Record 20517 entries for Stockholm Marathon 2011

Registration for the 2011 Stockholm Marathon has been closed at 20,517 entries, which is a new record.

I'm one of the lucky participants, running for the 5th time in Stockholm. This year I was able to improve my course PR from 3:14 to 3:06, and I'm planning for this trend to continue next year.

There would be more much runners for the May 28 event, but the organisers have decided to strictly limit the number of entries in order to guarantee that everything runs smoothly. Stockholm Marathon will never become as big as London, Berlin or New York marathons, but it provides a scenic and challenging course with absolutely fantastic atmosphere.

There will be about 5200 runners from Finland alone, travelling on marathon cruise ships with marathon food, shows and expos. Many will take their family or friends with them, ensuring a great crowd support.

By the way, you can watch Swedish TV coverage of previous events here.

Erwan Le Corre @ NASA

Houston, we have a solution.

Jake Gyllenhaal & David Letterman talk about running

Via Chris McDougall: Jake Gyllenhaal talked about running on Late Show with David Letterman. I'm not a big fan of either of them, but it's a fairly entertaining video.

Perfect Health Diet book review

Perfect Health Diet: Four Steps to Renewed Health, Youthful Vitality and Long Life by Paul and Shou-Ching Jaminet is not just another freakin' diet book to make a fast buck. This is definitely something different, a fresh approach. What's more, I think it might be beneficial - or even ideal - for endurance athletes.



There four steps they refer to in the title are:

1. Optimize macronutrition.
2. Eat paleo, not toxic.
3. Be well nourished.
4. Heal and prevent disease.

What's interesting about the diet is that although PHD is about 65% plants (by weight), it's far from being vegetarian. PHD says by all means do eat as many vegetables as you like, but also do eat fatty meats, seafood, and eggs, plus healthy oils and fats of course.

What I particularly like is that the diet is paleo-ish, but with a twist. For example fermented or fatty dairy are allowed.

What's not allowed are "the four most dangerous foods in Western diets":

• cereal grains,
• legumes,
• vegetable oils, and
• fructose sugar.

The book is not cheapest one around, but it's well worth the price. The writing is crystal clear, enjoyable to read and easy to absorb. It's too early to say whether all the promised results will eventually be there, but I do remain positively hopeful in that regard and plan to follow this program for a long time.

So without any further ado, get this gem of a book right away - or if you are not sure yet, go download their free Perfect Health Diet Color Companion (right click to download the PDF) featuring food pictures and images from the book.

2010 NYC Marathon time lapse videos

Born to Run the Marathon?

Chris McDougall's splits don't show in the results of 2010 NYC Marathon, probably because he ran barefoot and wasn't interested in attaching the timing tag to his foot.

Anyway the NY Times bestselling author of 'Born to Run' has written a piece for the NY Times about his decision to run the marathon after all.

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/04/born-to-run-the-marathon/

The Big Book of Endurance Training and Racing

If you are interested in endurance training and racing, but aren't yet familiar with Phil Maffetone's methods, I recommend you start with his new 'The Big Book of Endurance Training and Racing'.

Vegan Wars: Revenge of the Ex-Vegan

1 November seems to be World Vegan Day, which "marks the start of World Vegan Month". In my case however, it ironically marks my return to eating meat and all that goes with it, like saturated fat for example.

As a fresh ex-vegetarian/vegan/raw vegan, I thought this would be a good time to present Let Them Eat Meat's Interview with an Ex-Vegan: Denise Minger. Very interesting stuff there, in case you are not already familiar with all of that.

I'd say any free-thinking person who is capable of digesting her somewhat complex blog entries about China Study is likely to abandon vegan lifestyle sooner or later. Like they mention in the interview, Denise Minger is intellectually tap dancing all over everything T. Colin Campbell has done with the past decades of his life.

By the way, Denise Minger was also featured on Jimmy Moore's Livin' La Vida Low Carb Show podcast recently. Highly recommended, although I'm afraid neither of them are into endurance sports.

Obviously true vegan troopers won't accept any of this, and in fact all references to Minger's criticism against Campbell have been recently removed from China Study's wikipedia page. That's just great, you peace-loving vegan editors there: if pseudo-scientific propaganda doesn't work, let's resort to strict censorship!