A while back my friend Jyoti was asking if hill running would substitute for speedwork and Monica and I thought it probably was about equivalent to interval training (running fast for short distances, jogging a bit and then running fast again) but we didn’t have any real info on it.

Here’s a great article on running hills for speed:

One of the most famous proponents of hill training is Olympic coach Arthur Lydiard. His hill circuit training requires the athlete to bound (focus on horizontal motion) or leap (focus on vertical motion) up the hill. Lydiard concentrated a great deal on hill running form to promote efficiency. Driving the knees, for example, is one aspect on which to focus–as well as toeing-off and slapping the heel to the buttocks.

Bonus, Lydiard is a New Zealander like me and he used to have his atheletes run about in the Waitakere Ranges out west in my home town Auckland. Jyoti lives there and those hills are right in her backyard.

Link (via Cool Running)

Diet blog extols the goodness of Bircher Muesli.

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I prefer a creation from closer to home… or, well, from home.

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We just got back from a bike ride in France. It’s been a fun excuse to play around a bit with google maps. Check out our trip!


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Peter Paul Roosen and Tatsuya Nakagawa post to LifeHack about

So, what does Jerry Seinfeld and a typical sales person have in common? A focus on a key number. Seinfeld always needed new jokes so early in his career he used a calendar and a big red marker to cross out each day he sat down for a session to write new material. He needed one session per day and made sure every day on his calendar was marked. His number “1” helped him to become number 1 in his area. Anyone working in sales is quite familiar with “meeting the number”, whatever that number is for his or her manager or company.

There is no simpler number than 1.

Number 1: the special thing you do every day to become number one.

You can start a chain and keep doing your special thing.


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The fitness industry might be booming, but being fit isn’t exactly the norm. No matter our intentions, it’s often hard to turn down the slice of pie that everyone’s having, or a glass from that pitcher of beer that’s going around the table. Face it: being fit is a personal choice, and it requires thinking for yourself.

Easier said than done, right? Not according to Life is a Jounal: this site has list of 10 ways to think for yourself. A few of the suggestions are especially good for the aspiring smarter, fitter folk:

• Don’t feel you have to follow the crowd.




• Trust your feelings.




• Be Brave.

I’d like to add a a couple of my own:

• Know what you want. Write it down. Remind yourself. Make it a part of you. When you’ve done this, all other distractions will be “off the radar”.




• Live deliberately, as Henry David Thoreau said:

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.

Link (via Lifehacker)