Official Beermile.Com Rules

1. Each competitor drinks four cans of beer and runs four laps on a track (Start – beer/lap, beer/lap, beer/lap, beer/lap – finish).
2. Beer must be consumed before the lap is begun, within the transition area which is the 10 meter zone before the start/finish
line on a 400m track.
3. The race begins with the drinking of the first beer in the last meter of the transition zone to ensure the comptitors run a complete mile (1609 meters).
4. Women also drink four beers in four laps (past rule lists only required ladies to drink three beers).
5. Competitors must drink canned beer and the cans should not be less than 355ml (the standard can volume) or 12oz (the imperial equivalent). Bottles may be substituted for cans as long as they are at least 12 oz (341 ml) in volume.
6. No specialized cans or bottles may be used that give an advantage by allowing the beer to pour at a faster rate. ie “super mega
mouth cans” or “wide mouth bottles” are prohibited.
7. Beer cans must not be tampered with in any manner, ie. no shotgunning or puncturing of the can except for opening the can by the tab at the top. The same applies with bottles – no straws or other aids are allowed in order to aid in the speed of pouring.
8. Beer must be a minimum of 5% alcohol by volume. Hard ciders and lemonades will not suffice. The beer must be a fermented alcoholic beverage brewed from malt and flavored with hops. For an abbreviated list of valid beers and exceptions, click here.
9. Each beer can must not be opened until the competitor enters the transition zone on each lap.
10. Competitors who vomit before they finish the race must complete one penalty lap at the end of the race (immediately after the completion of their 4th lap). Note: Vomitting more than once during the race still requires only one penalty lap at the end.

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Watch out for GG in one of these

Race season is about to kick off for me.. .Yay!  The first race on deck is The Orginal St. Patricks Day 5k.  Short and sweet to get things started.  The best part about this race is that I have made a small wager with my friend Gareth on who is going to win between us.  What’s the wager you ask?  Well…. right now it stands that whoever loses has to wear one of those running skirts (or skorts) at the next race.  So keep an eye out for GG in a ‘skort’ sometime this year.

The Race after that is one of the new Smith Event Races.  The series is being put on by Tony Smith.  These are bound to be a lot of fun and the first one looks great so far.  Its XTERRA Winter Triathlon at Mt Norquay.  We Bike from the bottom of the paved Norquay Access Road to ski hill base village. 5.75 km. Vertical Rise 353m From there we transition to the Foot Race – Climb From Mt Norquay ski area base (via Shenanigan & Lone Pine) to top of North American Chair Lift. 1.00 km. Vertical Rise 400m. Then put on the ski boots (this might be the hardest part) and transition to Downhill Ski – Descend from top of North American Chair Lift (via the North American and Shenanigan ski runs) to finish line at ski area base. 1.5 km. Vertical Descent 400m. Whooot! sounds fun

The best part of the race is going to be the start.  ”09:45 Athletes ride bicycles down the access road to race start. 10:30 Sharp ! Race Start.”  From what I’m reading it sounds like a mass start bike up the hill….. All most Crit Style!  Ya…. cant wait.

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Calgary Police Half

Online registration for the Calgary Police Half Marathon and 5K run begins at 8am Calgary Time, Saturday, January 30, 2010. As a past participant, we are providing you with advance notice to ensure you do not miss the start of registration. As you know, in years gone by we have sold out very quickly.

We are continually striving to streamline our registration process. Please take advantage of the opportunity to purchase a souvenir sweatshirt.

Please visit our new web site at http://www.calgarypolicehalf.ca to get the latest information.

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Barefoot runners

All the latest footwear engineering in your running sneakers might not mean a thing when it comes to preventing injuries. The latest barefoot running study in the journal Nature deployed 3-D infrared tracking to gauge the difference in foot strike between shod and shoeless runners, Scientific American reports. Here’s a modern-day meme summation of the findings: “Shoes? You’re doing it wrong.”

Runners who wore sneakers ended up landing heel-first 75 to 80 percent of the time. By contrast, barefoot runners usually land toward the middle or front of the foot — a dramatic difference that recalls the more natural foot strike of early Homo sapiens. Needless to say, early humans certainly were not born to run wearing Nike or Reebok.

The heel-landing without shoes means a painful collision force of 1.5 to 3 times human body weight. But cushioned sneaker heels have allowed runners to change their stride to high-impact running, and likely open up a whole world of pain involving foot and leg injuries.

