Outpost of the Odd

And You Thought They Only Knew How to Taper

We’ve featured running wiener dogs, running reindeer and even running shrimp, but here’s Roadrunner the Cat:

Yes, of course Roadrunner has his own web site.

Why Running Is Better Than Bobsledding

You can get injured a lot of ways while running, but probably not this way.

Put Your Money on the One-Horse Open Sleigh

British bettors got a break from wagering on the usual horse races and were treated to a reindeer derby at Kempton Park Racecourse. Here’s the action:

If you’d rather not run with such a fast crowd, you can settle down with the ReindeerCam, Santa’s Official Reindeer Live Feed.

Riveting entertainment, I know, but anything is better than working.

Top Banana

It’s one thing to dress up as a banana and race as part of a Jamba Juice promotion, like this one in Hawaii:

It’s another thing entirely to dress up as a banana and win a 5k in 16:16. Frank May did just that in Northampton, Massachusetts this month. He split from the bunch around mile 2 and peeled away without a slip.

No word on May’s next race, but I know of one that should guarantee him a PR.

Nothing Says Christmas Like Ejecting Egg Nog

I’ve never seen one of these type of races organized so close to home, but I promise I’ll be bypassing the Sacramento Egg Nog Mile. It’s clearly a race for the young man.

For those of you unfamiliar with the rules of such races, the idea is to drink a 12 oz. cup of egg nog, then run a 1/4 mile. Repeat until a mile is completed. If you gack, there is a 1/4 mile penalty (but fortunately, no egg nog penalty). The record is 5:04, which I bet is something Roger Bannister couldn’t have done.

So if your idea of fun is watching the youth of America intestinally decorate a 400-meter track (set to music), by all means watch the video from last year’s race:

Cold Comfort

A recent study claims recovery benefits for runners from whole body cryotherapy. I had never heard of it before, but this Runner’s World video from April shows how it works:

A quick way for me to go from Neapolitan to Neapolitan ice cream.

Running Improves Your Skill at… Crossing the Street

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign wanted the answer to the question, “Do Athletes Excel at Everyday Tasks?” It’s a fair avenue for exploration; people are always claiming increased cognitive ability due to physical activity. The method used by the scientists to test the hypothesis was a bit unusual:

The present study extended the sport-cognition literature by studying athlete and nonathlete performance on a realistic street crossing task that challenged fundamental cognitive and perceptual skills. A street intersection was modeled in an immersive virtual reality environment, and participants were asked to navigate trafficked roads under different distraction conditions by walking on a treadmill that was integrated with the virtual world. We specifically used the street crossing paradigm to study the multitasking and processing speed abilities of collegiate athletes and nonathletes.

Multitasking can be defined as an ability to perform more than one task concurrently. To successfully cross a street, pedestrians have to simultaneously attend to the flow of traffic, monitor and remember vehicle distances and speeds, and execute a crossing. Moreover, street crossing requires the coordination and simultaneous performance of multiple subtasks, not simply the performance of subtasks that do not overlap in time. Thus, we examined multitasking in athletes and nonathletes by studying their ability to successfully cross a virtual street. Further, subjects were sometimes asked to cross the street while conversing on a cellular phone or listening to music, two realistic distracter tasks that might introduce additional multitask challenges.

…The task on each trial was to safely cross an unsigned intersection while avoiding traffic. Each participant began each trial in an alley between two buildings. He or she was instructed to walk forward until the street became visible and then to cross when he or she determined it was safe…. Each participant was instructed to walk (not run) on the treadmill to cross both lanes of traffic without being hit by a vehicle. Simulated spoken feedback was given if a subject successfully crossed the street, and visual feedback was provided if a subject was hit by a car.

Overall, the findings suggested that “superior processing speed in athletes may be a factor contributing to better performance in a realistic multitask challenge,” or, in other words, athletes were less likely to be struck by cars while crossing the street.

So, good news, runners! Not only is your general physical health improved by running, but you are less likely to become roadkill than a similarly situated non-runner. Of course, the non-runner may be safely at home on the couch, but still.