Went for test run this morning and the knot (pressure point) in left calve started up again about 4km into run. Think it's the shoes that's causing my problems. Checked below both shoes and see the rubber is worn off both sides in the centre of the heel but the edges still has lots of tread. Think it's time for a new pair of shoes!
Thugwane wins Loskop MarathonThe Forever Resorts Loskop 50km ultra marathon run on Saturday belonged to 2005 record holder (record: 2:44:03) Josiah Thugwane (Nedbank AC) of Mpumalanga, finishing in a time of 2:47:53.
According to Thugwane, it was his experience that saved the day as he used his knowledge of the route and years of experience to take the lead at the 48km mark up Varaday's Hill, overtaking Zimbabwean, Gilbert Mutandiero, who held the lead from the start in Middelburg.
At one point Mutandiero had built a lead of over one minute at the half way stage. Murtandiero finished in a time of 2:48:46.
Nedbank's Mpho Mokgonami finished third in 2:53:27. Holding second place from the ten kilometre mark was Thugwane's training partner, Doctor Mtsweni, who finished fifth overall.
The women's race was equally exciting with 2008 winner Muchaneta Gwata (Mr Price) holding the lead to the 25km mark; with teammate Chiyedsa Chokore hot on her heels until she sped up to build a substantial lead. Chokore finished in a time of 3:30:09.
Second place went to Riana van Niekerk (Mr Price) in a time of 3:34:41. Third place went to Anita O'Brien (Alpha Centurion Runners) in 3:42:33.
Over 3 500 athletes lined up for the start of the Forever Resorts Loskop Marathon in Middelburg, Mpumalanga.
It was an equally exciting day for the half marathon that makes up the Forever Resorts Loskop Marathon Series - Forever Resorts Wild Challenge.
Mike Tebalo of Tuks Athletic Club broke the 2007 record in a time of 1:09:42. Wesley Ruto of Toyota finished one minute behind Tebalo in 1:10:48. Third position went to Lucky Mohale of Gauteng Striders in 1:11:13.
The Forever Resorts Wild Challenge ladies title went to Yaraidza Shindi of Mr Price in a time of 1:21:55.
Arsenal 1-2 Chelsea
Didier Drogba's 84th-minute winner put Chelsea in the FA Cup final and kept alive interim manager Guus Hiddink's hopes of an unlikely treble.Tuesday 21/04/2009
Stretching calves by leaning against wall seem to loosen knot (pressure point).
Who is Arthur Lydiard?
Lydiard - A definite hall of fame contender
Arthur Lydiard, who has died while in the midst of a gruelling lecture tour of the United States at the age of 87 (on Sat 11 Dec), was a supremely successful coach of distance runners, best known for guiding Peter Snell to three Olympic golds. But he was also the man who invented jogging, effectively the catalyst for the fitness boom of the last quarter-century.Yet Lydiard never really wanted to coach. “I had never set out to be a coach — I didn’t want to be one — but when these young guys began running with me and then winning New Zealand titles, suddenly I was one,” he recalled recently. “Maybe architecture would have given me more money, but would it have given me the same satisfaction?”
Controversial when his coaching ideas first became known, they quickly gained acceptance after New Zealanders Snell, at 800 metres, and Murray Halberg, at 5000m, both won golds at the 1960 Rome Olympics. Now, Lydiard’s training theory is conventional wisdom.
Although it began little more than half a century ago. Lydiard’s coaching career was worlds away from today’s professionalism: in 1960, it took an appeal in an Auckland newspaper to pay for Lydiard’s ticket to Rome for the Games. Once there, he found his own lodgings three miles from the athletes’ village, to which he ran or walked each day in the hope that officials might allow him in to supervise Halberg and Snell’s training. And in Snell’s Olympic final, the New Zealander ran in a pair of track shoes hand-made by his coach.
Lydiard claimed that the main requirement of a half-miler was endurance, and Snell proved it. In December 1961, Snell ran a marathon in 2:41. Then, barely a month later, Snell set three world records at 800m, 880yd and the mile.
New Zealanders Dick Tayler, Rod Dixon, Dick Quax and 1976 Olympic 1500m champion John Walker all followed Lydiard’s basic methods, as did Ron Clarke, of Australia, who broke 19 world records in the 1960s. In 1967, Lydiard was hired by the Finnish athletics federation and proceded to revive their proud distance running tradition, with the emergence of Pekka Vasala and Lasse Viren, who both won Olympic golds.
