It was, without question, the hardest thing he had ever done.
When Eliud Kipchoge clocked 2:00:25 for the marathon in early May at a Formula One Track in Monza, Italy, it sent shockwaves through the world of distance running. Nike, the orchestrators of the Breaking2 project, had referred to it as a moonshot, and for Kipchoge the fall back to earth took a heavy toll.
“I proved to myself and the world that any human can go beyond any limitation when you really concentrate and love the sport,” he said this week during a phone interview with Runner’s World from his training base in Kenya. “But it was really difficult—mentally and physically.”
For the past two and a half years, at least before hockey tugged him back into its irresistible orbit, Ryan Malone had entered what he calls “full dad mode.” This meant facing knee hockey shots from his two sons in goalie gear. Camping, school activities, flooding the backyard rink each winter. The retired veteran of 647 NHL games stayed in decent shape, mostly for keeping up with the kiddos, but also to stave off soreness after walking 18 holes. He remembers loving the smiles that Will, 9, and Cooper, 7, each had upon skating for the first time during mini-mites. He looked forward to helping coach both during the approaching season.
Last month, seeking ways to stay busy and stick around the game, Malone called Jim Johannson, the USA Hockey executive and national team general manager for the 2018 Winter Olympics. At first, Malone asked about doing some part-time scouting in the Twin Cities area, where he currently lives. Two days passed. Then Johannson’s phone rang again. “Actually,” Malone told him, “I’m going to put the pads on and try to play.”
By a certain point, what with all the milestones and landmarks celebrated at the 2017 U.S. Open, it seemed fair to wonder: Can a sport overdose on significance? Because if you weren’t hearing about the 60th anniversary of Althea Gibson’s first U.S. title, you were hearing a speech about the 50th anniversary of Billie Jean King’s. Or reliving, with the coming release of a new movie, King’s barrier-busting victory over Bobby Riggs in the “Battle of the Sexes” in 1973. Or marking, with four U.S. women in the semifinals, the seeming revival of American might.
That, of course, was underpinned by the historic fact that three of those women are African-American, which led to the first major final ever contested by two black players not named Williams. With the crowning of Sloane Stephens, 24, as U.S. Open champion, the generation inspired by Venus and Serena had, at last, arrived.
“Tennis has gotten out of the country clubs,” says Chris Evert. “The barriers have really been torn down. It’s not a snobby, white, rich sport anymore.”
Forget the Golden State Warriors and Real Madrid. The best team in the sports world is cycling’s Team Sky. Atlanta general manager Thomas Dimitroff has studied their methods over the past two summers, and so far, it’s working.
… Speaking on Monday Night Football, Allardyce said: “My first aim was to get to the tournament but once there my first question would have been about how we cope with the deficiencies in the team on the mental side of things.
“For me, the ability to cope with the pressure of being at a major tournament was all in the mind – that was the key element for me.
… Some scientists now think that maybe they have just been looking too closely. When it comes to the science of learning, zeroing in on synapse action risks missing the forest for the trees.
A new, zoomed-out approach attempts to make sense of large-scale brain changes that underlie learning. By studying the shifting interactions between many different brain areas over time, scientists are beginning to grasp how the brain takes in new information — and holds onto it.
Such studies rely on powerful math. Brain scientists are turning to approaches developed in other network-based sciences. They also are borrowing tools that reveal in precise, numerical terms the shape and function of the brain-signaling pathways that shift as people learn.
… to really get his team to improve, [Bob] Rickman needs them to watch everything, not just the good stuff. He creates playlists, adds comments and drawings, then shares the videos with players to help them see where they can improve.
“That’s when I would break out some clips and email a player and say, ‘Look at these shots you had last game,’” Rickman said. “Or, ‘Look at these series here. What are we doing right and what are we doing wrong?’ That’s a good way to get them to focus in on the particular areas you want them to.”
