I was truly devastated by the news from the Boston Marathon yesterday. This kind of senseless violence perpetrated at what has always been such a positive, peaceful, joyful gathering is just too horrible to describe. Scientific American is covering many aspects of this kind of event, from the wonderful behavior of fellow runners (acting against what psychology tells us), to the value of social media during the crisis. I have a post on why so many of the runners began to show signs of hypothermia after being diverted off the racecourse, and how runners and Bostonians helped each other. And today, I'm Running for Boston, and I hope you will run, walk, or otherwise locomote for Boston, too.

As a distance runner, I see a lot of nutritional advice. As we get more serious about running, more serious about decreasing our times, increasing our distance, and other measures of "performance", we start haunting forums and websites, places that refer to food as "fuel". You hear a lot about "pre-race fuel", "post-race fuel", "post-workout fuel". Is it better to have an apple with peanut butter 1 hour before running? Or a bowl of oatmeal two hours before? It's better to "fuel" with pasta the night before a half marathon, but what about a 10k? When you're running for more than an hour, when should the "race fuel" come out? What kind? When do you switch from water to Gatorade and in what amounts? Should we never eat cheese? These are the kinds of questions that can make runners spend hours comparing notes, and that's not even getting into the actual workouts and races themselves! We all want to do our best, and we all want to feel our best doing it, to recover quickly, and to do it again.

When you talk a lot about different types of "fuel", you hear a lot about certain ones in particular. Peanut butter gets a lot of praise, high protein, tasty, and you don't have to eat a lot of it. For extreme conditions, honey will get you there. Oatmeal is a universal favorite. And then there's the banana. I sometimes think that endurance athletes must account for 90% of all banana sales in the US. No matter where you are, at the end of every race, 5k, or ultra-marathon, there will ALWAYS be bananas. Huge piles of them on the post-race tables, and racers snarfing them down.

Me, I've always felt a certain amount of banana conflict. In my daily life, I really hate them. I hate the flavor, I REALLY hate the texture. And the gross little strings just make me gag. The first thing that turns me off a food is telling me it's got banana in it. But after a long run, or a race…I'll snarf those bananas just like everyone else. After morning workouts I'll be there choking down a banana with my breakfast, grimacing all the while. Heck, after a while I ever started to crave them! During a long race, you really do start to visualize that banana at the end.

But why do I do it? I still hate them. I still choke them down and try desperately to get the taste out of my mouth afterward.

But I'm a runner, and I have always, always been told that bananas are a freaking wonder fruit. They've got carbohydrates, they've got potassium, they've got fiber. They've got the sugar to keep you on your feet and the potassium to stop your muscle cramps. They are THE thing that every athlete should eat.

I have always, always been told this. But after a while, I started hunting around. Where is the proof?! After all, we SEE all that nutritional advice…but most of it is anecdotal at best. What's truth and what's not? And where lies the banana?

(BEHOLD. My NEMESIS. Source)

Nieman et al. "Bananas as an energy source during exercise: a metabolomics approach" PLoS ONE, 2012.
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I realize this study is SO last week, which is about two months in dog years and a decade in internet years, but seeing as I'm about to lend my dulcet tones and my delicate opinions to Skeptically Speaking on this topic, I feel I must needs blog this paper.

That, and it's about coffee. How could I NOT blog this paper!?

Freedman et al. "Association of coffee drinking with total and cause-specific mortality" NJEM, 2012.

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I get cold after I run. Really, REALLY cold.

I’m sitting here, preparing to write a blog post on thermoregulation. I finished a good run a while ago. The temperatures outside weren’t too extreme (50ish degrees F, so comfortable for a good run), and I was sweating freely when I finished. About an hour later, here I am, in fleecey pants, shirt, socks, hoodie…and sleeping bag. And afghan. And cat.

I’m freezing. Really, seriously cold. My nailbeds are almost purple, my hands are like ice, and I’ve got goosebumps all over. I’m almost too cold to shiver.

This happens every time I run more than about 5 miles.

Of course, being a scientist, I have to find out WHY! And I got in touch with Ollie Jay at the University of Ottawa to find out. Go over there and check it out!

Sci is at Sci Am Blogs today, talking about a new paper on locomotor efficiency. We're some pretty efficient walkers and runners at specific paces. But what does that mean for our individual muscles? Find out and check it out!