Running in the dark and hills and marathon training

As I prepare for the Akron Marathon I am determined not to be burned by the hills from mile 15-22, and my training has mirrored this. I am incorporating much more hill running, and today to simulate the race I ran a 6 mile tempo run and then hit the hills fatigued to get used to the pain. It worked wonderfully, and I will probably do it again. The most exciting part of the run came at the beginning. I was running down a significant hill near my house. It is such a hill, that the sidewalk has stairs to help people go up and down. I usually don't run down the stairs, but try to stay with the steep slope of the road. I wear a red flashing light when I run in the dark as to be seen by all the oncoming traffic.

I was headed down such hill in the wee hours of the morning and noticed that a car was coming up, and of course it had its headlights on because it was dark. I moved from the road to the stairs to avoid the possibility of a head on collision with the vehicle (a battle that I would surely lose) and continued on my merry way. As the car passed me (again, with its headlights on) the passenger leaned out his window and yelled "Booo!"

Seriously.

Who passes a runner running in the opposite direction of their vehicle at 5 am and offer commentary that is appropriate for a sneak attack. Personally, I would have felt better if he said something derogatory towards me or my family than this. I could understand if they were passing me from behind with their lights off and the engine off in stealth mode, but head on? Give me a break.

Kinesio-tape

While watching the Olympics over the past weeks, I have noticed a little bit of kinesio-tape on some of the athletes in the events.  To begin with, I do not use it, nor do I know too much about it.  Do I believe it "works?" Probably, almost everything does a little bit.  While in chiropractic college we had a little seminar/presentation about kinesio-tape.  This presentation was given to chiropractic students and chiropractors (a population that has a greater than average understanding of human physiology and biomechanics), and the presenter focused on the fact that professional teams and athletes use the tape.  In fact, she had a handout with pictures of prominent athletes who use the tape.  For me, I would rather know the science, theory, and thought behind a therapy than who uses it.  As long as the idea is logical and reasonable, I don't have any issues with the procedure and consider the validity of it.  That particular presentation just turned me off to the idea because it was presented to me as if I would be impressed by the individuals receiving it.