat could beat the hyenas to a carcass. They could survive another day, perhaps long enough to have children.

The major changes that took hold in the body over the next half-million years were examined in 2004 by biologists Dennis Bramble of the University of Utah and Daniel Lieberman of Harvard. Their conclusion contradicted the common assumption that human running was simply a by-product of walking. Nearly every one of the major anatomical changes en route to modern man, the professors argued, conspired to make him the hot-weather endurance running champion of the savanna.

There is, for instance, the rubbery neck ligament that acts like a shock absorber for the head during running; the glut of sweat glands to help keep the body cool while running; the lack of body fur for the same reason; shoulders that move, unlike in apes, independently from the neck so that the arms can swing while the head remains still; long legs and narrow waists; larger surface areas in hip, knee and ankle joints, again for improved shock absorption; short toes, which are better for pushing off than for grasping tree branches; an arched foot, which acts as a spring; and big butt muscles to keep us upright. "Have you ever looked at an ape? They have no buns," Bramble says. "We think running is one of the most transforming events in human history."

No longer content merely to scavenge, our ancestors, despite having no greater weapons than sticks and stones, became deadly hunters. They overwhelmed their perspirationally challenged quarry with a methodical chase that lasted until the beasts, unable to pant sufficiently while fleeing, simply gave up from heat exhaustion.

Descartes said we are because we think, but consider that we thought only after we ran. Even our large brains developed because we ran, growing only once our endurance enabled us to gorge on animal fat and protein. We are who we are—the only sweating, largely hairless bipedal mammals—because we ran. As Lieberman puts it, "Endurance running is hardwired into our anatomy and physiology."

For decades running was considered an unimportant part of human evolution because we humans are such pathetic wimps at sprinting. In his world-record 200-meter dash, Usain Bolt averaged a little more than 23 mph for nearly 20 seconds. That would make him an abject failure as a savanna hunter because an antelope can double that clip for minutes at a time. But with the help of our upright stance (which exposes less of our bodies to the sun) and our profuse sweating, we can outrun just about any other animal on the planet if the race extends over hours in searing midday heat.

Sound far-fetched? Consider that humans have beaten horses in the 22-mile Man Versus Horse Marathon in Wales, and humans routinely win the 50-mile Man Against Horse Race in Prescott, Ariz. And note that in Southern Africa a small number of San Bushmen, the world's oldest community of modern humans, still hunt by separating an antelope from its pack and chasing it for hours in 105° heat, until the animal simply stops running and waits to be killed. Or note that any Tom, Dick or Oprah can complete a marathon with proper training and sensible pacing.

Granted, most of us are a bit out of practice, but even you who walked the mile in high school gym class have the genetic stuff of an endurance hero. Lieberman suggests that our love of sports is partly an outgrowth of our running past. "Animals play at things that are important to them," he says, "and we play at running."

Yet there are massive differences in ability among individual humans even in running, a simple and global sport in which lack of access to equipment does not inhibit achievement. There is, for instance, an undeniable trend in elite running. The 18 fastest marathon times in history belong to East Africans—Ethiopians or Kenyans—and the top 10 sprinters ever in the 100 meters are men of West African descent. In short, they are all black.

ALL GENES ARE AFRICAN

WE ARE ALL black. Not in the sense that our skin is of a shade that protects against equatorial sunlight, but in the sense that Africa is contained in our every cell.

It starts with our brown-eyed, many-times-great-grandmother, the woman scientists call Mitochondrial Eve. Mitochondrial DNA is a genetic material that is inherited from one's mother, and as it happens, every one of us shares some of it with Mitochondrial Eve, a woman who lived in sub-Saharan Africa around 150,000 years ago, when the entire human population consisted of a few tens of thousands.

Since the mid-1990s scientists have been following the path of mankind's genes away from Mitochondrial Eve by collecting genetic data throughout Africa and beyond. Geneticists Kenneth Kidd of Yale and Sarah Tishkoff of Penn have been among the leaders in this endeavor. Some of their work supports the "recent African origin" model, which suggests that all modern humans can trace their ancestry to a single population in east-central Africa as recently as 100,000 years ago. Since humans branched off from our common ancestor with chimps about six million years ago, that means we're about a one-minute drill out of Africa.

