Indeed, training regimens haven't changed much since the early days of the running boom in the late 1960s.

WSJ: Breaking the Two-Hour Marathon Barrier

But don't expect the running boom to grind to a halt.

WSJ: Endurance Sports: Studies on Older Endurance Athletes Suggest the Fittest Reap Few Health Benefits

The long-running housing market boom could turn out to be a speculative bubble whose bursting damages economic confidence and growth.

ECONOMIST: Not so rosy | The

In September 2004, years before the iPhone app boom, the service launched a mobile version for PDAs running on Microsoft Pocket PC 2003 and using Wi-Fi which, at the time, was a very rare commodity.

BBC: Profile: How Skype connected

The 1970s gave us the jogging boom and a New York Times bestseller called The Complete Book of Running.

FORBES: Apple The Outlier

But they have been among the worst sinners during the Asian boom years, investing with no apparent regard for economic return and, collectively, running up debts five times the size of their equity.

ECONOMIST: A survey of Asian business