Athlo Blog

This is the first post of a new monthly series dedicated to reviewing athletic equipment. Some upcoming reviews are hockey sticks by John and the best chairs for endurance computer coding by Mark. We will also be starting a monthly race review so there should be something everyone will find interesting and helpful. This month I am focusing on running shoes.

The running shoes I have worn for the past two years are the Adidas Supernova Control 10. They retail online for about $70.  I bought the two pairs shown here at Sports Basement Presidio in San Francisco.

Overall, these shoes have been great and I will continue to buy Adidas running shoes.  My biggest compliment is the amount of cushioning provided while remaining fairly light.   I would highly recommend them to anyone training for a marathon.  For me, they took absolutely no time to break in. I ran 26 miles in the orange pair the first time I wore them and only came away with one small blister on the top of each little toe.  

I do have one complaint about these shoes.  I tend to mix trail and road routes into my running but the Adidas Supernova soles are definitely not made for trails with any loose rock or gravel.  You can see in this photo that the shoe on top has a number of large rocks stuck in the grooves of the sole, mostly in the heel area.  I picked the rocks out of the shoe on the bottom to show what it should look like.  Stopping to pick rocks out during a run can break your rhythm but not stopping can become uncomfortable and annoyingly noisy if the rocks and hitting the pavement.

Despite the trail running limitations, I would still highly recommend this shoe.  On a scale of 1 to 10, I give it an 8.  Although, I may have to break down and buy a pair of Adidas Supernova Riot, their trail running shoe, to go with my Control 10s.

I came across CompleteRunning, a fairly large network of running blogs, the other day.  One of their most popular posts that caught my eye was 25 Celebrities Who’ve Run A Marathon.  I’m not really one for tabloid magazines or Hollywood gossip but I thought it would be interesting to see how my one marathon time compares to some of the rich and famous.  

The author’s list of 25 had a wide range of people, anywhere from David Lee Roth to George W. Bush.  Even that guy who played RoboCop was on the list.  Would you believe that George W’s time is better than RoboCop? And unfortunately both of their times were faster than mine.    

The post does not give any insight as to how anyone on the list trained, or how Oprah’s finish time smoked AC Slater’s, but the captions are entertaining to read.  Check it out and see if there are any that surprise you.   Hopefully my next marathon time will be enough to beat our current President!

Slowing down to run farther seems obvious, but it is the hardest thing for people to force themselves to do when they first attempt longer runs.  To explain this, I’m going to target people who’ve never exceeded the 3-5 mile run range, think anyone going farther is crazy, and probably genetically superior.

Take your average high school athlete that has had to run 1-2 milers to stay in shape and maybe was able to crank out a 5 miler or 10k at one point for a charity race.  This likely seemed like the hardest thing on their body because they were trying to keep the 1-2 mile pace over the longer distance.  The fact is your body cannot maintain the heart rate you get up to when running a fast 1 mile over the course of 5 miles.

To show this point I’ve plotted the world record paces for the Olympic distances along with the mile and both full and half marathons:

Assuming that the average person would exhibit this rate of slowdown, someone who could run an 8 minute mile would be able to run a:

• 5k (3.1 mi) at a 9.1 min/mile pace (multiply by 1.13),
• 10k (6.2 mi) at a 9.4 min/mile pace (multiply by 1.17),
• Half Marathon (13.1 mi) at a 9.6 min/mile pace (multiply by 1.20),
• Marathon (26.2 mi) at a 10.6 min/mile pace (multiply by 1.33)

By slowing down at these rates for longer distances and periods of time, the body avoids crashing like when you finish a hard sprint and need to immediately stop to catch your breath.

There are a number of methods out there to determine your body’s thresholds like heart rate training and VO2 max determination, which I highly recommend looking into if you’re training for 13+ mile events.  If you’re not a competitive runner and sticking to 10Ks or less the best thing is to listen to your body; it’ll tell you when you can pick it up and when you should slow down.

If you’re not consistently running and try this approach a few times a week you’ll be amazed at how easy it becomes to get up to 45 - 60 minute workouts.  You’ll quickly be at a cardio level recommended by most doctors and medical journals.  If you get the bug and want to push it longer or harder I would advise researching nutrition management to ensure you’re replacing adequate calories and fluids to keep you going and avoid serious injuries.

That’s my approach to running farther: slow down.  I’d be curious to hear if any of you have found other methods that have really helped when trying to go from short to long distance running.

We have finally made public one of the features we’re most excited about: training plan generation.  Based on scientific data and their own training experience, Ryan and John supplied me with tons of information pertaining to how people run, what their capacities are, and how to train differently given various constraints.  I automated their logic and today we have launched the first release of the marathon training plan generator.  Here’s how it works:

You start off by telling Athlo everything you know about your current fitness level.  If you don’t know anything, no worries, Athlo will make a good guess.  For the marathon training plan, you provide your known times for shorter distances, like a 5K or 10K.  Using data like this, Athlo will immediately generate a semi-generic training plan that you’re free to customize by providing additional input.

For example, Athlo will likely assume a 20-week plan for a marathon, but maybe you don’t have that long or would like to take longer.  Just change the dates and Athlo will adjust your schedule.  The same is true for you start/end fitness level.  If you know your body better than Athlo, simply override the assumptions it’s made and continue.

You finish up the process by telling Athlo what days of the week you can/can’t work out.  By doing this, Athlo will schedule your workouts on days that work for you.  Moreover, given your goal, Athlo will make a recommendation for how many days a week you should train.  Again, if your thoughts vary from Athlo’s, so be it.  Our simple drag-drop interface will let you make changes in seconds.

Lastly, you have the option to print your training plan or save it to your profile.  We recommend the latter simply because you can then track your performance on Athlo and better assess whether or not your goal is realistic.  If it’s not, update it and keep training!

In developing this feature we tried to make a complex process simple.  Compare our generator to others on the net and we think you’ll quickly see the difference.  Others force you into a X-week schedule, require too many inputs, and give you a plan that you can’t tweak once you’ve generated it.  We think we’ve raised the bar with ours.  Of course with any new feature there are bound to be bugs and interfaces that need tweaking.  Please help Athlo get better by providing your input in the comments.  Your comments will help ensure that as we update this feature and roll out new distances and sports, we best meet your needs.  Enjoy!