Lydiard’s methods have also influenced successive generations of British coaches and runners, from Dave Bedford and Steve Ovett, through to Paula Radcliffe and Kelly Holmes.
The title of the “man who invented jogging” has been mis-attributed before, but Lydiard espoused his methods for general fitness and well-being around 20 years before the likes of American Jim Fixx and others adapted them for the millions of recreational and fitness runners around the world as they prepared to run marathons in the boom of the 1970s. Lydiard even invented the word in establishing the Auckland Jogging Club.
According to Garth Gilmour’s recent book, Master Coach, Lydiard’s first joggers were a group of men who had had heart attacks but undertook gentle running to exercise, going counter to the medical approach of the time. “Lydiard came up with the idea of combining conditioning with the stimulus of companionship by slow steady cross-country running done in loosely organised groups or ‘jogging’ clubs,” the book recounts. “The active citizenry took to it in a big way. Whole communities, from toddlers to grandma, jog on weekends and holidays.”
Quax, the 1976 Olympic 5000m silver medallist, said of Lydiard, “He was a man many, many years ahead of his time.”
Lydiard’s own, relatively modest, athletics career presaged the marathon boom. A rugby forward, he only took up running for off-season fitness. He soon found the marathon, and while never world-class (his best time was 2:39:05), he won the Auckland Marathon six times between 1949 and 1955, but also took the New Zealand national title in 1953 and 1955. He represented his country at the distance at the 1950 Empire Games.
If it was not his racing achievements that drew more talented athletes to him for training, then it was Lydiard’s charisma and leadership. As Sir Murray Halberg wrote: “I quickly found Arthur the sort of man to be naturally followed and listened to. He was a leader. He talked like one and he acted like one. My first impression of him was of a guy who didn’t go halfway. You either did what he told you to do or you didn’t. There were no short-cuts and he had no intention of wasting his time or yours on doing anything but what he said.
Not that Lydiard claimed every success for himself. Of Viren, who uniquely won the 5000-10,000m Olympic double in 1972 and 1976, Lydiard wrote, “He still sends me a card every Christmas and gives me the credit for his great successes, but I never trained him. I coached his coach to do that.’
Arthur Lydiard, born Auckland, July 6, 1917; died Houston, Texas, December 11, 2004. He is survived by his wife Joelyne.
More on : A Sporting Icon: The Great Arthur Lydiard
After years of analysis he discovered when distance and speedwork were properly balanced his overall performance in both track and distance events improved. Thus was born a theory when fully fleshed out would eventually transform sport: "…that long, even-pace running at a strong speed produced increased strength and endurance – even when it is continued to the point of collapse – and was beneficial, not harmful, to regular competition."¹ Lydiard continued with his training, building success upon success, which reached its apex when he represented New Zealand in the 1950 Empire Games marathon.In 1955 Arthur Lydiard, the self-coached runner for fitness, finally turned professional and became a coach. Over the next three decades Lydiard would come to coach Olympic gold medalists and world record holders such as Peter Snell, Lasse Viren, and Murray Halberg as well as several other Olympic medalists and international marathon winners.
Africans reign supreme in BostonEthiopia's Deriba Merga won the Boston Marathon men's title on Monday and Salina Kosgei of Kenya won the closest-ever women's finish.
Merga, 28, finished in two hours, eight minutes and 42 seconds, comfortably beating Kenya's Daniel Rono and Ryan Hall of the United States by nearly a minute in the 113th edition of the world's oldest annually contested marathon.
The Ethiopian's victory broke a three-year winning streak for Kenyan Robert Cheruiyot, who faded from the leading pack before the top of Heartbreak Hill, the steepest climb on the course which starts just after 20 miles, and soon dropped out.
Merga broke from the pack with about three miles to go to cruise on his own through Boston's streets to victory.
"At 23 miles I decided that it was time to push," Merga told reporters after winning the $150 000 prize.
South African paralympian Ernst van Dyk won his eighth Boston Marathon in the wheelchair section in one hour 33 minutes 29 seconds, well clear of Japan's Masazumi Soejima who was almost two kilometres adrift and Spain's.
