Slower Race Research Articles

Losing the slow race: How deer hinder growth, survival, and regeneration of juvenile hemlocks (Tsuga canadensis)

White-tailed deer can limit both growth and survival in slow-growing, shade-tolerant tree species. We monitored 1,100 juvenile hemlocks (Tsuga canadensis) for up to 20 years at 54 sites in northern Wisconsin and Michigan to document causes of recruitment failure. These sites include public and private forestlands and First Nation reservations with distinct approaches to forest and wildlife management. We assessed deer impacts experimentally by protecting half of the juveniles from deer and observationally by tracking unprotected individuals at sites with various deer densities. We estimated local deer and hare presence and density using repeated pellet counts, which best predicted the survival and growth of juvenile hemlocks. Caged individuals out-survived unprotected ones (35.2 vs. 15.0y estimated half-lives). For the fastest-growing quartiles, transition times through the “molar zone” of vulnerability to deer browse (heights 5–200 cm) were 33.4 and 77.7y for protected vs. unprotected juveniles. Deer browsing strongly reduces both survival and growth, allowing us to compare estimates of these processes and their ratio among sites and cohorts. The “Regeneration Ratio” of half-life to growth averaged 1.06 for the top quartile of protected hemlock juveniles vs. 0.19 for juveniles exposed to deer. Ratios below 1.0 suggest risks to hemlock regeneration while values below 0.50 signal likely failure. Forest and wildlife managers must limit deer impacts if hemlock trees and stands are to remain viable components of the region’s forests.

The Slow Race: Achieving Equity Through Legislative and Agency Minority Impact Statements

The Slow Race: Achieving Equity Through Legislative and Agency Minority Impact Statements

Risk factors for not finishing an ultramarathon: 4-year study in 23,996 race starters, SAFER XXI.

Limited data support prerace medical screening to identify risk factors for not finishing an endurance running race. The aim of the study was to determine risk factors associated with not finishing an ultramarathon. A prospective, cross-sectional study of Two Oceans ultramarathon (56 km) race starters who completed a prerace medical screening questionnaire. Race day environmental conditions were recorded on race day. Univariate analyses of risk factors associated with the did-not-finish (DNF) included race day factors and prerace medical screening history. Risk factors for DNF amongst 23,996 starters during the 56 km race included older age and females (P<0.0001). After adjusting for age and sex, the following were significant univariate risk factors: fewer years of running (P<0.0001), less previous race experience (P<0.0001), less training/racing per week (P=0.0002), lower average weekly training distance (P=0.0016), slower race vs. training speed (P<0.0001), lack of allergies (P=0.0100) and average wet-bulb globe temperature (P<0.0001). Females, older age, training-related factors (less training/racing, average weekly training distance, race vs. training speed) and average wet-bulb temperature, were risk factors for not finishing an ultramarathon. The results may not only assist runners and coaches in race preparation, but also have clinical implications for the medical planning prior to races.

Memory Lapses—Winning the Slow Race

Pre-existing humoral immunity can impact immune responses to heterologous infections. In this issue of Immunity, Wong etal. reveal that memory B cells, while failing to re-enter the germinal center, create an affinity-restricted, diversified B cell repertoire for rapid plasma blast responses. Their findings have important implications to vaccine design.

Racing Fast and Slow: Defining the Tactical Behavior That Differentiates Medalists in Elite Men's 1,500 m Championship Racing.

