“Epic” can be an overused word in sports writing, but it was exactly the right adjective for Desiree Linden’s win at the 122nd edition of the Boston Marathon last week. Start-line temperatures in the high 30s, gusting winds and heavy rain made for a race of attrition in which numerous elite athletes dropped out, unheralded and unknown runners placed in the top 10 and finishing times were the slowest in 40 years. Linden, 34, initially thought it wasn’t her day, but after helping fellow American and 2017 New York City Marathon champion Shalane Flanagan rejoin the pack after a bathroom break near the halfway point, she found another gear and fulfilled her long-sought ambition of winning a major marathon after many close calls and setbacks. Linden spoke with ESPN senior writer Bonnie D. Ford about her landmark achievement, the first by a U.S. woman in Boston since 1985.
ESPN: How did you feel the day after?
Desiree Linden: Surprisingly good. I just kept thinking that it was because we ran actually ran fairly slow, so if you didn’t totally crater — maybe that’s why I felt a little bit better. Although I think if it went poorly, it was the opposite end of the spectrum.
… When Mo Farah won the Mini London Marathon in the late 1990s, he dreamt one day of winning the main race over 26.2 miles. On Sunday he did not quite manage the feat, but he made serious strides toward achieving the goal one day by smashing Steve Jones’ long-time British record by almost a minute with 2:06:21 as he finished a fighting third.
Farah’s 2:08:21 marathon debut in London four years ago left many wondering if he was more suited to shorter distances on the track. But not only did he run two minutes quicker in the 2018 race but he ran with no fear as he boldly tagged on to the suicidal early pace (4:22 for the first mile, 13:48 for 5km and 28:19 at 10km – which is sub-two-hour pace – before slowing to a mere 61:00 at halfway) and he mixed it with Eliud Kipchoge, Kenenisa Bekele, Daniel Wanjiru and others.
“You be a man,” said Farah. “Fight like a man, or start off in the back and regret later on. I fought as much as I could. It was do or die.”
… At the American Pain Society’s annual meeting last month, a research team led by University of Washington pain psychologist Kevin Alschuler presented some preliminary results from a study of 204 participants in three of the events in the 4 Deserts Race Series, which takes place in the Sahara, Gobi, and Atacama deserts. Each event is a 155-mile multistage run; the researchers collected data on pain intensity and pain coping strategies for five consecutive days at each event.
Some fun details emerge from the data. On average, the participants reported spending about 30 percent of their racing time thinking about pain. (See? Endurance athletes are obsessed with pain!) Their average pain levels were about four on a scale of zero to ten, with highest pain level during the run averaging just over five.
But the most interesting data deals with the difference between “adaptive” and “maladaptive” pain coping strategies. Adaptive strategies are things like ignoring pain, deciding that you won’t let it bother you, or overriding it with the urge to keep going. Maladaptive strategies are things like catastrophizing (“I’m going to have to drop out!”), fear (“It’s going to keep getting worse!”), and despondence (“This is awful!”).
… My first lesson came from an unexpected place: a surgeon known for passionate focus and commitment to quality. During my surgery clerkship, I watched with awe as she meticulously repaired an abdominal birth defect in a tiny baby. Afterward, I heard her telling the surgical resident about her long-distance cycling during a recent vacation. With the slight hesitation of a medical student, I mentioned I’d recently registered for the upcoming NYC marathon. She turned to me, and with a twinkle in her eye revealed she had run the NYC marathon many times, and was again registered for the race.
“Got any advice?” I asked.
“You’ll learn to understand the way a human body works better than any physician could teach you,” she replied. “It’s similar to doing a critical care fellowship! As you train, the physiologic needs and metabolic demands of your body will become crystal clear — you’ll learn fundamentals of hydration, electrolyte balance, carbohydrate needs, and thermoregulation.”
In other words, take heed, respect the body, learn, and enjoy. Words of wisdom for both professional and personal wellbeing.
“The more endurance work you do, the longer you can last in the game. I would say gradually improve your endurance work by a few minutes at a time, so you get up to 30 minutes’ running twice a week. You don’t want to overdo it, though, because that would shock the body and leave you tired for the game.”
With triathlon racing season upon us in the Northern Hemisphere, most of you are probably well on your way to your first starting line of the year. You successfully made it through another off-season and your build phase is either in full-swing or possibly even completed. But now is the time when doubts start creeping into your head, likely because you are feeling fatigued after some of your recent, more difficult sessions. This period of fatigue is a normal and vital component to physiological change.
