Check out what they're doing at the Paris marathon this weekend...

Paris Marathon organizers will lay energy-harvesting tiles across the course on Sunday to ensure not all the effort expended by the race’s 40,000 runners goes to waste.

The flexible tiles made from recycled truck tires will span a portion of the Champs Elysees for about 25 meters (82 feet) of the 42.2-kilometer course, according to Pavegen Systems Ltd., the U.K. maker of the tiles. Each footstep generates as much as 8 watts of kinetic energy, which is fed back to batteries that can charge display screens and electronic signs along the route, the company said.
— Paris Marathon to Harvest Runners’ Energy With Pavegen Tiles - Businessweek

What a brilliant idea and definitely something I think should be deployed more often, and not just in road races, everyday life too. Anywhere you have moving traffic of any source is potentially a location to harvest energy.

How's this for an introduction for an ultrarunner?

Kilian Jornet Burgada is the most dominating endurance athlete of his generation. In just eight years, Jornet has won more than 80 races, claimed some 16 titles and set at least a dozen speed records, many of them in distances that would require the rest of us to purchase an airplane ticket. He has run across entire landmasses­ (Corsica) and mountain ranges (the Pyrenees), nearly without pause. He regularly runs all day eating only wild berries and drinking only from streams. On summer mornings he will set off from his apartment door at the foot of Mont Blanc and run nearly two and a half vertical miles up to Europe’s roof — over cracked glaciers, past Gore-Tex’d climbers, into the thin air at 15,781 feet — and back home again in less than seven hours, a trip that mountaineers can spend days to complete. A few years ago Jornet ran the 165-mile Tahoe Rim Trail and stopped just twice to sleep on the ground for a total of about 90 minutes. In the middle of the night he took a wrong turn, which added perhaps six miles to his run. He still finished in 38 hours 32 minutes, beating the record of Tim Twietmeyer, a legend in the world of ultrarunning, by more than seven hours. When he reached the finish line, he looked as if he’d just won the local turkey trot.
— Becoming the All-Terrain Human - NYTimes.com

Very good, and long article about a very impressive runner.

Just entered my first duathlon for probably more than 15 years. Keep missing this one, but not this year.

Think you need mountains of carbs to be a good ultra-runner? Think again...

We’ve often heard within the context of endurance athletics that you must be consuming copious amounts of carbohydrates in your diet in order to adequately fuel your performance. But what would happen if an athlete decided to shift his training from being a sugar-burner to a fat-burner using ketones for fuel instead? That’s what marathon runner Timothy Allen Oson from the “Sole To Soul Rhythm” blog decided to put to the test after experiencing stomach pain during his races.
— 642: Ultramarathon Runner Timothy Olson Thrives On A Low-Carb Diet | The Livin La Vida Low-Carb Show

Skip forward to the 8:45 mark to hear the interview with Timothy.

A low-carb runner WON the race?

STEVE PHINNEY:  That’s correct.  His name is Tim Olson.  He lives in Oregon, and he says he made the transition to low-carb about a year or so ago.  Tim won a 100 mile race, I think, in late fall or early winter, and so he had already demonstrated he can do the event on low-carb and when he came into this Western 100 race, his goal was not just to do the race.  He stated in advance that his goal was to win it.  So he ran at the front of the race.  He was running with a number of other very accomplished male competitors — people who had done this race before and placed well before.  Somewhere between mile 65, well,  he went through the checkpoint at mile 65 a couple minutes ahead of the next guy, and there were a group of of four runners who were within four of five minutes of each other around them.  But when he passed the checkpoint at mile 85, he had opened the gap somewhat.  Then between mile 85 and 100  — and keep in mind, by mile 85 Tim Olson has already run the equivalent of over three marathons — somewhere in those final 15 miles, Tim Olson opened up an an additional 15 minute gap between himself and all the other runners.  That means, after running 85 miles, he was able to put on a burst of speed at the end of the race, and he finished 15 minutes ahead of his next closest competitor.
— Western States 100 – Low Carber Wins Ultramarathon – Steve Phinney and Jeff Volek Study | Me and My Diabetes

Not only did he win by over 15 minutes, he smashed 21 minutes off the course record.

As time goes on, more and more athletes and the world has a whole are starting to realise there has to be something in this LCHF diet. I've been following a LCHF diet for about 6 months now and seen nothing but great results.

Keith Levasseur ran Saturday's Baltimore Marathon in 2:46:58 while wearing flip flops. Levasseur will file paperwork with the Guinness Book of World Records to have the feat acknowledged as a world record for a marathon in flip flops.
— Man Runs 2:46 Marathon In Flip Flops | ThePostGame

It's official: I'm just not trying hard enough with my minimalist running. Time to up my game

Renowned German sports journalist Hajo Seppelt claims he spent time in various parts of Kenya where he posed as an undercover sports agent and found out that doping is rife not only amongst Kenyan middle and long distance runners and but even with some of the foreign athletes who have been training in the famous high altitude areas of Iten.
— Athletics Kenya confirm use of banned substances, Kenya, more sports, StarAfrica.com

I guess it IS something about the region that produces some of the world's best endurance runners, pity it's more than just the altitude, hills and way of life and training for some of them.

Ever had one of those races where you wish you could just cut a corner and get the whole thing over and done with? Well, ever thought about making this a habit? It seems one Kip Litton in the US has for quite a lot of his races and it's got the attention of the running community over there.

Exploring the Web sites for each of Litton’s marathons occupied Strode for several days. Not every race was as well documented as Missoula’s, but wherever professional race photographers had been present he hunted for shots of Litton among other runners. He found images of him at the end of a course, only twice at the beginning, and never in between. And there was the chip-gun differential: with rare exceptions, Litton started two to five minutes behind the leaders. In a crowded field, wouldn’t a swift runner want to avoid weaving through clusters of slower runners?
— Is Kip Litton a Marathon Fraud? : The New Yorker

Despite a lot of evidence of cheating and disqualifications, it seems he still denies cheating and of course it means no one knows exactly how he did it, though the bicycle behind a tree theory seems the most plausible.

A very interesting study (you can read the whole article for free, not just an abstract) on the effects of a pre-exercise high-fat meal (HFM) on endurance performance versus a high-carbohydrate meal (HCM).

We observed that the time until exhaustion was significantly longer in the HFM + M (p 0.05) than in HFM + P and HCM + P conditions. Furthermore, the total amount of fat oxidation during exercise was significantly higher in HFM + M and HFM + P than in HCM + P (p 0.05). These results suggest that ingestion of a HFM prior to exercise is more favorable for endurance performance than HCM. In addition, HFM and maltodextrin ingestion following 3 days of carbohydrate loading enhances endurance running performance.
— Significant Effect of a Pre-Exercise High-Fat Meal after a 3-Day High-Carbohydrate Diet on Endurance Performance

This study puts some scientific backing to my own findings now I've switched to a predominantly high-fat low-carb diet. Interestingly, I've not tried the maltodextrin jelly part yet. Maybe before my next race.

For one, Jamaica has just 2.8 million or so people, the USA has around 314 million — that means the US has more than a hundred times more people to find their sprinters in. GDP per capita is $9,100 in Jamaica, and it's $49,000 in the USA — that's five times the money to buy starter pistols, studded boots and Gatorade.
What is behind Jamaica's remarkable athletic success?
— Why Jamaica Is So Fast - Business Insider

I think you'll find it's a lot simpler than this: Jamaica, like the rest of the Carribean islands which had athletes in the 100m heats, is so small that being a long distance runner would be boring. You're run right round the island every time you popped out for a "quick run" .