I thought a short explanation of a typical ventilatory response to the onset of exercise might help answer this question. Carbon dioxide in our blood increases at the onset of exercise at a greater rate than it does later during our exercise bout (after we’ve warmed up for a while). Respiration is what gets rid of this carbon dioxide, and thus our breathing rate also increases more than normal at the beginning of exercise. As exercise progresses, the chemical conditions of our blood (i.e. increased heat & metabolism) allow more oxygen to distribute carbon dioxide out of the blood, creating less demand for our breathing rate to do that.

Read More….

Expert Panel Question???

Question: “Everyone is different, but in general, how long should a runner wait after recovering from an illness, such as a bad cold or flu, before doing a long marathon training run 15 to 20 miles?”

(ask your questions to the UtahRunning.com Experts here)

Answer!!!

(a brief response)

When not taken care of appropriately, a harmed immune system can lead to a cascade of problems when involved in heavy or high-volume exercise training. If you are not careful when resuming exercise following a damaged immune system (e.g. a cold or flu), you can chronically impair muscle tissue function, cardiac (heart) function, and of-course extend or rebound your illness. This is why more experienced runners will always tell you that patience always pays off in the end.

Intensive exercise training should not be resumed until a few days following the complete resolution of common cold symptoms (e.g. sore throat and runny nose without general body aches and fever). To date, research shows mild to moderate exercise (e.g. walking) when sick with the common cold does not appear to be harmful. Some data even suggests mild to moderate exercise during a cold enhances the immune system; speeding recovery.

With symptoms of extreme tiredness, fever, swollen lymph glands, and muscle aches (e.g. following a bout of the common flu), it’s best to allow yourself 2-4 weeks following resolution of symptoms before resuming intensive training. A long training run (e.g. for marathon training) is considered intensive training.

Read More….

About a year ago I read a research study that tracked changes in body weight of people participating in road races (running) for the first time (since there was an observed surge in the number of people running races throughout the U.S.) The study was considered important by the researchers because if more people running races was in any way related to improving the racers’ health, then efforts to increase road race participation might be a good way to improve public health. In other words, the researchers wanted to know if people were signing up for and running races as a motivator to start exercising more, and whether or not they actually were exercising more as a result of running races.

Did racing improve health?

The researchers actually learned that even over the first couple of years following peoples’ first experiences running races, these people generally experienced no improvements in body weight. Now, I think there were several things in this study that could have been done better, but I still think there was a potentially accurate message of great value.

Read More….

Trever Ball – Exercise Physiologist | Epidemiologist | Local Elite Athlete

Trever is currently a PhD student in Exercise Physiology at the University of Utah, where he studies the effect of levels of physical activity on health outcomes; both on large-population, and individual scales. His current research projects involve assessing public health costs of physical inactivity, and implementing more physcial activity counseling in primary care settings. He received both his Bachelors and Masters degree of Science in exercise science from Utah State University.

Following graduation Trever taught as Adjunct Faculty in the Department of Health Promotion and Human Performance at Weber State University from 2008-2010. Trever has long-enjoyed distance running – He completed his competitive years training with a group of elite post-collegiate athletes under the direction of Paul Pilkington. He was a cross-country All-American at Utah State, where he was also a Big West and WAC conference cross-country and 5000 meters champion. While at Utah State, Trever was awarded the universities top achievment award as Athlete of the Year in 2006. Trever, his wife, and son currently live in North Salt Lake, Ut.