Monday, September 7, 2009
Paula Radcliffe's training routine
Paula Radcliffe's training routine
Athletics: Paula Radcliffe's gruelling training routine makes her slightly comic, but you still have to marvel at her, says Peta Bee.
There is little you can do but marvel when you watch Paula Radcliffe run. At her bouncebackability, her tunnel vision, her ferociousness and her sweetness. At her laborious running style and her relentless speed. And at how long it must take her to get ready in a morning because, hell, she must be one high-maintenance chick.
From what has been made public of her pre-race routine, Radcliffe gets up, has a bowl of porridge (scientists says it's low glycaemic index) and a sports drink (energy-boosting) before putting on her running kit (ultra-lightweight, heat-dispelling), a Breathe Right nasal strip (increases airflow to the lungs), two adhesive back straps (supports the muscles around her spine), a pair of compression socks (reduces muscle vibration in the calves), specially designed Nike trainers (prevents soreness in the legs), a titanium necklace (wards of stress fatigue and improves blood flow) and sunglasses.
Not that it ends there. When it's over she has an ice bath (heals microscopic tears in muscle fibres), a massage (removes waste products and lactic acid from her legs), rubs on some emu oil (the elixir made from fatty tissue on the emu's back has potent healing properties), drinks a glass of bright green wheatgrass juice (full of nutrients), has a handful of vitamin supplements, eats some ostrich meat (low in fat, high in iron) and, finally one assumes, sits down. It would be no surprise if she chose a chair that cooks her dinner while working on the acupressure points in her feet.
What is happening to Radcliffe is nothing new. There is a point along the continuum of celebrity, be it that of sports stars or otherwise, where a dalliance with odd behaviour becomes troublingly all consuming and when, on the image front at least, things start to veer downhill. Usually, it is a progression so subtle that you barely notice the transition from acceptable to somewhat questionable. But let's just say it is the stage before Jacko went completely wacko, between him having the occasional facial tweak to him adopting a chimpanzee and moving into an oxygen capsule.
David Beckham reached this place after the sarong and before the second tattoo. The Williams sisters are well and truly there. Tiger Woods is on his way. And so, it seems, is Radcliffe. We could forgive her the socks, nose plasters and even the emu oil as endearing eccentricities. But the back support and titanium neckwear were steps too far. Even, it seems, for the adoring fans who log on to her official website.
Apparently they watched in bewilderment as she lined up for the 10,000 metres final in Helsinki adorned with her technological trinkets and tried to make out what exactly it was she was wearing around her neck. A bicycle lock got the majority vote. But there were undertones of exasperation in their chat-room exchange as they pondered what might come next and calculated how much quicker she might run if she ditched the lot. But there can be no turning back.
Withdraw into a world where you devote more and more attention to less and less and eventually all that remains to focus on is yourself. Such self-absorption is necessary to some extent in sport, particularly in individual events like Radcliffe's which require singlemindedness in the extreme. But retreat too far from the ordinariness of daily life, as she appears to have done, and there is the risk that you begin to lose perspective of what's normal and what's verging on crackpot.
When experts in alternative medicine were consulted by the BBC to comment on Radcliffe's Helsinki performance-enhancers they concluded that not one of the props she used had a scrap of clinical evidence to support them. They could offer only a psychological boost to someone who believed that they work, the university researchers said. After Athens she consulted a naturopath who held metal rods over items of food to determine which she should exclude from her diet. As a result she has cut out wheat, dairy, gluten, tomatoes, coffee and grapes.
She now eats wheat-free pasta the night before a race. How Hollywood. It is a slippery slope to celebrititis, and Radcliffe, the nation's darling, appears to be on it. Come back Paula, before it's too late.
© Guardian News & Media 2008
Published: 8/21/2005
Athletics: Paula Radcliffe's gruelling training routine makes her slightly comic, but you still have to marvel at her, says Peta Bee.
There is little you can do but marvel when you watch Paula Radcliffe run. At her bouncebackability, her tunnel vision, her ferociousness and her sweetness. At her laborious running style and her relentless speed. And at how long it must take her to get ready in a morning because, hell, she must be one high-maintenance chick.
From what has been made public of her pre-race routine, Radcliffe gets up, has a bowl of porridge (scientists says it's low glycaemic index) and a sports drink (energy-boosting) before putting on her running kit (ultra-lightweight, heat-dispelling), a Breathe Right nasal strip (increases airflow to the lungs), two adhesive back straps (supports the muscles around her spine), a pair of compression socks (reduces muscle vibration in the calves), specially designed Nike trainers (prevents soreness in the legs), a titanium necklace (wards of stress fatigue and improves blood flow) and sunglasses.
Not that it ends there. When it's over she has an ice bath (heals microscopic tears in muscle fibres), a massage (removes waste products and lactic acid from her legs), rubs on some emu oil (the elixir made from fatty tissue on the emu's back has potent healing properties), drinks a glass of bright green wheatgrass juice (full of nutrients), has a handful of vitamin supplements, eats some ostrich meat (low in fat, high in iron) and, finally one assumes, sits down. It would be no surprise if she chose a chair that cooks her dinner while working on the acupressure points in her feet.
What is happening to Radcliffe is nothing new. There is a point along the continuum of celebrity, be it that of sports stars or otherwise, where a dalliance with odd behaviour becomes troublingly all consuming and when, on the image front at least, things start to veer downhill. Usually, it is a progression so subtle that you barely notice the transition from acceptable to somewhat questionable. But let's just say it is the stage before Jacko went completely wacko, between him having the occasional facial tweak to him adopting a chimpanzee and moving into an oxygen capsule.
David Beckham reached this place after the sarong and before the second tattoo. The Williams sisters are well and truly there. Tiger Woods is on his way. And so, it seems, is Radcliffe. We could forgive her the socks, nose plasters and even the emu oil as endearing eccentricities. But the back support and titanium neckwear were steps too far. Even, it seems, for the adoring fans who log on to her official website.
Apparently they watched in bewilderment as she lined up for the 10,000 metres final in Helsinki adorned with her technological trinkets and tried to make out what exactly it was she was wearing around her neck. A bicycle lock got the majority vote. But there were undertones of exasperation in their chat-room exchange as they pondered what might come next and calculated how much quicker she might run if she ditched the lot. But there can be no turning back.
Withdraw into a world where you devote more and more attention to less and less and eventually all that remains to focus on is yourself. Such self-absorption is necessary to some extent in sport, particularly in individual events like Radcliffe's which require singlemindedness in the extreme. But retreat too far from the ordinariness of daily life, as she appears to have done, and there is the risk that you begin to lose perspective of what's normal and what's verging on crackpot.
When experts in alternative medicine were consulted by the BBC to comment on Radcliffe's Helsinki performance-enhancers they concluded that not one of the props she used had a scrap of clinical evidence to support them. They could offer only a psychological boost to someone who believed that they work, the university researchers said. After Athens she consulted a naturopath who held metal rods over items of food to determine which she should exclude from her diet. As a result she has cut out wheat, dairy, gluten, tomatoes, coffee and grapes.
She now eats wheat-free pasta the night before a race. How Hollywood. It is a slippery slope to celebrititis, and Radcliffe, the nation's darling, appears to be on it. Come back Paula, before it's too late.
© Guardian News & Media 2008
Published: 8/21/2005
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