“Most people today think barefoot running is dangerous and hurts,” said Daniel Lieberman, a professor of human evolutionary biology at Harvard University and lead author on the study. “But actually you can run barefoot on the world’s hardest surfaces without the slightest discomfort and pain.”

Lieberman and his colleagues point out that modern running shoes did not come about until the 1970s — a fairly late invention that latched onto that then-new fad known as jogging (or “yogging” as Ron Burgundy says). Now contrast several decades of sneakers with a human body that evolved barefoot running over thousands of years, and you begin to see a potential problem.

More bad news for sneakers came last December, when the American Academy of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation found that running shoes can increase joint torques at the hip, knee and ankle. Their study suggested that even going for a run in high heels was better for preventing joint injuries than tennis shoes.

Runners who fear years of soft treatment giving way to foot calluses still have options. Certain footwear such as the Newton Running shoes or the Vibram Five Fingers permit runners to readjust their foot strike back to the more natural way, or simply act as a second tough skin to protect the foot in the latter case.

One more unstated benefit of running without sneakers — you’ll never, ever have the temptation of wanting to remove your toenails.

[via Scientific American]

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—UPDATE—

Race will be held at the Glenmore Athletic Track – Map Here

Sign on will occur at 6:45 pm.

• Virgins: 7:15 pm
• Open Female and Master Female: 7:35
• Open Male and Master Male: 8:00 pm

Updated Beer Mile Poster

For those of you who dont know what a beer mile is you can check out beermile.com for all the info.  Its a blast so tell your friends and make this your ‘A’ race.

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Track work

I looked it up and essential all I had done was irritated my airway by to breathing dry air (or just drying out you airways due to the heavy breathing that comes with endurance sports.) There is no virus or bacterium involved. It’s more like a burn than an infection. The healing process takes a few days to a few weeks and it never returned unless the air is especially cold or dry or you take a few weeks off. The area that is irritated is farther down your pipes than the area that a throat lozenge can reach, so they won’t help much. Other than time, regular attendance to suffer festivals, and moist air, I don’t know of anything that will bring a cure.

Now I have a whole new excuse to use.

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Skinny, Ripped, and Tan Lines

OH actually i do have something small to write about. I have started running a bit more lately and if feels good to get back into the grove of things. I recently met up with Aaron Webb (ex pro triathlete) for a few workouts. If i have someone to train with i am a happy man… i have problems getting out on my own for some reason. Anyways, Aaron is trying to get back into the swing of things too so hopefully i wont have to do as many solo run/rides.

There is also tentatively a Wednesday night jam ride starting up here this week. I am hoping its similar to the Calgary hammer fests. I think those workouts, along with crits, really whip me into shap fast. they hurt like hell but are they get the blood pumping.

On the racing front there is the Tour De Orchards race coming up on May 9th and 10th.  Check out the event details on their web site http://www.breakawaycycling.ca/ Lets hope i dont get dropped this time.

News with the Pros – German riders Andreas Kloeden and Matthias Kessler have been liked to illegal blood
transfusions.. bla… read more about that HERE

Halifax Port At Night

And a couple of nights ago I took my moutain bike down to the port/rail yard to snap a few pictures.  Some of them turned out really well i think.  Check them out on m Picasa page here http://picasaweb.google.com/carsonbannon/HalfaxPort# There are a lot of doubles because i was shooting in both RAW format and JPG.

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The one outstanding characteristic of very successful competitors in all almost all endurance sports is a low body fat content. The body fat stores account for about 15-18% of total body weight in normal young men, and in young women the figure is about 25-30%. ‘Normal’, of course, is changing along with the size of the Mexi Fries at Toco Bell, and those ranges should be qualified as being normal for healthy people. Most of this fat is not necessary for energy supply and is simply extra weight that has to be carried throughout the race.

Fat Guy Heading Up A Climb

Our fat stores are important and the fat cells play many key roles. As well as acting as a reserve of energy that can be called upon at times of need, fat is important in the structure of tissues, in hormone metabolism, and in providing a cushion that protects other tissues.

An excess of body fat, however, serves no useful function for the endurance athlete. It can help the sumo wrestlers, and perhaps may not even be a disadvantage for the shot putter, but not the cyclist or runner. Extra fat adds to the weight that has to be carried, and thus increases the energy cost of running. Even in an event as long as the marathon, the total amount of fat that is needed for energy supply does not exceed about 200g for the average runner.

