This Week On the Net (4/28-5/4)

I come across a number of interesting things on the internet every day, and some of them are relevant to eating and exercising.  I list them here, so I don't leave them scattered in my brain, never to be found.

• Rise of non-traditional races.  An article on RW about the increasingly popular fun races like the mud races, color runs, electric runs (which I want to do in Nov), zombie runs, etc.  I think it's awesome that people want to make running fun.
• Feeling inadequate during your training?  Just makes me more convinced that an actual race is a different beast all on its own.
• TED talk on athletes getting better, faster, stronger (or not).  Featured on Runblogger, it's an interesting talk because it's not discouraging, it's funny, it's smart, and extremely informative.  It makes me hopeful of both the human body and the advancing technology.  
• Social Media and Better Running. Social media is definitely one of the big motivators that got me started to run and kept me going thus far.  I met running enthusiasts online, by whom I was inspired to try running myself; I use Nike+ to track my workouts and share them with said people (it's also automatically synched to my Twitter account); I write this blog to document my thoughts and progress, and to connect to other blogs and websites about running.  I'm also discovering lots of other resources related to running.  I live in a world where social media and the internet is taken for granted, and this article is interesting because it gave me a persecutive I haven't thought about before and showed me just how much social media is impacting our runnings.
• TED talk on humans born to run.  An interesting talk given by Christopher McGougall (author of the book Born to Run) that's a few years old now.  He presented an interesting view on how running may be the only advantage pre-historic humans have to survive their environment, and how we are really built for running and are really good at running long distances.  He also gave a glimpse on his passion of minimalistic running, which I find very interesting and tempting.  In addition, he posed a question I've been pondering ever since I began running: I want to run because it's fun and it would make you healthy, but people keep getting injured and somehow that's a sign to show that you are a dedicated runner, and pushing though those pains make you are more hard core running enthusiast.  I don't ever want to get injured, especially not from running, and I do wonder why people are injured so often while running.  Any many presented minimalistic running as a solution, and maybe there's some truth in that.  I also recognize that because of shoes our feet are probably not adapted to run barefoot right away, so until I get some professional opinions and advices on how to gradually switch to minimalistic running I'm not gonna just go out a buy a pair of expensive rubber 5-toe shoes and seriously screw up my legs.
• Born to Run.  The book written by Christopher McDougall (see above) on which the TED talk was based.  I got interested after listening to the talk and am now reading the book.  He's a great storyteller, so I'm hoping that this book well be engaging as well.
• Beer Mile. Interesting concept I came across while looking at an article shared by my friends on Facebook on the new Beer Mile milestone, a sub-5 minute beer mile (James Nielson, Canada, 4:57).  Personally I don't see joy in any parts of this activity; it combines two of my least favorite activities: drinking beer and running really fast.
• What is good running form.  A question asked frequently but never extracts a straight answer, and this one is no different.  But it does goes into detail some of the debate on shoes vs. minimalistic running which I found interesting.
• Leadville Trail 100 Run.  Some crazy dude came up with a race across 100 miles of the Colorado Rockies terrain back in the 80s, and more crazy dudes and dudets run it every year.  It's apparently so popular that the race is sold out the first day registration is up.  I feel like I fell head straight into a subculture of ultra marathons and trail running, and I realize that there are people out there that I wouldn't normally think could possibly exist.  Isn't the world wonderful!