You’ve probably been hearing more about them: occasional murmurs of very long distance races, men and women running six marathons across the Sahara, a 3,100 mile race in Queens, NY, in the middle of summer. Ultrarunning, or running more than a 26.2 mile marathon in a single shot, seems an unlikely pursuit — and it is.
During my senior year of college, I went on a health kick and decided I needed a blender. After a good deal of research, I settled on the Vitamix 5200.
Over the course of four days, I ate little else but fruit. Such is the life of a fruitarian.
Somewhere between short day hikes in Yellowstone and forays above the tree line to bag a couple of Colorado 14ers last year, you probably realized your trail runners or light hiking shoes just don’t cut it on off-trail, gnarly terrain. Technical approach shoes blend everything you like about your trail-running shoes — ankle support, beefy soles, light weight — with the sticky rubber and technical details of a climbing shoe or heavier boot.
The rotor wash from a Bell 212 helicopter is startlingly strong. Though I was getting used to the pick up and drop off routine — kneel, huddle together, cover your face — every time the helicopter landed I was nearly blown off my feet.
There are basically two schools of thought when assembling a kit for an ultramarathon: comprehensive preparation and more weight, or as minimalist as possible. For first-time ultra-distance runners, the decision can be a little confounding.
It was around around mile 23 of the Vermont 50 that I thought about the duck. I’d read in On Food and Cooking by Harold McGee that the common green-headed mallard stores as much as a third of its carcass weight in fat for fuel and insulation so it can fly continuously for hundreds of miles.
In 1997, Chris Lieto saw the Hawaii Ironman Triathlon World Championship on TV and decided to start training. Three years later, he became a professional triathlete.
At age 12, Anton Krupicka ran his first marathon. He’s been running ever since.
In the marathon origin story, Pheidippides runs from Marathon to Athens to deliver a message of victory and then promptly dies. We’ve come a long way since 490 BC, and today most people run marathons to compete, challenge themselves physically or raise money for charity — and they rarely kick the bucket at the end.
This summer, curious about the benefits of an 80% raw fruit diet, we joined a gathering of Fruitarians in upstate New York at the Woodstock Fruit Festival.
As the English proverb ran in the 16th century, “A man can not have his cake and eat his cake,” meaning that one cannot both possess cake and eat cake, simultaneously. The cake paradox may be a source of chagrin across the pond, but here in America we’re able purchase cake, eat cake, and often have abundant leftovers to tuck away in the freezer and unpack for a marathon of The West Wing.
While his contemporaries were putting on puppet shows and learning to play catch, Aaron Gwin was racing BMX in national competitions. He was eight.
Hey there. Yeah, you, riding along in your cool color-coordinated cycling team kit, all matchy-matchy.
If you’re riding a bike for exercise or hobby, chances are you’re clipping in and experiencing the pleasure of an efficient ride with optimal power transfer. Though we have three contact points with the bike — pedals, saddle, bars — the connection to the pedals via the shoes is the only one that’s mechanical, so it’s essential that the shoe fits properly.
Choosing a surfboard is no simple matter. There are lots of factors to consider, like the shape of the board, the size, rocker and rails, tails and fins.
Our roundup of the hardest open water swims mentioned that the 100-mile plus swim between Cuba and Florida is nearly impossible, the only successful attempt having been made by a swimmer inside a shark cage. About that.
For the last six months my dietary goal has been fairly simple: use more fat and less glycogen (stored carbs) for fuel during long rides. You’re probably wondering why I’d do that when I could just carbo-load the night before and suck down a few gels to get through the day.
For a long time our options for buying a bike were limited to what was at the local shop, which was a roll of the dice in terms of selection and service. But with e-commerce consumers have limitless information available at a mouse click.
When it comes to household names in cycling, there’s Lance Armstrong and…who else? We’ll make the case for Lennard Zinn, whose bike maintenance books — among them, the best-selling Zinn & The Art of Road Bike Maintenance — have prime real estate on the shelves of anyone who knows a bottom bracket from a Krispy Kreme.