Nautica Malibu Triathlon – Childrens Hospital Los Angeles

This year will be our third year raising funds through the Nautica Malibu Triathlon for children with cancer. Funds raised from this great event are dedicated towards research that may provide better treatments and cures.

Biomechanical Analysis of Usain Bolts 9.58 sec World Record

At the IAAF World Championships in Berlin, the German IAAF Member Federation, DLV, in cooperation with the IAAF is carrying out a major Biomechanics Project.

The project presented the reaction times and splits for all the finalists from the 100 metersemifinals and the final at the 2009 IAAF World Championships in Berlin.
We thought we would present them here and try to predict just how fast Usain Bolt can run.

This table gives us some real insight into Bolt's race. Lets take a look at some crucial points in the race. You can click on the table to see the details.

1. Of the 8 finalists Bolt has the 3rd slowest reaction time to the gun, at 0.146 seconds. Both Asafa Powell with 0.134 secs and Tyson Gay with 0.144 secs react faster.
2. By the 20 meter mark though Bolt has caught up all this time and gone ahead of Powell by 0.03 secs.
3. From the 20 meter mark on, Bolt is away and getting further away over each 20 meter interval. Although we can also see that Tyson Gay is able to hang pretty close between 20 and 80 meters.
4. Bolt reaches his top speed of 12.27 m/s or 27.45 miles per hour at the 65 meter mark. This can be seen in the second graph presented by the IAAF Biomechanics Research paper.
5. From 80 to 100 meters Bolt actually begins to slow down. We can see that his time for the last 20 meters is 0.05 seconds slower than his fastest 20 meter split of 1.61 seconds. We also know that he reached his maximum speed at 65 meters and everything after that was a little slower.
6. One last thing to note is that in this race there is a tail wind of 0.9 m/s. This is legal but it does give the athletes a slight advantage as it pushes them along.

To determine how fast we think he can run, lets look back at the Beijing Olympics and remember how analysis of that race suggested that if Bolt had maintained his speed through the last 20 meters and did not begin celebrations, he could possibly have run the 100 meters in 9.55 seconds.

His current world mark is pretty close to that already, so where can he improve to make up the time. So here are some key factors that are critical to determine how much faster he can go.

1. Firstly look at the table again and at Bolt's reaction time (RT) for his semi-final. In this race he gets out in 0.135 seconds as against the 0.146 seconds in the final. We also see that he completes the first 20 meters in the same time in both the semis and final, while he definitely seemed to be cruising in the semi-final. It has also been suggested that Bolt actually covered the first 20 meters in Beijing faster than he did in Berlin. This is up for debate though, as the video analysis was done using broadcast footage where the camera setup was not optimal. In any case, Bolt can definitely get out of the blocks faster and should be able to cover that first 20 meters faster than he did in Berlin.
2. The prediction from the Beijing Olympics was based on the suggestion that Bolt could maintain his speed at 80 meters through to the end of the race. In Berlin however, he is not able to do this and slows down a little over the last 20 meters. We also notice that all the athletes in the final ran slower over the last 20 meters, than in the split between 60-80 meters (which was the fastest for all of them). Therefore it may be impossible for a 100 meter athlete to maintain their speed over the last 20 meters and the Beijing prediction may have been optimistic in this regard.
3. In the last 10 meters in Berlin, Bolt takes a look out of the corner of his eye to check on Gay. We don't believe this could have caused too much of a slow down. In fact if we look at his average velocity at the 90m and the 100m mark from the research, we can see that he does not slow down between those 2 points. But lets assume he could have been 1 or 2 hundredths of a second faster if he had not checked.
4. The 0.9 m/s tail wind in the final in Berlin will definitely have helped Bolt. A tail wind of up to 2.0 m/s is considered legal for a record to stand. Therefore there is an advantage to be gained with the right conditions.

Finally we have some sort of answer. We think Bolt can definitely run faster. If he improves his reaction time and runs hard through the finish in the right conditions, we have no doubt a new world record will be set.
I am sure we would all love to see an athlete challenge the 9.50 second barrier and Bolt may have it in him to do just that. We look forward to watching it all.