If you stayed on course during winter and early spring, even with some deviations, and completed at least 70 to 80 percent of your training plan (or of what you intended to do), I guarantee you that the form will find you in time for your race. This one magic day, seemingly same as any other, you will go out for your usual run and suddenly feel light and fit and strong. You will tear apart all your splits for the last three months and you will do it with a lower heart rate. Congratulations: You have just made a qualitative leap in your form.
The workouts should have been uneventful. But when two-time Olympian Desiree Linden ran repeats on a rural road in Charlevoix, Mich., they went slower than she expected. Linden returned to her home base in Rochester, Mich., huddled with coach Kevin Hanson, and trained with her teammates on familiar courses. To her surprise, she crushed workouts there.
Turns out, one of the most commonly used pieces of running technology, a GPS watch, had given Linden an inaccurate read on her fitness. In Charlevoix, she measured distances with her watch, but the satellite connection there was unreliable. She was catching a bad signal, though she didn’t know it at the time.
Every runner with a GPS watch can relate to what Linden went through a couple of years ago, the sense that you’re fitter than what your watch indicates, the quirks in technology messing with your mind on training runs, and even in races. And every runner can relate to the extra motivation and confidence that comes when the mile splits on your GPS watch are faster than you feel or you beat someone on a Strava segment.
Northwestern University, Farley Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation from
NUvention: Wearable Tech and Body-Interfaced Electronics (formerly Biomaterials) is a pilot class that will focus on how to leverage Lean Startup Principles in the biomaterials space. Students will form small teams around technologies being developed in the Center for Bio-Integrated Electronics at the Simpson Querrey Institute for Bionanotechnology, led by Professor John Rogers. These companies must manage high technical and market risks, deal with complex intellectual property and navigate the culturally diverse worlds of science and business.
America’s Cup-winning engineer Ian Burns says his goal is for the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) to be the world leader in sports technology after returning home to take up a leading role for Australian sport.
Mr Burns has commenced as AIS Deputy Director of Applied Technology and Innovation after nine America’s Cup campaigns and the past seven years as Director of Performance with Oracle Team USA.
Mr Burns believes developments in sports data, technology and innovation will be a major factor in Australia’s ongoing international performance over the next two decades.
“Australia and the AIS have built a great reputation in international sport, but development in technology and innovation has now reached a pivotal stage and will define how competitive we remain over the next 10 to 20 years,” he said.
EurekAlert! Science News, University of Waterloo from
The greasy food being served at hockey rinks isn’t really what young hockey players want, according to a study from the University of Waterloo.
The study of 25 travel team players aged 11-15 found they were more motivated by performance, recovery and marketing when making food choices – values that typically aren’t represented with the unhealthy food currently served at arenas.
“The perceptions these players place around the value of healthy food choices for performance and post-exercise recovery could be leveraged to influence change,” said Susan Caswell, a PhD candidate at Waterloo and author of the study. “This has implications for policies and processes relating to player training and food retail and media environments.”
The company, which has already started building out its artificial intelligence team, is working to train computers to review game footage and extract statistics, providing new insights for coaches and players and fun facts for broadcasters to relay to fans.
“There’s lots of video footage that exists globally of historic games,” Henderson said. “If we can get computers basically to watch the game and code the game, that enables us to aggregate data sources on a much grander scale than individual humans can.”
The Sports Innovation Lab works with companies who are on offense. They’re looking for an edge over the competition and they want to stay ahead of trends that are rapidly changing the sports industry.
To develop a culture of innovation (and stay on offense) many firms have hired a new kind of professional to lead: the Chief Innovation Officer.
While this concept may be new to the sports industry, other industries already have Chief Innovation Officers. We thought it would be helpful to explain what these people are hired to do. Below is how the Harvard Business Review describes the role. We’ve added the details that are relevant to sport in italics below each description.
This talk was presented during the National Academy of Sciences Arthur M. Sackler Colloquium Creativity and Collaboration: Revisiting Cybernetic Serendipity in Washington, D.C. March 13-14, 2018.
This talk was presented during the National Academy of Sciences Arthur M. Sackler Colloquium Creativity and Collaboration: Revisiting Cybernetic Serendipity in Washington, D.C. March 13-14, 2018.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the mantra of the current era. The phrase is intoned by technologists, academicians, journalists and venture capitalists alike. As with many phrases that cross over from technical academic fields into general circulation, there is significant misunderstanding accompanying the use of the phrase. But this is not the classical case of the public not understanding the scientists — here the scientists are often as befuddled as the public. The idea that our era is somehow seeing the emergence of an intelligence in silicon that rivals our own entertains all of us — enthralling us and frightening us in equal measure. And, unfortunately, it distracts us.
There is a different narrative that one can tell about the current era. Consider the following story, which involves humans, computers, data and life-or-death decisions, but where the focus is something other than intelligence-in-silicon fantasies.