Food for Thought: Magazines, Foam Rollers, Tempo Runs

Here’s what I’ve been thinking about healthy living lately….

“Offline” reading in my completely digital world… I picked up two magazines for my “dead time” on flights (before we hit 10,000 feet & I can turn on my iPad, and prior to landing) last week and I enjoyed Runner’s World & Clean Eating. It made me pine a bit for magazine subscriptions since I live in Italy. I don’t really enjoy magazines that are for the most part translated from English (& I think the exercise/fitness culture in Italy is behind a bit here). I saw Runner’s World is on the iPad so I may have to subscribe 🙂

The First Lady of Fitness…I loved this pushup contest between Michelle Obama & Ellen Degeneres – I think the best thing Michelle is doing right now is emphasizing exercise and fitness. Love it!

Get your best friend & get healthy… 4 Reasons Why Close Friends Are Good for Your Health on Self.com – totally agree with this. My best friends and I have really helped support each other in healthier lifestyles (and it’s even more fun to indulge together, too).

Reading about Tempo runs…for most of my running life, I haven’t really read up on what to do, how to do it…I just ran. I picked distances and aimed for times. I spend more time researching weight lifting and muscles 🙂 But I was hearing a lot about “tempo runs” and wanted to understand them better. Basically, a tempo run is about running “comfortably hard” and should be at about 90% effort. Many tempo runs are done with the use of a heart rate monitor.

Here are two articles that explain it better:

• What Exactly is a Tempo Run? on Runner’s World
• Your Perfect Tempo on Running Times

Foam Rolling: I have always stretched post-workout – it’s something I learned from doing years of sports and it’s become a bit of a cool-down ritual that allows me to focus before running off to the next thing. Using a foam roller is becoming mainstream and I talked about this with some colleagues recently. Do you use a foam roller? Here’s some more links about it:

• The Almost Magical Foam Roller on RunningTimes.com
• Recovering quickly after a tough workout on Lifehacker
• Foam Rolling for Runners on Runners World
• on Wikipedia