The reasons for this dramatic improvement are not hard to deduce. There is far more money in big-city marathons than there was back in the ’80s and ’90s. As a result, more runners from East Africa — the world’s breadbasket of distance runners — have been encouraged to take up the sport, and more of those runners have been turning to the marathon than ever before. In 2008, Dennis Kimetto was a Kenyan cattle farmer who casually ran around four miles a day. Had he born 15 years earlier, Kimetto may have lived his entire life as a cattle farmer; instead, he was discovered by fellow marathoner Geoffrey Mutai, who invited Kimetto to join his training group. Within six years, Kimetto had broken the world record.
With marathon riches as an incentive, more and more of the hidden East African talent has been found. And for the last 15 years, the marathon world record has been the exclusive domain of the East Africans — the last six record holders have all been from either Ethiopia or Kenya, and that trend seems likely to continue: the fastest anyone from outside of those two countries has ever run on a record-eligible course is 2:05:27.
The result of this influx of East African talent to the marathon is that the men’s marathon world record has been broken with regularity, six times since 2007, while the men’s distance world records on the track have ossified — no one has broken a WR in the men’s 1500, 3k, 5k, 10k, or 3k steeple since 2005.
But even in the context of that improvement, Kipchoge’s 2:01:39 makes no sense.
… When Brett Maher, the Cowboys’ new kicker, came onto the field for a 37-yard field goal attempt in the middle of the first quarter, Gillham sat up a little straighter. When Maher’s kick split the uprights, he was like millions of other Cowboys fans.
“I’m human, so of course I’m happy, but I don’t want to say it was ‘relief,’ because that implies there was some doubt,” Gillham said. “Outside of the fact that every kicker is human and therefore will miss at some point, there was no doubt.”
For the past 20 months, Gillham has served as a sports-performance consultant for Maher. He is not a kicking guru. He is not a clinical sports psychologist, either. To Maher, he is critical to his success in making the Cowboys’ roster.
The meditation sessions lasted 20 to 30 minutes most mornings during the offseason. Just a small slice of his day. But for Broncos receiver Emmanuel Sanders, they were long enough to reflect on the previous day and reset his mind for the hours ahead.
There was plenty to forget and plenty to think ahead about.
An acknowledgement of how discouraging his 2017 season was because of injury and a quarterback carousel, and acutely aware of how a player’s production can decline when they reach his age (31), Sanders rededicated himself this offseason. He stayed in the Denver area instead of returning home to Houston during the six-week summer break and was connected with Resilience Code, a fitness-and-medical facility in Englewood that helped him zero in on his routines.
For the first time since February, Kristaps Porzingis is back in a Knicks uniform. But it may still be a while before he sees game action.
Nearly eight months after tearing the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee, Porzingis had a starring role Monday at media day, each N.B.A. team’s annual festival of unbridled optimism before the start of training camp.
Porzingis, now in his fourth season in New York, said he was excited — about his strides in rehabilitation from surgery.
Despite stepping down as the Nuggets’ strength and conditioning coach, legendary trainer Steve Hess has left indelible fingerprints on a young Denver team.
It seems like every few months there’s a new cellphone, laptop or tablet that is so exciting people line up around the block to get their hands on it. While the perpetual introduction of new, slightly more advanced electronics has made businesses like Apple hugely successful, the short shelf life of these electronics is bad for the environment.
Modern electronics are filled with circuit boards on which various metals and plastics are soldered together. Some of these materials are toxic – or break down into toxic substances. There are efforts underway to boost recycling of e-waste, recovering materials that can be reused and properly disposing of the rest. But most devices end up added to the growing piles of e-waste in landfills.
Instead of adding more trash to these ever-growing piles, there is an opportunity to create electronics that are biodegradable. That’s why other researchers and I are looking to the emerging field of paper-based electronics – known as “papertronics.” They’re flexible – even foldable – sustainable, friendly to the environment and low-cost.
Last season, Washington Capitals center Evgeny Kuznetsov was walking around Capital One Arena when he noticed the door to the visitors’ locker room was not only left ajar, but unattended. Curious, Kuznetsov poked his head inside. He noticed a fridge in the corner that was stocked with bottles of something he had never seen before.
“It is bad,” he admits, then flashes a sinister smile. “But I took one.” As Kuznetsov slipped out of forbidden territory onto safe ground, he opened up his stolen treasure and took a sip. “It was delicious,” he said. “I wanted to know what it was.”