Van Dyk is a paralympic Gold medalist who owns the fastest marathon performance in history with his one hour 18 minutes and 27 seconds set on the Boston course in 2004, but the head wind in the Patriots' Day race kept him well off that pace this year.
The women's race ended in drama, with Kosgei winning by a mere second in a final three-way sprint with a time of 2:32:16.
She beat last year's winner, Ethiopian Dire Tune, who collapsed after crossing the line and was carried off on a stretcher for observation at a local hospital.
American Kara Goucher was third.
RESULTS
Men 1. Deriba Merga (Ethiopia) 2 hrs 8 mins 42 secs2. Daniel Rono (Kenya) 2:09:323. Ryan Hall (US) 2:09:404. Tekeste Kebede (Ethiopia) 2:09:495. Robert Kipkoech Cheruiyot (Kenya) 2:10:066. Gashaw Asfaw (Ethiopia) 2:10:447. Solomon Molla (Ethiopia) 2:12:028. Evans Kiprop Cheruiyot (Kenya) 2:12:459. Stephen Kiogora (Kenya) 2:13:0010. Timothy Cherigat (Kenya) 2:13:04
Women 1. Salina Kosgei (Kenya) 2 hrs 32 mins 16 secs2. Dire Tune (Ethiopia) 2:32:173. Kara Goucher (US) 2:32:254. Bezunesh Bekele (Ethiopia) 2:33:085. Helena Kirop (Kenya) 2:33:246. Lidiya Grigoryeva (Russia) 2:34:207. Atsede Habtamu (Ethiopia) 2:35:348. Colleen De Reuck (US) 2:35:379. Alice Timbilili (Kenya) 2:36:2510. Alina Ivanova (Russia) 2:36:50
SA athletes finish second in Dakar GP
Wouter le Roux and Samson Ngoepe finished second in their respective events at the IAAF Grand Prix Meeting in Dakar, Senegal, on Saturday.In a strong wind that prevailed throughout the meeting, Ngoepe had a great battle with Kenya's Geoffrey Kipkoech Rono in the 800 metres and only lost out in the final sprint for the line.
Ngoepe posted a time of 1:49, 80 behind Rono's winning time of 1:49, 72.
Le Roux came up against Saudi Arabia's Bandar Yahya Shraheli in the 400m hurdles and finished second in 51, 82, compared to Shraheli's winning time of 51, 53s.
Norman Dlomo crossed the line in fifth place at the annual Nagano Marathon in Japan this weekend in a time of 2:15:45.
The race was won by Kenya's Isaac Machiri in a time of 2:11:21.
Angela Wagner finished in fifth place in the 3 000m steeplechase at the 51st Mt SAC Relay meeting in Walnut, California, in a time of 10:06,28.
Friday 24/04/2009
Bumper field for this year’s Comrades
Organisers of the Comrades confirmed that this year’s race will be the biggest one in the past four years. The Comrades Marathon Association (CMA) said yesterday that close to 12 900 people have registered to participate in the event on May 24.
The CMA also announced that there has been a significant increase in the final number this year as from the previous four years. “We’re over the moon about the amount of registered runners this year,” said Craig Fry, media co-ordinator for the race. “For the past four years we’ve averaged at about 11 000 entrants … This year, we aimed for between 12 500 and 13 000, and we’ve done it!”
The CMA said that there was a 17% increase in entrants this year. It said this increase proves that events like the Comrades are in a healthy position. “Getting so many entrants this time around is an indication that people are interested in the race,” said Fry. He said this is especially true when one takes into account that 2 404 runners registered this year are first-time entrants.
“This is a huge amount when you look at the overall amount of entrants,” he said. “To have such a large amount of people being first-time runners is a clear indication that the race is growing in popularity.”
The CMA also indicated yesterday that of the 12 900 entrants in this year’s Comrades, 12 300 are South African runners. Of these, 2 120 are female and 10 180 male. There will be 460 male international runners at this year’s race, and 130 female international runners will participate.
Visited the comrades site and see that 20 of my club mates have entered. Do they mean the qualifying times were not submitted in time if they say DNQ next to runners name?
Onder dop uitgedraf - Leslie Daniels wys hoe die Comrades gedoen word!
Ethiopian Meseret Defar broke the women's world indoor 5 000 metres record on Wednesday when she clocked 14 minutes 24.37 seconds at the DN Galan meeting in Stockholm, Sweden. 
