#competitor.com

Five: Monday, June 9

1. Twenty runners you should be following on social media (Good list, but don’t expect any of these to give you a flood of tweets or a reply to yours. I think this is the list compiler’s friend list)

2. Hot drinks vs cool drinks for cooling

3. Beginner’s guide to multi-stage racing

4. Race art

5. Really nice post from Pete Larson

This story has been exploding across the running world over the past 24-hours, but I'm finding the story behind the story to be even more fascinating than Hesch's admission. The article linked above is by Mario Fraioli with Competitor.com who details how Hesch and journalist Stephen Kasica played a behind-the-scenes game with several publications. Fascinating read. Hesch's apology, as well as the New York Times and Runner's World Newswire articles mentioned in the Competitor.com piece are linked below:

Christian Hesch Publicly Apologizes For Doping - Competitor.com

In Chase for Wins, a Runner Cheats - New York Times

Road Ace Christian Hesch Doped, Facing Ban - Runner's World Newswire 

Short article on Competitor.com regarding the importance of wearing an ID band while running. The article makes mention of my wife Olivia and I, along with our daughter Kate.

Two years ago Kate was running the final mile of her third kid's marathon, and first by herself. She did a great job in the race, but unfortunately when we went to the pickup area  after the finish line, she was nowhere to be found. After 30+ minutes of searching, my wife's finally received a call from a race volunteer who had our daughter.

Before the race I had gone to RoadID.com and purchased an ID for Kate's running shoe. I had been running with one for a while, and wanted to make sure Kate had one for her first solo race. My wife and I had both told her that if anything happened to her and someone asked how to contact her mommy or daddy to just tell them it was on her shoe. This is exactly what happened with the race volunteer and we were successfully reunited with Kate.

After this event we sent a short note to RoadID telling them the story, and they quickly asked if we would be willing to be part of their testimonial page on their web site. We worked with their staff to write a short recap of the events and sent them a picture from after the race. Since we were willing to do the testimonial, we now get free RoadID products for life, which is nice because they are vital for anyone who is a runner, biker, etc. or for kids in almost any situation.

In a blog post last week I asked the question "Will Runners Take SKECHERS Seriously?" Well today I finally saw an up-close picture of their upcoming entry into the serious running shoe market, the SKECHERS GOrun:

Per Competitor.com "The yet-to-be-released GOrun by Skechers uses minimalistic engineering and a 4mm heel-toe drop to create a barefoot running experience. The shoe, endorsed and engineered with the help of Meb Keflezighi, will hit stores later this year"

I'll have to admit that this is a pretty sweet looking shoe, but I still highly doubt they will have much success among serious runners or even minimalist fans. What do you think?