This Week on the Net (6/9-6/15)

Another short week.  I hurt my foot during running on Tuesday and had been resting for the rest of the week, and my surfing the web also diminished because of it.  Still working on getting through the RW magazine.  I'm on the most recent issue now.

• Running on soft surfaces not good for your knees?  This NYTimes article from 2011 seems to think so.  Apparently running on hard surface vs. soft affect the way people run, so it's like a completely different activity, instead of a less forceful one.  Running on soft surface seems to increase overall injury rate, which is different from knee injuries specifically, because of the irregularity of soft surfaces that make the runners injure their legs more easily.  I found this interesting because like so many other things runners believe in, it turns out to hold no scientific proof.  I've only paid attention to it because I've been running trails a lot recently with my friend who absolutely refuses to run on concrete roads because of her knee surgery a few years ago.  I could sort of feel what she says, because I do find it more enjoyable and easier to run on the softer trails.   And I do think that in terms of the impact on your knees it feels like less impact on soft trail than on hard roads.  So this article is not good enough to arm and persuade my friend to run one the road with me.  I'm still curious about the hardness of the surface on your knees without the distraction of other might-have-been injuries.  
• Runner's World Heartbreak Hill Half & Festival.  Happened last weekend (6/6-8).  I was there briefly but didn't run, but plenty of bloggers did.  Katie from Runs for Cookies wrote a nice multi-part series on her experience there.  Many other bloggers did as well, but I've been following Katie's blog for a while so it was especially more fun.
• Back of the pact woe?  One of the more popular, or well-responded, post relating to the RW Heartbreak Hill Half & Festival is Heather's account on running at the back of the pact.  She was sick on running day and was going to DNF before two other runners convinced her to walk the whole thing and walked with her.  A fast runner, she found for the first time what it was like to run at the pact, where people were slow but hardworking, where the volunteers were scattering, bored, or disappeared altogether, where the photographer just wanted to be done, where the traffic officers don't really care by the time you arrive, where the band pacts up, and where the cheering crowd is done for the day.  Running out of water, medals, and traffic control was apparently common from the responses of other back-of-the-pact runners, and this sad reality is just so disheartening.  On the most superficial level, all runner paid the same entry fee and therefore should get the same amount of service and respect, and on a deeper level, all runners should receive the same level encouragement and respect for completing their race.