What Kidd, Tishkoff and others have found is that genetic variability—differences in DNA among people—is greater among Africans within a single population than among people from different continents outside Africa. This is because all human genetic information was contained in Africa not so terribly long ago, and our ancestors who left Africa—most likely a single group of no more than a few hundred people—took only a small portion of it with them en route to populating the world. All of us outside Africa are genetic subsets of the subset that left Africa. So despite the fact that black Africans may share certain obvious features, such as dark skin, when it comes to an African's entire genome, there might be more difference between him and his next-door neighbor than between Dirk Nowitzki and Ichiro Suzuki. In fact, the farther a group of native people is from Africa, the less genetically diverse it tends to be. In some sections of DNA, Kidd says, there is more variation within a single African Pygmy population than in the entire rest of the world combined. "In that sense," Kidd says, "I like to say that all Europeans look alike."

This has tremendous implications. In some cases, for example, classifying people solely according to their dark skin will impart no genetically based knowledge about the group's members other than that they have dark skin. Take, for another example, sports. Kidd suggests that for any activity that has a genetic component, the world's most naturally gifted person is likely to be African (or recently removed from Africa, as are African-Americans and Afro-Caribbeans), as is the world's least naturally gifted individual. So both the fastest and slowest runners might well be of recent African descent.

That's not to say that scouts should be looking for the next MJ or Usain among African Pygmies. "There are some anatomical features that would intervene," says Kidd, referring to the Pygmies' short legs, but he adds that "you might find the most naturally gifted basketball players in some of those populations in Africa where height and coordination are on average very high, and where you have a lot of other genetic variation within that group."

Of course, the only real way to test this idea would be to know which genes influence athleticism, and then to look for them in the genomes of the world's best athletes.

Run for the African in you!!

Go Ge' em!!

Kara talks babies, running and life...

A Brief Chat With Kara Goucher

05/10/2010 11:49 PM

By Peter Gambaccini

Photos by Kara and Adam Goucher and Kara alone by Victah Sailer

Kara Goucher, the 2007 World Championships 10,000-meter bronze medalist and third-place finisher in the 2008 New York City Marathon (2:25:53) and 2009 Boston Marathon is (along with husband Adam Goucher) expecting her first child, a son; the due date is September 29. The pregnancy was a very well-kept secret until a "New York Times" article divulged it this past weekend. Goucher and world marathon record-holder Paula Radcliffe, with whom she trained for more than three months in Oregon, are actually due to give birth on the same day.

Goucher was second in the 10,000 and won the 5000 at the 2008 U.S. Olympic Trials in Eugene and was 10th in the 10,000 at the Beijing Olympics in a personal best 30:55.16 and ninth in a slow-paced 5000. Her 5000 best is 14:55.02. In 2009, Goucher won the NYRR Women’s Mile at the Millrose Games in New York (4:33.19) and the 3000 at the Reebok Boston Indoor Games in 8:46.65. In September 2007, Goucher won the Great North Run, a half-marathon from Newcastle to South Shields, England, defeating Paula Radcliffe in 1:06:57. The former Kara Grgas-Wheeler attended the University of Colorado and won the 3000 and 5000 at the 2000 NCAA Track & Field Championships outdoors and was the 2000 NCAA Cross Country champion. She and husband Adam Goucher, another Colorado alumnus, live in Portland, Oregon, and are coached by Alberto Salazar, the three-time New York City Marathon champion.

Congratulations. You learned of your pregnancy in January, which is happy personal news for you, but it also means there's a feasible timetable for you to get back in shape for the Trials (the U.S. Olympic Women's Marathon Trials on January 14, 2012 in Houston).
Kara Goucher: Yeah. That situation is different for me, obviously, because I've taken this year off. We had some problems getting pregnant but we found out in January, and for us, that felt like a relief because it was a few extra months (to come back after motherhood). I kind of have this dream that I'll be able to run Boston next year. It might be a little rushed. But it just is great. And I'll be able to do a full track season next year, and I will be ready for the Trials. I'll definitely be ready for the Trials.

Even while trying to get pregnant in 2009, had you been running a pretty full load of work in those months up to January?
KG: No. I backed off a lot during that time period. And I backed off a lot during the first eight weeks (of pregnancy). I mean, I was running every day, but I had backed off significantly. And once I found out I was pregnant, I didn't lift weights for about eight weeks or so. And once I got the okay that everything was progressing and I was kind of out of the woods of a miscarriage, then I kind of started to do more and more to where I am now, which is about 70 miles a week and lifting three days a week. But it's all relative.  I have great days and I have bad days. I just have to roll with it.