Background: 1,500 m running has long been a blue ribbon event of track championship racing. The eventual medalists employ common tactical behaviors such as a fast sustained pace from the start (gun-to-tape), or, slow initial laps that precede a precisely timed race kick. Before the kick, there are positional changes caused by surging, that can go uncharacterized. The inter-relationship of surge events, tactical positioning, and kick execution may have important implications for eventual medal winning outcomes and require further definition.Methods: In a randomized order, three middle-distance running experts were provided publically available video (YouTube) of 16 men's 1,500 m championship races across, European, World and Olympic championships. Each expert determined the occurrence of surges (defined as any point in the 1,500 m after the first 300 m where an athlete repositions by ≥3 places; or noticeably dictates a raise in the pace from the front) and the race kick. Following a second level verification of expert observations, tactical behaviors (quantity and distance marker within each race) mean distance from the finish were compared between fast (≤3:34.00, n = 5), medium (>3:34.00– ≤3:41.99, n = 7) and slow (≥3:42.00, n = 4) race categories.Results: Before the race kick, there were more surges in slow (5 ± 1.7, mean ±90% confidence limits) vs. fast races (1 ± 0.4, very large difference, very likely). The final surge before the race kick occurred earlier in fast (704 ± 133 m from the finish) vs. medium (427 ± 83 m, large difference, most likely), and slow races (370 ± 137 m, large difference, most likely). At initiation of the race kick in fast races, large positional differences were found between eventual gold (2 ± 1.2; likely) and silver (2.2 ± 1.6; likely) vs. bronze medalists (4.4 ± 1.2). In slow races, positional differences were unclear between eventual gold (4.3 ± 4.7), silver (4.8 ± 4.8) and bronze medalists (5.3 ± 1.5). Regardless of category, the race kick occurred on the last lap, with unclear differences between fast 244 ± 92 m medium 243 ± 56 m and slow 236 ± 142 m races.Conclusions: Presenting tactical behaviors by race categorization (slow, medium, fast race times), provides a novel understanding of the nuance of racing tactics. The present findings highlight the importance of considering within race athlete decision making across multiple-race scenarios during championship preparation.

The Magpie: A Key

The Magpie:A Key Kerrin McCadden (bio) One magpie always means watch out.One magpie in the yard means stay in the house.Two magpies in the lane mean don't go farther than the roadside.A magpie walking with its beak open, but quiet, means go out, but come home quickly.A magpie calling means something will happen en route.A magpie on the clothesline means watch your back.Two magpies in the hedge mean don't worry about what the sparrow that hopped inside your open door means.A magpie flying, or a tiding of magpies, means place large bets against tomorrow.A tiding of magpies spotting the sloped field means the old man up the road is lonelier right now than you are.A magpie on the fence means leave the mail in the box.Two magpies, one flapping its wings, mean yesterday was better than today.A magpie landing in the dooryard while you are looking out the window means your systems are working. Steady on.A magpie mentioned by a neighbor who stops by means what you said first made poor sense.A magpie pecking at the gravel means work harder on how to speak after long silences.Two magpies walking together away from the house mean draw the curtains and the door. Something you don't know is on its way.A magpie under the rhododendron means you have not hurt anyone, or questions and answers have come apart.Two magpies in the old garden mean choices are long-shots. [End Page 8] A magpie, two magpies in a rough wind or rain mean making anything, or minding anything is a slow race home.Two magpies on the stable roof mean the days have packed their bags.One magpie making a nest has stolen what you love. [End Page 9] Kerrin McCadden Kerrin McCadden is the author of Landscape with Plywood Silhouettes (New Issues Poetry and Prose, 2014), winner of the New Issues Poetry Prize and the Vermont Book Award; and the chapbook Keep This to Yourself (Button Poetry, 2020), winner of the Button Poetry Prize. She is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship and the Sustainable Arts Foundation Writing Award. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Best American Poetry, Poem-a-Day, American Poetry Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Los Angeles Review, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. She lives in South Burlington, Vermont. Copyright © 2019 Middlebury College Publications

Conversion index for running on different indoor track and field facility types

There are many variations of sizes for indoor running tracks, which have caused difficulty in setting fair and equitable qualifying standards for championship competitions. The aim of this study was to determine event- and gender-specific conversions by indoor track facility type for standard running events ranging from 200 to 5000 m. All performances for running events were obtained from 2010 to 2015 using the Track and Field Results Reporting System. Conversions between track types were determined as factor differences using a mixed modelling approach in SAS for gender and event separately. A total of 325,074 performances (162,176 male, 162,898 female) on 184 flat, 19 banked, 36 oversized and 21 undersized tracks were included in the analysis. All conversion standards with 90% confidence intervals for men and women presented were clear. For all events and both genders, converting from an undersized track to all other track types resulted in faster race times (conversion < 1.0), flat to banked and flat to oversized tracks also resulted in faster race times (conversion < 1.0) and banked and oversized to flat tracks resulted in slower race times (conversion > 1.0). Overall, there is a significant track effect between facility types for both genders and most facility types.

