Does stretching really lower the risk of sports injury? Sports Injury Bulletin has a really great article that discusses all of the current research, including the difficulty of avoiding the inevitable bias in cohort studies.

The New York marathon did a fantastic job with the photos. You can search by runner name or bib number. For example, here are the photos for Jeff, including several of him crossing the finish line.

They clearly had some sort of automated system set up, likely connected to the wireless dongle that the runners had to wear on their shoes. The only way this could be improved, IMHO, is if the individual pages for the photos indicated the time the photo was taken, the distance the person had run, and maybe even a GPS location.

The photo prices, however, are ridiculous. The best value might be the $90 photo CD, but only if you were hypothetically very happy about the photos taken of you.

Flickr is fun, and the tag system is perfectly done. For example, check out the photos tagged with marathon.

Some other good photos at amitgupta.com.

The goal: Running a marathon before my 30th birthday. The next step: A 10k. The New York Road Runners call the 10k the “perfect racing distance for most runners”. The NYC Marathon training schedule for first-time marathoners might be a good place to start, even if I’m not looking at an actual 26-miler until next October at the very earliest possible.

The Darien Road Race would be a good one to run (trying to stay in the running-for-charity theme), but I don’t think I’d be ready for that by next weekend.

Katy, M, Nomad, and I — in that order — ran a 5k road race this morning. Congrats to Katy for getting 49th place, placing her in the top half of the finishers!

Update 09-15: Here are our results: