Apolo Ohno Trains His Legs And His Mind For The NYC Marathon

Of the roughly 45,000 brave souls who will line up for the start of the New York City Marathon in less than two weeks, there’s a good chance that at least a few will have doubts of crossing the finish line.  They have put in the training miles, eaten the right foods and picked out their playlist.

Yet, the biggest obstacle to a finisher’s medal is not their legs, but their brain.  Like an overprotective mother, the brain not only runs the show but also decides when enough is enough.  However, exercise science researchers now believe that it is possible to fool mother nature and tap into a reserve store of energy for better performance.

Somewhere in the New York masses on November 6th will be a short but determined first time marathoner who happens to have eight Olympic medals.  Apolo Ohno, world champion speed skater, will be racing not only in an upright position but for a little longer than his usual 1500 meters.  During his training, he has noticed the difference between the short thirty second repetitions on the ice and the long runs required for marathon endurance.

In a recent interview, he commented that after a 20 mile training run, “I was like a zombie. I couldn’t function. It was crazy.  I was like, ‘What is wrong with me?’”  One thing that all of his Olympic training has taught him is the power of the mind.  Last week, he tweeted, “The MIND is the most undertrained asset of any athlete. It is the biggest difference between separating those who r GREAT or inconsistent.”

Matt Fitzgerald, long-time running columnist and author, agrees with Ohno.  In his 2007 book Brain Training for Runners, he detailed the role of the brain in controlling our physical endurance.  Traditionally, fatigue used to be considered a breakdown of biochemical balances with the build-up of lactic acid or depletion of glycogen for fuel.  However, research in the 1980s showed that this breakdown did not always occur and that athletes were still able to push through at the end of a race even though they should have been physically exhausted.

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The Next Madden Game Frontier?

(Graphic courtesy of Oregon State University)

For all of you Madden 12 junkies out there, I've got a new post over at Axon Potential on some current artificial intelligence research being done at Oregon State University.  They are attempting to teach a computer system to watch an OSU football game and be able to identify, categorize and then suggest plays in a football simulation.

Certainly a tall order, even for some humans, but they've had some initial success with a small playbook of twenty passing plays.

According to the lead researcher, “This is one of the first attempts to put several systems together and let a computer see something in the visual world, study it and then learn how to control it,” said Alan Fern, an associate professor of computer science at OSU. “Football actually makes a pretty good test bed, because it’s much more complicated than you might think both visually and strategically, but also takes place in a structured setting. This makes it quite analogous to other potential applications.”

It seems the developers at EA Sports may have a head start on play selection AI, based on my poor record against the Madden gods.

Thanks for making the jump to Axon Potential to read the rest of the story.