There are reasons why women don't want to reveal any news in the first trimester. But this, the prospect of your pregnancy, was an ongoing topic on message boards and such. People were thinking "well, it's getting to be April, it's getting to be May, if nothing's happening, maybe she should do a fall marathon." You managed to keep the world in the dark about all this.
KG: You know, that actually wasn't my intention. At 12 weeks, I was ready to tell the world, and at 12 weeks, I went in for a first trimester screening and I had positive screen for a baby with a chromosomal abnormality. So I wanted to know if my baby was going to be healthy or what I was going to be dealing with before I told the world. And I wasn't able to have an amniocentesis, basically, until 18 weeks. There was a long stretch there where I was dying to tell, and Paula (Radcliffe) was ready to tell, but I couldn't tell. I just needed to know what I was going to be dealing with before I shared it with the public. I was very open about wanting to have a baby so I wanted to very open with everybody once I was pregnant, but I just felt like if I do have a special needs baby, I need to know that and accept that and everything before I share it with the world. That's why it took me so long to tell.

Did that apparent chromosomal abnormality amount to anything?
KG: We tried to have an amnio at 15 weeks and we couldn't do one safely then and we tried again at 16 weeks and it still wasn't safe. So we had one at 18 weeks, and we found out within 24 hours that it was perfectly healthy. It was a roller coaster. My sister was also pregnant and she lost her baby at 14 weeks; she had the same due date as Paula and I. So it was a very big roller coaster of emotions and we're just so happy now to have good news and be able to just not worry about it anymore and enjoy it, 'cause for those six weeks, until I found out there wasn't a problem, were quite stressful, to be honest.

I'm sorry you had to go through that.
KG: It's okay, and everything happens for a reason. Now we're overjoyed. We really are.

It's always interesting when secrets can be kept. The baby bump must have been visible to people in the Oregon running community and writers for the 'Register-Guard' or the 'Oregonian' could have spilled the beans, but it seems everybody decided to respect your privacy.
KG: Everybody was really respectful. And I know a lot of people have known. I mean, it's obvious (laughs). I don't look like I normally look, and I have quite a bump.  I'd be doing track workouts and just dying, and people would cheer for me and say "why aren't you running faster," and then they'd realize "really?" But everyone was just really respectful about it. No one really asked me about it, so it worked out great. It isn't like I didn't want to share, 'cause I did. I wanted to tell everybody. But like I said, I just needed to know what we were dealing with before I told.

We had seen the blog you wrote about your friendship with Paula, who'd spent three months in Oregon, and how tearful you were to see her leave. But there was an unspoken element in that piece, which was that you were both expectant mothers. But her arrival in Oregon and the training you did together - did that start before either of you knew you were pregnant?
KG: She actually came out in early December and just sort of checked out the (Salazar) program. Alberto was encouraging her to come check it out and just see, because she'd had these little nagging injuries over the years

and maybe there's something missing from her preparation. She came out and worked out with us for a few days and we talked a lot then. She knew I was trying to get pregnant and was just a great person to talk to. Then she went to Ireland for the holidays but she came right back in the very beginning of January and she stayed for a little over three months at that point. That's kind of how it happened. She decided to come out and to learn our new program, our new weight and strength program, just see if she could get over some of these things that have cost her a chance to run at the World Championships, a chance to run at the Olympics, little nagging things that have been creeping up with her.

You and Paula have the same 'due date,' September 29. Did you actually find out on the same day?
KG: I found out earlier, because I actually went to the doctor and had a blood test, and she was doing an at-home kit, which takes a few days longer. But when she found out, she ended up going to see my doctor and they measured the baby and everything, and we have exactly the same date.

From the time you spent with Paula, from the point of view of an athlete and a runner, what did you learn from her?
KG: She just sort of demystifies everything because she's run so fast in every event from the 3K up - I mean, even the 1500 up through the marathon. You just think that there's some secret thing she's doing that you just don't know about. But after training with her for so long, she's good because she does the work, and she never skimps. She always does her second workout and she always does all her strength stuff and all the little extra stuff - the core stuff, little exercises she does. Over time, she told me a lot about her workouts. We did one long run where I just pestered her about what she did before she ran 2:15 (2:15:25, Radcliffe's marathon world record), and it was great. It made it seem like anything can happen. She really reiterated that with proper training and just no limits set on yourself, anything can happen. She got there just from working hard. There is no secret potion.

