supplements

It seems that American hero Alan Culpepper is another of the illustrious names (ahem) who has been bothered by a lack of iron in the blood.

The latest Running Times has a good story on this unsuspected scourge of distance athletes.. read it here.

One thing I disagree with. RT's Richard Lovett writes: "Treatment is fairly simple". Hmm. One runner in the article apparently solved it by eating steak; Culpepper took supplementa and six weeks later was OK. Not my experience :)

That's the question put to Dick Beardsley, 4th fastest US marathoner of all time, who is still racing 25 years after his epic "Duel in the Sun" Boston marathon.

It's the first question in an interview with Dick for the nuBound supplement company. His reply:

"That’s a great question. I retired in 1988 from high level competition, but I’ve
always continued to love running. There’s a great new generation of top level competitors out there doing amazing things. Many top athletes as they age take the view that they “don’t want to lose” and back out of continued competition. For myself, I continue to love the challenge of training and improving — I’m working on a whole new set of 50+ personal bests. I certainly don’t do it to relive old glories. It’s not that I have something to prove. I do it because it’s just a hoot!"

News that marathon runners and other endurance athletes may be at increased risk of skin cancer shouldn’t have come as a surprise.

Mainstream media focused on the idea that it was increased exposure to the sun that was to blame, and almost universally carried warnings for runners to slap on the sunblock. In doing so they completely missed the point – which is that training and racing suppresses the immune system.

It’s the immune system that controls cancer, not how much sunlight you are exposed to. Distance runners are more likely to develop cancer because they artificially – and chronically -- suppress their immune systems. To add insult to injury, most runners are not nutritionally protected, or at best only partially protected, against the overt stress of protracted exercise.