Why does Galen Rupp sitdown on the track after a race?

I've always been curious about why is it that you shouldn't sit after a race. Any idea?

Where does the blood go when you run? It pools in your legs where you need it. This is obviously increased when you sit down and the blood is not allowed to return to the other areas of your body. Blacking out is a strong possibility.

I would think that sitting for a very short period of time would be okay, but I have seen whole packs of runners flop after a mile race.

Even if it is not bad for you isn't this hot-dogging?

Jed Clampett wrote:

Where does the blood go when you run? It pools in your legs where you need it. This is obviously increased when you sit down and the blood is not allowed to return to the other areas of your body. Blacking out is a strong possibility.

I would think that sitting for a very short period of time would be okay, but I have seen whole packs of runners flop after a mile race.

Even if it is not bad for you isn't this hot-dogging?

Great, didn't know that thanks for the info!

It doesn't matter.

I agree with HardLoper

I thing you guys lope too hard and it will come back to bite ya.

It's kind of like understanding the mentality of people who get tattoos.

Jed Clampett wrote:

Isn't that bad for you?

He probably has the trots and trying to stave off a shitsplosion

The thing is Galen Rupp should know whether it's bad to flop to the track right after a 2 mile run! They have discovered that it helps you to bend at the waist when you finish a race. But to just fall to the ground makes absolutely no sense to me.

It can't possibly help you recover faster.

It's like trying to understand people who do tattoos!

No one dares to try to answer this question except to say it does not matter.

Give a scientific reason for why it doesn't matter. For 100s of years we said it matters because the person doing it might black out (faint). Now we say it doesn't matter?

There must be some studies done on this. Hopefully someone on here had some physiology!

One of the tough things about Let's Run is you can have a question that really needs to be answered and there won't be anyone around to answer it until the next day. By then it will be buried and you cannot find it among the thousands of posts that are similar.

I'm not about to open up to posting an email!!! Not to some of the idiots on this blog.

Jed Clampett wrote:

No one dares to try to answer this question except to say it does not matter.

Give a scientific reason for why it doesn't matter. For 100s of years we said it matters because the person doing it might black out (faint). Now we say it doesn't matter?

There must be some studies done on this. Hopefully someone on here had some physiology!

Use a little common sense. If you faint when you are standing up, you fall to the ground. Have you ever seen somebody faint while already laying on the ground? I didn't think so. That is why I always lay on the ground after a race.

I know.

Actually my best time in the 400 is 44.8 and my best 200 is 20.03. That's not too bad for someone over 80 years old. But I do my best.

Because the USATF won't let Al bring a chair out to the track for him to sit on.

This way I can have a nice nap and recover.

more quickly.

I've got about as much chance of getting someone with a Master's degree in exercise physiology to answer my question as understanding why people get tattoos.

Jed Clampett wrote:

No one dares to try to answer this question except to say it does not matter.

Give a scientific reason for why it doesn't matter.

Blood does not pool in the legs when you run. On the contrary, the action of the calf muscles on the veins running through them accelerates what's known as the "skeletal muscle pump" which forces blood back toward the heart.

IIRC this is what causes heart rate to immediately skyrocket during a short sprint, even before oxygen consumption rises significantly. The heart has to beat faster to handle all the blood rushing into it from the veins.

Sitting down may inactivate the skeletal muscle pump, but it also stops the legs from moving and thus from using lots of oxygen. This can cause acid buildup in the muscles since gas exchange is instrumental in removing acids. But there's no reason why that should hurt you, only possibly slow your recovery for the next rep, which after a race there isn't one. If the muscles stop using oxygen, the brain won't be deprived of it so it makes no sense to pass out, unless you'd pass out anyway from exhaustion.

You may notice the burn often hits immediately after you stop running, more than during. When that happens, throw in a 50 meter stride or some drills and see what happens. For me it kills the burn right off.

Thank you. Obviously some fool discovered that by accident and someone who understands science had to figure out why this does not kill you as they used to believe. We do know that a recovery jog is necessary to heal the muscle tissue that was damaged by the effort of the run. It's not about removing lactic acid.

I have a question for you. If it isn't bad for you, then why does being active as in your last paragraph feel better, than if you lay down?

Even if what you say is true, it still seems stupid to lay out after a run.

But if you have more, I'm definitely curious because if you coach, you have to know what to say to kids that do this stuff.

The effect is not always the same.

If the tissue is seriously damaged, the blood need to flow, to deliver oxygen faster. If the runner sits down, the heart rests and the blood flows slower than needed. He may have cramps and even have difficulties to move in the next 30-90 minutes.

I believe that Rupp doesn't have the muscle tissues pretty bad affected, so this won't be a problem for him. Especially after hearing that he ran 20 miles at 4:52 with a heart rate at 150 bpm.