we use it to lose weight, one of my college mates decided to do emulate me by doing a long up in the trails in his sweatsuit but it didnt work too well, we had to call an ambulance for him. One more point, showing too much skin is against our culture
I haven't read your article Scott but it sure sounds great.
Keep up the good work.
Scott,
Great stuff! Many guys have told me "it is good to sweat" as well. when I was over in Nyahuru, the KIM group did their harder runs, time trials, and track sessions in t-shirts or singlets.
native son wrote:
we use it to lose weight, one of my college mates decided to do emulate me by doing a long up in the trails in his sweatsuit but it didnt work too well, we had to call an ambulance for him. One more point, showing too much skin is against our culture
Please do not impersonate me. I am the one and only Native Son in this forum. That was a nice try. I might even consider suing you for masquerading as myself.
They think???? of course they know better, it keeps them warm, they know what they are doing. Of course they are champions...Ethiopian do the same
The only weight they are losing is water. So losing weight isn't the issue. Probably more to do with heat tolerance and a mental edge. Wouldn't you feel faster if the only time you ran in shorts and a singlet or tank top was when you raced?
A couple of Keyans have told me that they felt like it let them get a little more work at a lower speed - same work, less pounding when compared to running in shorts/singlet. That said, almost every Kenyan I know is in blizzard dress when the temps hit 50, so it's probably mostly a thermal issue.
I wouldn't discount the fact that most of these guys have extremely low body fat, and not as much "natural" insulation as most Westerners (even the active ones).
It looks like a lot of people are looking for another "secret" why the Kenyans are so good. It's certainly isn't because they wear sweats when they train. My guess is they're going very easy and they think it's cold out so they wear sweats to avoid catching a cold. If you go very easy (something most Americans don't do very often) you won't warm up that much. Some of these guys may put on weight in the off season but after a little bit of training there's no weight for them to lose.
Kenyans run great times whether it's hot or cold - it doesn't really matter when you're really good. I would say that runners that don't train in humidity will have a harder time adapting to that than to heat or cold. A lot of WC/Oly Marathons have been in hot AND humid conditions and Europeans, Americans and Asians seem to do better vis a vis the Kenyans than they normally do in fall/spring marathons.
What is the link to the article? Thanks
Green Tea wrote:
What is the link to the article? Thanks
just go to scotts home page
www.scottdouglas.bizand he has links to all three slate articles
i read an article a few years back about kenyans not eating meat while training because they thought it made them heavy and slow. and this wasn't because they didn't have access to meat, this was a group training in the us. i've heard the same thing from a few other kenyan and ethiopian runners. seems like they do have a concern for their weight. the only problem with the low weight approach, is injury can come easier.
"Surprised no one has raised the converse, does this necessarily mean you race (relatively) poorly in cold?"
A creative Google search will turn up many articles where Kenyans use "the cold" (below 60!) as a reason for racing poorly. It isn't because they are African, it is because they tend to have a lower weight to surface-area ratio than often more stoulty configured American runners and thus dissapate heat more effectively. More of them really do feel cold at those temperatures for purely physiological reasons just because more happen to have that build. Americans with the same build will probably report being cold in similar proportions. (Of course, there is more to one's preferred temperature than this, but I think weight to surface area is a large part of the formula). I personally, find 30's absolutely comfortable and find 70's far to warm.
All I know is that if it is 70 degrees or cooler I always wear my winter gear during all my easier runs. This is for personal comfort since I hate to be cold. I don't know if the Kenyans do it for the same reason, but I am pretty skinny so I figure that may have something to do with it. I have no insulation. The Kenyans are skinnier than me so it doesn't surprise me that they would do it also.
Humidity tends to effect whether or not I dress warm to though. Since it is not very humid in Kenya, they are probably cold more often.