We first saw her in New York in 1995, when she came in for the Fifth Avenue Mile. She lost; she came in second. She wasn't going to let that stand. She came in the next year and won, and came back the year after that and own, and then moved on to the rest of her life.
KG: You know, she is one of the nicest people I've ever met in my life and she is gracious to everybody, all her competitors, but she is tough as nails. And she's as competitive as anybody. You cannot imagine how badly she wants to perform well. I think sometimes people get tricked because she's genuinely just that nice, but there's a fire in her to be the best at everything, and she's pretty awesome.

Well, this is something else that must mean a lot to you as a fellow marathoner. I know that in your first marathon, you obviously ran a lot with her (ultimately placing third in New York in 2008). But she's capable of putting the hammer down at right at the beginning and going all the way regardless of what anybody else decides to do. When you ask her about what other people might have been up to in the race, she pretty clearly indicates it's her race, she's capable of handling the entire pace and burden by herself, it doesn't matter what anyone else does.
KG: We talked about that quite a bit, because she knows that one of my goals is to run 2:18, and she said "you will not do it by sitting behind and running tactically. You have to be willing to just hear the gun go off and do the work." And she really reiterated that with me, that there will come a point where I just have to do it. And she's in control; when she races, everyone else is basing their plan and their strategy off of what she's doing. And she's not going to anything that isn't right for Paula. It doesn't matter who's in the race. And I think she's really great, because she knows herself so well.

In the ING New York City Marathon with Gete Wami in 2007, there were a couple of points where Paula feel behind late, and there were people in the press room saying 'oh, Wami's going to win it.' I was not one of these people. But when I asked her later if those moments concerned her, she quite flatly stated 'no, I know exactly what I was doing.' She might have been as many as 15 meters behind, and it looked a little scary, but she was confident.
KG: I remember. I was on the press truck, I was freaking out, because she had led the whole thing and I was like "great, now she's going to lose," and then the next thing I knew, she was pulling away from her (from Wami). Nevermind.

What was it like for you to watch the spring marathons without being able to participate?
KG: I'm just a fan of track and field in general, and marathoning, so I like to watch it, but it was the first time that I was like "I really miss it. I miss competing." In the fall (of 2009), with New York and everything, I was just so busy with trying to get pregnant, and my mind was really preoccupied. But especially watching Boston, I really wish I was there. I was a little envious.

You mentioned you're now doing 70 miles a week. From what we read, you're evaluating your situation with coaches and doctors, almost on a daily basis, how this can and should be adjusted and how much needs to be adjusted, right?
KG: Yeah, I talk to my doctor quite a bit. Yesterday, I did mile repeats in 4:55 on the Alter-G (treadmill). We're trying to move my harder workouts more to the Alter-G but we'll still trying to determine that that's going to be safe. It's just constantly calling experts. Between Alberto and my doctor, everyone's just talking. Alberto has so many resources. There's a lot of discussion constantly. You know, I will not do anything that's not safe. I would never do that.

Obviously, the reason for the Alter-G is that lower impact, if it can be achieved, is desirable.
KG: Yeah, and also, I am slowing down, and I can't run 4:55 miles anymore outside. It's a chance for me to keep some of that muscle memory alive. I took off 10 pounds yesterday (Sunday) and I was able to do 4:55. If I went outside, I don't know if I could run under 6:00 right now. It's another way for me, at least in my mind, to feel like I'm keeping that edge and think that I'll be able to come back quicker because the muscle memory will be there. Maybe that's not true, but I believe it's going to work (laughs).

Just so people understand, when you say 'take off 10 pounds,' it means the Alter-G is adjusted so that the impact is equivalent to a person who weighs 10 pounds less than what you weigh.
KG: Right. It's calibrated to what my weight is right now, and I can literally take off five pounds, 10 pounds, 15 pounds, two pounds, whatever it is that I want. And I've been running with 10 pounds off, and I'm able to do workouts I was able to do before.

As we said, this will be evaluated as you go along, but when it gets to be August, what do you think will be happening?
KG: I'll just have to see. I really imagined I would just train through the whole thing. But talking to Paula, in her third trimester (with her first child, daughter Isla), she really did back off quite a bit. But she still worked out

every day; maybe it was in the pool, or maybe it was on the bike. I'm hoping to go all the way and train through the entire pregnancy. But I've been surprised at how much slower I've gotten, even in the last two weeks, so I know I won't be able to keep up, maybe, the intensity that I have so far.

