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Gabino Toledo's world-class running career was cut short when docs discovered he had a congenital heart defect. He refused surgery and carried on running, still well able to make the rest of us suffer. In fact Gabino was the coach who taught me how to suffer, by the simple expedient of running my hardest workouts alongside or, often, just in front of me :)

It was a standing joke among the athletes training with him that we only had to hang on long enough for his heart rate alarm to go off -- then he would have to back off. Being Gabino, he rarely did.

"There's no secret in our training programme", says Deena "...what really makes the athlete stand out from the next -- at an elite level -- is the amount of time you put into the exemplary things, the ancillary work, the stretching, massage therapy, the work in the gym, all the other things to make us a more well-rounded athlete."

Henry Rono, the former multiple world-record-holder who has been blogging for almost two years about his aim to take the 4:40 world mile record for masters from Nolan Shaheed, has now announced a series of races that amounts to a world tour.

Shock news and comment on The Science of Sport here.

Double-amputee sprinter Oscar Pistorius, aka "Blade Runner", will not be allowed to compete in the Beijing Olympics now that the International Amateur Athletics Federation (IAAF) has ruled that his carbon fibre racing prosthetics give him "a clear competitive advantage".

It's not just that she's the best British woman runner, she's the best British runner, man or woman. So I' relieved that after two years out to have a baby, a bit nerve-wrackingly longer than we all expected due to an injury when she started serious training, then an uncharacteristic second place in her first race back (the Great North Run)... Paula Radcliffe is well and truly back.

I AM alive. I haven't posted too much content on here in a few weeks. I have a good excuse, darnit!

Oh good, it's not just me.

Former world record-holder Henry Rono's forum/blog reappeared back at letsrun.com, but the comeback star with ambitions for the masters mile record of 4:40 has been strangely quiet.

Latest post from King Henry tells the tale -- like the rest of us, he's finding that turning yourself into a decent miler takes longer than you'd think.

This past week Scott Jurek did an interview in which he complained a little about the media attention given to Dean Karnazes. This was quite predictably followed by another flurry of Dean-bashing and Dean-worship on running forums across the web. It didn't seem to hit here. (Perhaps until now. :-)

This is remarkable...

Hardrock 100 champion ignores sprained ankle

Excerpt: "Taking more than half an hour off the course record of the Hardrock 100-mile endurance race is an impressive achievement. Doing it with a sprained ankle borders on superhuman.