We used a novel approach to examine whether it is possible to improve the perceptual–cognitive skill of pattern recognition using a video-based training intervention. Moreover, we investigated whether any improvements in pattern recognition transfer to an improved ability to make anticipation judgments. Finally, we compared the relative effectiveness of verbal and visual guidance interventions compared to a group that merely viewed the same sequences without any intervention and a control group that only completed pre- and post-tests. We found a significant effect for time of testing. Participants were more sensitive in their ability to perceive patterns and distinguish between novel and familiar sequences at post- compared to pre-test. However, this improvement was not influenced by the nature of the intervention, despite some trends in the data. An analysis of anticipation accuracy showed no change from pre- to post-test following the pattern recognition training intervention, suggesting that the link between pattern perception and anticipation may not be strong. We present a series of recommendations for scientists and practitioners when employing training methods to improve pattern recognition and anticipation. [full text]
… They’ve gone with a dual core processor that increases performance by 70%. Additionally, they’ve added in WiFi on a new combined WiFi/Bluetooth chipset they’re calling the W2. They say this is making WiFi 85 percent faster and WiFi/Bluetooth 50 percent more power efficient.
Further, the Series 3 unit now has a barometric altimeter in it. This is being used for things like stair flight tracking, as well as down the road with apps for skiing and snowboarding.
But of course – the main event here is the cellular capabilities. Rather than putting in a physical sim card, which would take up too much space, they went with an electronic SIM (eSIM), which is a SIM card without the physical card part. Meanwhile, the antenna for the watch is the front of the display.
Circuit prototyping traditionally requires tedious layouts using CAD tools, transfer of those plans to a printed-circuit board maker, precise placement of components on the pc board using pick-and-place robots, and then a wave soldering step to establish electrical contact between the components and the board. Prototyping engineers wait weeks before they can test the circuit board, find its flaws, and repeat the process until they get it right.
The Charles Stark Draper Laboratory Inc. (Cambridge, Mass.) has reported on an approach for 3-D printing of circuits that it says can slash the wait time from weeks to days. The components are glued down to a substrate with no traces and then are interconnected in real time with conductive ink in the 3-D printer.
While runners at the Bank of America Chicago Marathon on Oct. 8 worry about their pre-race rituals and mile times, Dr. George Chiampas will be focused on making sure all 40,000 competitors go home healthy. As the race’s medical director, Chiampas, 46, leads a team of 1,500 medical professionals and volunteers that spring into action to help sick and hurting competitors during the Chicago Marathon. From minor muscle strains to serious heat-related illnesses, they are prepared to deal with it all. At the 2016 marathon, Chiampas and his crew treated an estimated 2,000 runners. A Chicago native, Chiampas first got involved with the race as a volunteer when he was in medical school. He continued to volunteer when he was emergency medicine resident before becoming the race’s medical director in 2007. Competitor caught up with the busy physician to chat about marathoner maladies, his toughest year as director and his advice to runners on race day.
… While soda may have had its reckoning, what didn’t change until lately was the size or sugar content of another popular beverage—so-called sports drinks. Typically sold in 20-ounce bottles, this class of liquid famously led by Gatorade and Powerade (owned by Pepsi and Coke, respectively) often has about 130 calories and 35 grams of sugar—just shy on both counts of a can of Coke.
Here, too, the big names have begun to pivot, but they remain far behind the curve—America’s lucrative fitness craze has already moved on when it comes to sports drinks. Beyond just being healthier with less sugar, there’s a whole new generation of high-tech, all-natural libations looking to hydrate gym minions. Their aim? Blowing soda, sugary sports drinks—and plain old H2O—entirely out of the water.
But first, these upstarts need to figure out how best to do that.
For the documentary Icarus — which won the first-ever Orwell Award at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival in January, and was released on Netflix on August 4 — lifelong cyclist Bryan Fogel set out to experience the effects of performance-enhancing drugs, and to expose how easy it is to outsmart anti-doping tests.
With the help of Russian scientist Grigory Rodchenkov, director of the WADA-accredited laboratory in Moscow, Fogel used EPO, testosterone, and Human Growth Hormone as he trained for the 2015 Haute Route. Along the way, however, he inadvertently became entrenched in Rodchenkov’s clandestine world, which led back to state-sponsored doping of athletes for the 2014 Sochi Olympic Games.
… “When Bez, myself, Bill came in, it’s talking about succession planning and looking at our roster and how it will transition year-to-year over three years, or over five years, and trying to be a team that can sustain success for more than one to two years, but to try to stay on the top as long as we can,” Vanney said. “Some of that comes from development within, in the academies and the young players you have in the draft, and some of it is obviously through scouting and trying to find the right guys. Ultimately, I think we’ve done a good job on all of those which has led us to having good depth in our team.”
The team also needed time to instill its identity. That involved tactical tweaks – a move to the 3-5-2 last year for the playoffs has turned into a full-time formation – and highs and lows within a season that create the makeup of a team.