Long ago, I saw a woman who'd once came in second in the New York City Marathon out running when she was very pregnant with twins, and she was doing speedwork. I think she gave birth that week. That was certainly a new idea at the time.
KG: And it's all relative. I'm sure it was crazy to see her doing speedwork. But I'm sure to her, the speedwork was so slow. The other thing people need to understand is, like I said, I'm not out there doing mile repeats in 4:55. I'm out there doing easy runs and doing 200s in 37. It's all relative. Those are workouts I'd be ashamed to be caught doing normally.

You're going to making appearances at road races for a while, aren't you?
KG: Yeah, June is actually a pretty busy month for me because that's probably the last month that I'll feel comfortable to travel a lot. So I'll go to a couple of Rock 'n' Roll races. I'll go to Grandma's Marathon (in Duluth, where she grew up). And I'll be at the Mini in New York.

And the plan is to run the New York Mini (a 10K) with Paula at a reduced pace?
KG: Oh, definitely a reduced pace. It will not be fast. We'll just run together and enjoy it. Yeah, we definitely want to run it.

This will obviously have to be re-evaluated after the birth of your child, but we assume you've had conversations with Alberto about a spring 2011 marathon. Assuming all goes well, do you think from October 1 to April whatever, you could regain quite a bit of your fitness and speed?
KG: Just like you said, we'll have to see how it goes. It's a goal in pencil, it's not a goal in pen, to be ready to run Boston, honestly. We know it probably won't be my best marathon ever but we don't  think there's any reason why it couldn't be a really good solid one. Just with the placement of the Trials and everything, it really might be my only chance to run a marathon (before the Trials). But if I'm not ready, we'll not do it. But that seed's been implanted.

But it would appear likely you'll only do one marathon before the Olympic Trials.
KG: Yeah. I think that if I couldn't run a spring marathon, I most likely would not run a marathon before the Trials. I would just run a half. I don't really see myself running a World Championships marathon. I see myself running on the track (Goucher can qualify for the Marathon Trials with a half-marathon time).

What's up with your husband Adam's running? Has he had a little injury setback?
KG: He had a little setback, yeah. He was going great. He had had eight really great weeks at over 100 miles and started to feel a little soreness in his hip and it turned out to be a stress reaction in his hip. He had to take a couple of weeks off. He's just started train again and he's hoping that the training will come back really quickly. He was going to do the Healthy Kidney (10K in New York on May 15) but he's not going to do that right now. He would love to do some road races and especially a half-marathon or two this summer so we'll have to see how quickly he comes back.

Compliments of: www.runnersworld.com

Go Get'em!

Rubbin is Racin

Have you ever had chafing after a long run? I know I have. I am currently training for the Rock n Roll San Diego Half Marathon and I have experienced some really bad chafing on my long runs. I don't really notice too much until I get in the shower and feel that burn. Ouch! I have found that if you apply a small amount of Neosporin to the infected area, it will clear up in about a day.

Chafing is caused by repeated motion, specifically, skin rubbing against loose fabric or other skin. Chafing most often occurs around the bra line in women, nipples in men, inner thighs, and under the arms. Moisture, either from sweat or rain, can worsen chafing. If you are planning on doing a half marathon or marathon, this is something you are most likely going to experience. Harry Hogge said to Cole Trickle on Days of Thunder, "he didn't slam you, he didn't bump you, he didn't nudge you... he rubbed you. And rubbin, son, is racin'." Harry is right, your body is going to rub in these races and here is what you can do to prevent the chafing.

Before long runs (you don't have to worry too much about chafing during your shorter runs), spread a thin layer of Vaseline on vulnerable areas. 

--  Between your inner thighs, where your inner thighs rub together and rub on the hem of your shorts -- On the underside of your upper arms, where the inner part of the arm rubs against your shirt and the side of your upper rib cage -- Men should also apply a dab of Vaseline to each nipple.

To prevent chafing, wear running attire made of synthetic materials such as moisture wicking fabrics. Don't wear cotton clothing because once it gets wet, it stays wet. In addition, cotton is a rough material and when it's constantly moving against your skin, it can rub your skin raw. If you've ever seen a male runner with bloody nipples, he's most likely wearing a cotton shirt. I have never experienced this, but I have a good buddy in Seattle that has and now I know why. Stop wearing cotton shirts on your runs Will.

For women, make sure you're wearing a synthetic sports bra with smooth seams. Since chafing can be caused by loose running clothing, it's better to wear running clothes that are snug. Some runners prefer to wear spandex bike shorts to prevent chafing between their legs. Biking shorts sound awesome, but I think I will stick with Vaseline for now.

Take this seriously Racemates. I have read about people dropping out of races because of chafing. Let's go get em'!