Corrupt Bureaucrats, Bad Managers, and the Slow Race between Education and Technology

​We study a developing economy in which the representative firm’s production function exhibits complementarities between human capital and the available level of technology. The firm invests in the acquisition of new technology, while employees decide how much human capital to acquire. The rate of human capital accumulation positively affects the economy’s growth rate, and therefore in our baseline case a reform that improves the educational system boosts growth. An important caveat, however, is that the absence of robust institutions may lead to lax enforcement of property rights and limit the incentives for firms to invest in new technology. The lack of investment in technology constrains demand for human capital and undermines the success of the education reform. It can even lead to a brain drain as individuals take advantage of the education reform and then move to an economy with higher demand for their acquired skills. We also consider our model findings with respect to the real-world case of Russia. Our main conclusion is that measures to improve the school system need to be accompanied by other institution-building measures that enhance property rights, promote good management practices and reduce incentives to engage in corrupt behaviors.

Yellow‐cedar: climate change and natural history at odds

Yellow‐cedar: climate change and natural history at odds

Gait Characteristics Over the Course of a Race in Recreational Marathon Competitors

We analyzed gait and function of the supporting limb in participants of a marathon race at three stages: prerace, midrace (18 km), and near the end of the race (36 km). We confirmed that the most successful runners were able to maintain running speed for the duration of the race with little change in speed or gait. Speed slowed progressively during the race for those with slower race times, but stride frequency–stride length relationships remained normal for the speed they ran. These findings differ from most lab-based studies of fatigue, in which runners are forced to match a constant preset treadmill speed. Small changes in maximum ground force were seen in both slow- and fast-running participants as race end approached.

Claire Bateman's Poetry of Matter and Spirit

Claire Bateman published her second and third books of poetry almost simultaneously in 1998: Friction (Portland, Oregon: Eighth Mountain Press) and At the Funeral of the Ether (Greenville, South Carolina: Ninety-Six Press). Like most of us, Bateman had some difficulty getting a second collection published, in the years following Bicycle Slow Race (Wesleyan, 1991), and she accumulated a large manuscript which became Friction (124 pages); At the Funeral of the Ether (64 pages) collects even more recent poems. Bicycle Slow Race was a moderately good book, I thought, but it didn't especially grab me. two new books are something else. There is a greatness caroming around in Bateman's two new books, a greatness flashing within and between many of the poems. I say this uneasily, because I try to maintain a conservative and even dourly guarded relation to the idea of greatness, cherishing it as a possibility even in the po-mo postcolonial worldwidewebbed carnivalesque cacophony of post-twentieth American culture, while remaining intensely skeptical of the claims made for most big-name (and middlesized-name) poets of the Seventies-Eighties-Nineties. A greatness in the work of Claire Bateman. Uneasily I say it, also because I've found myself hazarding the g-word in the past year with reference to several poems by Larry Levis, and The Glass Essay by Anne Carson. Am I getting soft? One indicator of the presence of greatness is that you turn to great writers instinctively in your effort to take the measure of the work at hand. Blake, Shelley, Whitman, Dickinson--such giants walked in my musing while I read Friction and At the Funeral of the Ether; not because of any facile allusions by Bateman but because of her fierce blatant obsessive engagement with the eternal theme of the relation between matter and spirit. Another g-indicator is that you want to ponder the poems over and over, you want to think and re-think about them, you're not content to rest in a cloudy overall impression; you sense there's a meaning waiting to be gathered, as you re-read the poetry, whose richness goes beyond the ideas you've had about any three or four individual poems. Of course, several big vague things would have to be said (about alteration of one's essential sense of life, for instance) if the task were to define greatness, but luckily my hope now is just to show why Claire Bateman's two new books got me started on this g-buzz. everyone they started out enormous, even, some say, infinite. You could travel no, longer-- your whole life-- on a single one, never even catching a glimpse of the punctures marking entrance & exit. of course, things are different; the eyes of the Lord run to & fro throughout the earth seeking a wound small enough to match. This poem from At the Funeral of the Ether, though considerably shorter than most of Bateman's poems, displays characteristics which we'll notice frequently in her work. It seems to offer itself disarmingly as a transparent summarizing declaration of a familiar state of affairs-- As everyone knows, Now, of course, things are different... But its tone of conviction turns out to have an occult quality, professing an awareness of reality on such a vast scale, and with such strange assurance about its metaphor, that the too-popular word visionary seems called for. Like Blake's on, Mock on, Voltaire, Rousseau or Yeats's News for the Delphic Oracle, Bateman's poem startles us with its unexplained explanatory authority, whose confidence seems to disdain any decorative elaboration. Stitches is cosmogonic and cosmological, proposing an account of the making of the world and the principle of the world's ongoing condition. …

