HRE wrote:
Everything I've seen about sports drinks says they are no better than chocolate milk, juice, beer, and junk food as replacement drinks but that's not the point. Sure, you want to recover better for your next run but you should be able to tell if you've recovered. If sports drinks, massage and the like really are important why were guys like Jones, Hill, Rodgers, Foster, etc., able to run faster than without them than almost anyone now who uses them can? Shoes are a different matter, mostly one of personal comfort. I can run in shorts and t-shirt comfortably in weather that most people need a sweatsuit. But again, there's nothing wrong with sports drinks, massages, altitude tents and so on. There is something wrong with a mindset that thinks these sorts of things are necessary to run at your best.
Thanks for talking sense. Some of us know what you mean.
There's nothing wrong with scientific advances. There IS something wrong when an extractive capitalist (yes, I used the word) economy leverages "scientific advances" to convince gullible Runner's World folk that only if they "hydrate" with certain "replenishing" drinks will they achieve "maximal results." What gets lost is the guts, heart, and soul: the inspired, spirit-driven discipline of running. Again: there is such a thing as scientific progress. But there's also such a thing as spiritual devolution.
Guy Debord, in SOCIETY OF THE SPECTACLE, said that the West is presently locked into a declension from being to having to appearing.
Translation into LR terms: At some point in the past of living memory, runners focused on how it felt to run and to train oneself into peak shape. Then that juice got sucked away by a "runner's world" that profited from convincing runners that success was all a matter of having (buying) the Right Stuff. In our own day, that world of commodified running has further devolved into a place where, when you've just purchased the lastest 19th generation brand-name shoes, or GU, you go on Facebook and share a photo of the Running Stuff that you've just bought. And then feel good about yourself.
From BEING to HAVING to APPEARING. From living it, to buying it, to "sharing" photos of it.
Tell me that's not what has happened. I suggest that that is precisely what has happened. Debord knows us. He knows how it's working. Not necessarily among competitive runners--but definitely with Lolo, Maggie, and a couple of guys who run the steeple and 800, respectively. It's about the pix shared online. It's no longer about the private feeling and then stepping up and delivering.
Altitude tents!! If only I had an altitude tent......
Not.