It was a bottle of coconut water — but not with the chalky, milky consistency that tends to turn off first-time sippers. This kind was tinted with flavor (Kuznetsov believes it was orange) and tasted like a sweet juice. He went online to learn more and found out he could try passion fruit, pineapple or lemon. He ordered a case and had it sent to his house in Virginia. When he ran out, he had another sent. And then another.
“There are so many flavors, and it just tastes good,” Kuznetsov says. “So I drink it instead of … I don’t know, beer.”
Many parents of teenagers struggle with how to instill better eating habits in their children and often assume it is simply too late to change their teen’s behavior before they leave the nest for college. However, Sally Squires, who writes the Lean Plate Club™ blog, says research shows that may not be the case.
Squires said much of the work on fighting childhood obesity has focused on younger age groups because they have more time to develop healthy exercise and eating habits. Teens, on the other hand, are often thought to be more set in their ways and slower to take cues from authority figures. But the answer to that problem may be closer at hand than people think: team sports.
According to Squires, there is new research that suggests the teenage years provide a great opportunity to instill healthy habits that can serve adolescents well for the rest of their lives. At a recent annual meeting of the Society for Nutrition and Education and Behavior, a team of scientists from Oregon State University presented results from a two-year obesity prevention study involving nearly 400 high school soccer players. The study showed signs that teenagers are more open to the idea of healthy life habits than people typically assume, and some teens may already have a first-hand look at the importance of healthy eating and fitness.
You’ve probably seen countless pills, potions, and headlines promising to help you unlock, unleash, or otherwise master your metabolism, as though it were some magical, flab-frying gremlin you can order to toss more fat cells into the fire. But it’s not quite like that. Your metabolism isn’t even a “thing;” it’s a process. Let’s break it down.
What is Your Metabolism?
“Metabolism” is an umbrella term for a host of chemical reactions going on inside you every moment of every day. It’s what changes the food you eat and the fuel stores you have into usable energy. It’s what breaks down and rebuilds muscle tissue after a hard run. It’s what keeps you living, breathing, and thinking.
The human gut is lined with more than 100 million nerve cells—it’s practically a brain unto itself. And indeed, the gut actually talks to the brain, releasing hormones into the bloodstream that, over the course of about 10 minutes, tell us how hungry it is, or that we shouldn’t have eaten an entire pizza. But a new study reveals the gut has a much more direct connection to the brain through a neural circuit that allows it to transmit signals in mere seconds. The findings could lead to new treatments for obesity, eating disorders, and even depression and autism—all of which have been linked to a malfunctioning gut.
The study reveals “a new set of pathways that use gut cells to rapidly communicate with … the brain stem,” says Daniel Drucker, a clinician-scientist who studies gut disorders at the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute in Toronto, Canada, who was not involved with the work. Although many questions remain before the clinical implications become clear, he says, “This is a cool new piece of the puzzle.”
All of the England’s top clubs are returning to Premier League action this weekend after getting their European campaigns underway in midweek. But after a couple of upsets on Europe’s highest stage, it still begs the age old question – can English clubs do well in Europe and perform in the league as well?
European nights are something that for every football fan relishes, and for many playing in Europe isn’t just a statement of intent, but a sign of progress that comes with serious financial advantages. For a mid-table team of the likes of Burnley last season, to the “Big Six” vying for the top four Champions League spots, playing in Europe has become more important than ever for Premier League clubs looking to make their mark.
But it really is a double edged sword, as Burnley have already found out to the detriment of their league form this season. Their qualification to the Europa League sparked huge joy amongst their fans after finishing an impressive seventh last season. Ultimately they went on to crash out in the qualifying stages to Olympiakos and now sit firmly at the bottom of the league table.
A new NCAA policy that makes it easier to redshirt football players comes with an unintended consequence: Players can now choose to save their eligibility by leaving teams after participating in four games, with plans to transfer and use the saved year at a new school.
Several upperclassmen who would have been out of eligibility had they kept playing this season have already taken this route, including Oklahoma State receiver Jalen McCleskey, a senior with 167 career catches.
… [Matt] Painter’s biggest angst back in 2015 was that he thought the Boilermakers’ culture had taken a turn for the worse. It wasn’t so much that Purdue didn’t have the right players, it was that the didn’t have the right people, or at the very least, didn’t know how to coach them correctly. Enter Chad Brown, a friend of a friend and a former college football coach, who developed a personality testing system for college programs. The system, modeled after the DiSC Assessment test, details a player’s personality traits, what his motivators are, and what his most important values are.