Slow balloon race

This is the first of a proposed series of columns presenting Physics Olympics “challenges,” activities that can be adapted as classroom laboratory experiments. The slow balloon race is based on Archimedes’ principle.

Record performances at the Boston Marathon: biometeorological factors.

Air temperature and relative humidity have long been suspected of affecting the performance of marathon runners. Though these factors are important in their extremes, we show that other factors are even more indicative of race performances. Performances of the top 3 finishers in the last 30 Boston Marathons were correlated with hourly meteorological data for each race day. These 90 individual performances were classified as: record breaking performances (31), average performances (35), and unusually slow performances (24). The factors that help predict record breaking and unusually slow performances are: (i) wet bulb temperature, (ii) percent sky cover, and (iii) presence or absence of a light precipitation. Record breaking performances are characterized by a wet bulb temperature of less than 7.8 degrees C, and 100% sky cover. A light drizzle is also conducive to better performances. On the other hand, unusually low performances are accompanied by a wet bulb temperature of greater than 7.8 degrees C, and a sky cover of 50% or less. No light precipitation was recorded on any of the unusually slow race days. A graphic analysis clearly shows these relationships to exist. In addition, a multiple regression analysis confirms the importance of these variables. The authors advise that these are reliable predictors; however, when considering marathon races held in various geographical regions and differing climatic regimes, the exact numerical thresholds used here may not apply.

Impact of race pace on development of hyponatraemia in full- and half-marathoners

Objective. Prior studies of full-marathon participants have demonstrated a higher incidence of hyponatraemia in runners with completion times of 4 hours or more. Our primary aim was to determine if slower pace is associated with increased prevalence of hyponatraemia. Secondly, we evaluated the prevalence of hyponatraemia in full-marathoners v. halfmarathoners.Methods. This observational, cross-sectional study comprised consenting runners in the 26.2 With Donna, The National Marathon to Finish Breast Cancer, in Jacksonville Beach, Florida, February 2008. On race day, participants completed a questionnaire, provided finger-stick blood samples, and were weighed both pre- and post-race.Results. A significant negative association was found between pace and post-race sodium level (p&lt;0.001). A negative correlation was found between finishing time and post-race sodium level (p&lt;0.001). The prevalence of post-race hyponatraemia was 4% (4/106) among half-marathoners and 13% (12/89) among full-marathoners (P=0.02). An inverse correlation was found between sodium change and weight change, significant in fullmarathoners (r=-0.55, p&lt;0.001) but not half-marathoners (r=- 0.23, p=0.042).Conclusions. Slower race pace and longer finishing times were associated with lower post-race sodium levels. Full-marathoners had a significantly higher prevalence of hyponatraemia. The development of hyponatraemia was associated with weight gain. Our data indicate that the relationship between post-race sodium concentration and pace differs according to the distance of the event. We can extrapolate from this data that longer racedistance with increased availability of fluid stations combined with a slower pace may increase the risk of developing exerciseinduced hyponatraemia.