Hmm. I'm 5'7" and a buck-15, but I just wear tights on the bottom and a dri-fit and fleece on the top in weather around 20 degrees (gloves and hat too). I get cold easily standing around in the cold, but running in the cold is not a problem. I, like most folks, like racing in 45-55 degress (maybe a bit warmer for shorter races). I also can't believe that they are dumb enough to think that they should be shedding weight by sweating to the oldies.
The SLATE article was tremendous, and typical "top notch writing" by Scott Douglas.
I think the last paragaph nailed it. It's a bit out of context, so you should read all 3 "articles":
During the speeches, the 2:09 marathoner to my right resumes his monologue about how Kenyan runners are different from American runners. "We are not like you people in America," he says. "These people, when they get famous, they stay simple." I think he has a point. When the speeches end, I look over and see Wilson Kipketer, the world-record holder at 800 meters, picking up bottle caps off the ground.
This stuff about losing weight through heavy clothes "because the body takes energy to cool itself" is nonsense.
If you actually calculated the Joules of energy the body needs to return to equilibrium, the number is so miniscule that there is no calorie burn.
It for the same reason that, if you stand outside in 50 degrees, and your body temperature is 98.6 degrees, you have bodily enzymes working to keep your body at that temperarature while there is also a "fight" to drag your temperature down from 98.6 and to drag the 50 degrees up.
Of course, it doesn't happen to any appreciable extent, but if you were several thousand miles out from the sun, where the temperature is over 4 million Kelvin, you'd burn up because your body enzymes would NOT tolerate such a magnitude of difference.
Having been a former Belgium based racing cyclist, I can tell you there were a few "old-school" rules that everyone followed. One of them was to cover up the legs at all times except racing. This meant laying around the house in long pants, and always training with leg warmers, even on the hottest days. Team managers would actually curse guys if they found them out training with no leg warmers on unless it got above 30C (86F), which was very rare. The upper body didn't matter as much. The reasoning was simple, protect the muscles at all costs, which in turn protected the tendons. Racing, on the other hand...
This makes absoulute sense. Bernd Heinrich, A professor of Biology and Great Ultramarathoner who also was top Master at Boston Years ago did field research on insects and animals and fould that a certain type of beetle was fastest when it was warm and could even fly when it was hot. When the beetles were cold he could catch up to them and the beetles couldn't even fly. The research on several other creatures had the same result. The hot animals/insects were also the fastest ones. Now put on your warm up suit and shut up! Out!
For the past half year, I have taken to dressing on the warm side - an extra fleece layer during xc ski season and continuing to wear my xc ski jacket and pants in runs now moving into spring. I'm doing it mainly to experiment after reading Benji Durden's comments here a few months ago (that he tried both but always raced faster when his training was done in sweats). I used to do the opposite: dress as lightly as I could get away with in the cold... I know that the college xc team here trains in sweats for heat training purposes. The temperatures are cool to cold in the fall here and they wouldn't otherwise be able to run well when competing in meets in CA for example.
Your body does acclimate to heat. I did a 2.5+ hr run yesterday in windpants, t-shirt and a Craft xc ski jacket (shell with microfleece lining and vented back) in temperatures near 70F and I was quite comfortable - a nice light sweat on my face, my cotton T-shirt was pretty much dry when I finished, and I only drank one small bike bottle of water during the run. Without acclimation, I'm sure I would have been REALLY hot wearing what I was wearing. I have yet to race this year, and I'm not expecting amazing jumps in performance in ideal cool conditions, but races are held in warm conditions too and people race in them. I didn't read the report on this year's Boston marathon, but I remember all the excuses for running poor in the heat last year. They were certainly valid excuses... they weren't ready for the heat training in cool temperatures but racing in hot temperatures. But, if they had trained in sweats (like the local college team here does...), they could have been ready for the heat.
As for dealing with the cold if you are always training warm, I say that you can always dress warmer. There is no reason to run slow in 20-30F... that's SUPER comfortable for xc skiing because they have on enough clothing. The Kenyans (and others) who run poorly in the cold shouldn't try to tough it out in shorts and singlet...