The article that I read makes reference to A very lean male 60kg runner with 5% body fat, it says that he will generally have 3kg of fat; a typical elite 55kg female runner with 15% body fat will have more than 8kg of body fat. Non-elite runners will commonly have at least twice this amount, and many runners further down the field will be carrying 20kg or more of fat.

It is probably not sensible for men to let their body fat levels go below about 5% and for women below about 10-15%. There’s good evidence that the immune system is impaired when body fat stores are too low, check out the previous post about body fat.

Fat typically contributes about half of the total energy cost of a long bike (this is very approximate, and will depend on speed, fitness, diet and other factors). At low speeds in ideal conditions, the total energy demand is low and most of the energy supply is met by oxidation of fat, with only a small contribution from carbohydrate in the form of muscle glycogen and blood glucose (which is continuously being replaced by glucose released from the liver). So for anyone who is looking to lose weight this would be the place to start… go slow!

Greg's Twig Legs

As speed increases, the energy cost increases more or less in a straight line, but the relative contribution from fat begins to decrease, with muscle glycogen becoming the most important fuel. The problem with cycling or running slowly to reduce body fat levels is that it takes a long time, because the rate of energy expenditure is too low. Run too fast, and you burn only carbohydrate, leaving the fat stores more or less untouched.

Body fat and performance

In a study of a group of runners with very different levels of training status and athletic ability, scientists observed a significant relationship between body fat levels and the best time that these runners could achieve over a distance of 2 miles. Although these results indicated that leaner individuals seem to perform better in races at this distance, some complicating factors have to be taken into account.

The relationship between body fat and race time may at least in part be explained by an association between the amount of training carried out and the body composition. It would hardly be surprising if those who trained hardest ran fastest, and it would also not surprise most runners to learn that those who train hardest also have the lowest fat levels. Indeed, body fat content does tend to decrease as the volume of training increases.

The runners covering the greatest distance in training had the lowest body fat levels. They also ate more food than those who did less running. There are, of course, some people who do not fit the line as well as others, but there are many factors that explain this variability. We would expect the people who eat more to be fatter, but no! The subjects who did most running had the lowest levels of body fat, even though they did eat more. Thus, we can separate food intake from body fatness if we add exercise to the equation.

Fat levels in elite athletes

Skin fold thickness estimates of body composition in 114 male runners at the 1968 US Olympic Trial race gave an average fat content of 7.5% of body weight. Since then, similar measurements have been made on various groups of runners, and the findings are fairly consistent.

Catherine At The Beer Mile

The low body fat content of female distance runners is particularly striking; values of less than 10-15% are commonly reported among elite performers, but are seldom seen in healthy women outside sport. The occasional exceptions to the generalisation that a low body fat content is a pre-requisite for success are most likely to occur in women’s ultra-distance running, and some recent world record holders at ultra-distances have been reported to have a high (in excess of 30%) body fat content. However, this probably reflects the under-developed state of women’s long distance running; as more women take part, the level of performance can be expected to rise rapidly, and the elite performers are likely to conform to the model of their male counterparts and of successful women competitors at shorter distances.

Although there’s an intimate link between body fat levels and running performance, it’s important to remember that reducing fat levels will not automatically guarantee success and may even be counter-productive. If you reduce fat by a combination of training and restricting diet, you are walking a fine tightrope. While a reduction in body fat may well boost running performance, cut down food intake too drastically and not only will training quality suffer, but the risk of illness and injury also increases dramatically.

The majority of this information comse from pponline.co.uk – a great resrouce

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Bonk

I remember FW asking if I wanted to stop into his place for a coke or some sugar cubes.  I only lived about a 3min ride from his place and was seriously thinking that without the sugar I might not make it… but i did… thank god. 

So this ride might be something similar.  To make matters worse i am heading out with a bunch of guys i have never met, and from what i hear they have been doing a lot of riding over the winter.  I, on the hand think my trainer is sitting in the back of MN car still (along with my 3 pairs of stolen sunglasses).

Check out he loop I plan on doing HERE. Lets hope I make it home alive.

Oh and just the other day I got my new DS-Trainers from the states.  They fit like gloves (or shoes… um ya).  KV is going to be eating my dust at the Blue Nose 10k this year.  Let the fit Carson be reborn!!!! Unlike RB talk of “a new leave” i am going to be on time with this shiznit.

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