Dudley Tabakin is Co-Founder of Sadaka, LLC http://videosportsanalysis.blogspot.com, a motion capture and biomechanics consultancy. Clients include FootJoy, Titleist, Warrior Hockey, Vicon Motion Systems, Innovision Systems Inc. and other Sports and Motion capture and biomechanics software companies

Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/track-and-field-articles/biomechanical-analysis-of-usain-bolts-958-sec-world-record-1137239.html

Runners’ High Demonstrated: Brain Imaging Shows Release Of Endorphins In Brain

 

Researchers have succeeded in demonstrating the existence of an 'endorphin driven runner's high'. (Credit: Arzt-Läufer, Image courtesy of University of Bonn)

ScienceDaily – Throughout the world, amateurs, experts and the media agree that prolonged jogging raises people's spirits. And many believe that the body's own opioids, so called endorphins, are the cause of this. But in fact this has never been proven until now. Researchers at the Technische Universität München and the University of Bonn succeeded in demonstrating the existence of an 'endorphin driven runner's high'. In an imaging study they were able to show, for the first time, increased release of endorphins in certain areas of the athletes' brains during a two-hour jogging session.

 

These results are also relevant for patients suffering from chronic pain, because the body's own opiates are produced in areas of the brain which are involved in the suppression of pain.

Runner's high

Endurance sports have long been seen as reducing stress, relieving anxiety, enhancing mood and decreasing the perception of pain. The high that accompanies jogging even led to the creation of its own term, 'runner's high'. Yet the cause of these positive effects on the senses was not clear until now. The most popular theory was and still is the 'Endorphin Hypothesis', which claimed that there was increased production of the body's own opioids in the brain. However, since until now direct proof of this theory could not be provided; for technical reasons, it was a constant source of controversial discussions in scientific circles. The result was that the myth of 'runner's high through endorphins' lived on.

Endorphin hypothesis confirmed

Scientists from the fields of Nuclear Medicine, Neurology and Anaesthesia at the Technische Universität München (TUM) and the University of Bonn have now subjected the endorphin theory to closer scrutiny. Ten athletes were scanned before and after a two-hour long-distance run using an imaging technique called positron emission tomography (PET). For this they used the radioactive substance [18F]diprenorphine ([18F]FDPN), which binds to the opiate receptors in the brain and hence competes with endorphins.

'The more endorphins are produced in the athlete's brain, the more opiate receptors are blocked,' says Professor Henning Boecker, who coordinated the research at TUM and who is now in charge of the 'Functional Neuroimaging Group' at the Dept. of Radiology, University Hospital Bonn. And further: 'Respectively the opioid receptor binding of the [18F]FDPN decreases, since there is a direct competition between endorphins in the brain and the injected ligand'.

By comparing the images before and after two hours of long distance running the study could demonstrate a significantly decreased binding of the [18F]FDPN-ligand. This is a strong argument in favour of an increased production of the body's own opioids while doing long-distance running. 'We could validate for the first time an endorphin driven runner's high and identify the affected brain areas', states Boecker. 'It's interesting to see that the affected brain areas were preferentially located in prefrontal and limbic brain regions which are known to play a key role in emotional processing. Moreover, we observed a significant increase of the euphoria and happiness ratings compared to the ratings before the running exercise.'

Professor Thomas Tölle, who for several years has been head of a research group called 'Functional Imaging of Pain' at TU Munich, adds: 'Our evaluations show that the more intensively the high is experienced, the lower the binding of [18F]FDPN was in the PET scan. And this means that the ratings of euphoria and happiness correlated directly with the release of the endorphins.' This has clear implications for those who suffer from chronic pain. 'The fact that the endorphins are also released in areas of the brain that are at the centre of the suppression of pain was not quite unexpected, but even this proof was missing. Now we hope that these images will also impress our pain patients and will motivate them to take up sports training within their available limits,' he concluded.

Running down the pain?

It is well known that endorphins facilitate the body's own pain suppression by influencing the way the body passes on pain and processes it in the nervous system and brain. The increased production of endorphins resulting from long-distance running could also serve as the body's own pain-killer, a potent potential therapeutic option. 'Now we are very curious about the results of an imaging study using Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging which we are currently carrying out in Bonn in order to investigate the influence of long-distance running on the processing of pain directly,' Professor Boecker says.

Further research is required so as to investigate the exact effects on depression and states of anxiety but also on possible aspects which may promote addiction. That is why the relation between genetic disposition and opiate receptor distribution in the brain is being currently investigated at TU Munich. 'A scary thought,' Thomas Tölle comments, 'if we ran because our genes wanted us to do so.' The first step towards researching these connections has now been made.

The results of the study " The Runner's High: Opioidergic Mechanisms in the Human Brain" are published in the journal 'Cerebral Cortex'. This research was supported by the German Research Association, as well as the Federal Ministry of Education and Research and the German Association of Neuropathic Pain. 

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