Well, after a tough few months of running, I came into the last day of 2012 with a short run on the schedule. I ran a four-miler at lunch and then realized just how close I was to 1500 miles for the year...I was two and a half miles away!
So I strapped the shoes back on after work and ran another 2.5. Probably not what the still recovering ankle really needed, but come on! I was so close!
Of course, the sad fact is that I ended September with almost 1400 miles in the books. I should have been between 1800 and 2000 miles for the year. Ah well, it will give me something to work on next year. And considering that I ended 2011 with just under 1000 total miles, really, 1500 doesn't sound that bad.
I'll be back soon with a more detailed year in review.
Wow, I actually did three runs this week. First time in a looooong time that I've managed three training runs in a week. Ankle still feels good. I think we might be a "go" for 2013!
Let's Race!
-Green Text for Trail Runs
-Red Text for Marathons and Half Marathons
-Blue Text for Triathlons and Duathlons
-Orange Text for everything else, the normal 5k, 10k, etc
Yes, yes, I know it's the off-season and all, but we're almost to 2013. It's time to get off the couch and get going again. Dust off the bike. Break out the trail shoes. Pull the wetsuit out of the closet. OK, put the wetsuit back. We're not ready for that yet.
But if you're feeling like it's time to start thinking about triathlon again, Athletes Lounge is right there with you. On January 18th and 19th, they've got two full days of triathlon goodness waiting for you.
Pro triathletes will be there to give tips, tricks and helpful hints: Chris Boudreaux, Chris Bagg, Damian Hill and Eric Lagerstrom. There will be discussions, drills, technique exercises and nutrition guidance. All for half a c-note - $50 and you're in. Not bad.
Well, I've been on the shelf for quite a while now. I'm just jonesing to get back out on the roads, the trails, the treadmills..whatever, I don't even care! I just want to run! I'll be spending much of January and February trying to get back into decent running shape, then spending nine weeks to get seriously ready for the Corvallis Half Marathon on April 14th. Looking for a new PR there.
Hope your off-season training is going well. There are a few races to choose from if you'd rather get your miles in with some other folks.
Let's race!
-Green Text for Trail Runs
-Red Text for Marathons and Half Marathons
-Blue Text for Triathlons and Duathlons
-Orange Text for everything else, the normal 5k, 10k, etc
This month's Best Running Song comes from a fantastic, fresh-sounding band from Iceland. Yes, Iceland. The band is Of Monsters and Men and the song is "Little Talks."
This band reminds me quite a bit of a former Best Running Song winner, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros. Both bands have amazing vocal interplay between the male and female lead vocalists, and neither band is afraid to mix in a bunch of instruments, including horns and accordions.
Here's a live version of "Little Talks" with a bad-ass trumpet solo.
And another fantastic running song from Of Monsters and Men is "Mountain Sound."
Here's a live version. The male lead vocalist, Ragnar Porhallsson, has such a distinct and wonderful voice. I love running to these songs. Hope you do as well.
Yes, it's that time of year again. The races are pretty much done for the year. Most of us in the running world are taking a little time off for the holidays before getting back into full-time training in 2013. Or we're doing some maintenance running to keep the legs and lungs ready for the planned Spring races.
Whatever you're doing at the moment, I know one thing is true: you've piled up a few race shirts over the last 12 months of 2012. I know my "running" dresser drawer is getting a little tight. So I've started the yearly purge of shirts and shorts and socks that need to go. And how do I decide what stays and what goes? Simple.
I work out like normal, and when I'm done, and headed to the showers at Dixon, I lift up my shirt and take a real good whiff. If it smells like a furry mammal crawled into my shirt and died of old age, then I just toss it into the garbage right then and there. And as much as I love tech running shirts, after a certain number of sweaty workouts and subsequent washes they just can't be saved any longer.
They acquire a true funk.
So far, I've tossed three shirts. And I've got a notion that one pair of shorts and maybe one or two more shirts will be destined to join their buddies before the winter is over.
Hey, have a good run out there...and don't forget to smell good doing it!
Pretty slim pickings this week...and most of them are ultras, so I hope you like running on frozen trails!
Let's race!
-Green Text for Trail Runs
-Red Text for Marathons and Half Marathons
-Blue Text for Triathlons and Duathlons
-Orange Text for everything else, the normal 5k, 10k, etc
I haven't run since the CIM on December 2nd. Furthermore, I have no plans to run this month. At all. Furthermore, the weather sucks. Furthermore, I plan to eat every cookie, piece of pie, Dairy Queen Blizzard, and slice of cake that I see between now and January 1st, 2013. Furthermore, once I get to the new year, I plan to be a big, fat cow, so I'll have something to work on once I'm running again.
Sounds pretty bad, right?
Well, there is one reason to enjoy the season...besides the baked goods...there's no better time to slap on your warmest PJ's, snuggle up on the couch (nearby fireplace optional, but preferred), and read a good book.
These are "small" crime novels with absolutely bigger than life characters. I wouldn't want to live in the Mississippi Delta area for any reason, but I wouldn't mind spending some time there with characters Nick Reid and Desmond, who star in both novels. These guys are funny, brutal, honest and all-American.
Gavin really has some talent, plenty of dry wit and can turn an original phrase like nobody's business. Here's a short interview with Gavin.
It's a new year. It's 2013! Let's hope you're healthy and ready to run coming into the new year. Let's make it a good one.
Goals anyone? Same one for me this year as in 2012...Boston! My two marathons didn't work out so well last year. Hoping for bigger and better things this year.
Let's Race!
-Green Text for Trail Runs
-Red Text for Marathons and Half Marathons
-Blue Text for Triathlons and Duathlons
-Orange Text for everything else, the normal 5k, 10k, etc
I thought of the first line of Moby Dick more than once on this swirling maelstrom of a race course at the 2012 California International Marathon. To further butcher a good metaphor, by the end of the race, I wasn't sure if I was Ishmael or the Great White Whale...
First, let's take care of some business.
If you're just looking for results, here they are. They're only unofficial results until Wednesday, I believe, then they should get the official results up.
And here's an article on the winners: Daniel Tapia and Alisha Williams, the first two American winners at CIM since 1999 and 2000, respectively.
And if you recall, I had wondered publicly if one could run a marathon on no training. Well, according to my personal sample size of one: yes, you can. But it won't be fast.
So let's go back about a week before the race. It wasn't a secret - the weather forecast did not look good for the 2012 CIM. But it's one thing to look at an online forecast a week before the race.
And it's another to look out your Sacramento hotel window at 5:00am the morning of the race. The rain was coming down in sheets...and the sheets were being blown sideways by huge gusts of wind. It was ugly.
Here's a photo album of the damage the storms had done in the Sacramento area in the days before the CIM.
The third and final of the storms in that series to hit Sacramento was hitting, you guessed it, on Saturday night and Sunday morning.
But what to do except run the damn thing? Well, if I had lived in Sacramento, I may have skipped the whole thing. But I already flew down, got a hotel, rental car, etc, etc...I was running it.
So I put on my finest definitely-not-rain-proof-running-outfit and headed for the buses to take me to the start line. Jen snapped a picture of me in the hotel, looking like a kid heading to his first day of school in a new town, dry and happy.
So Jen drove me as far as she could, then dropped me off. I ran through the driving wind and rain, which in the dark before sunrise, had a scary biblical quality to it, and jumped on a bus to take me to the start line. There were supposed to be tents and such near the start line, but the wind was howling and garbage was flying through the streets; you really couldn't see much of anything. I scrambled to a strip mall next to a gas station, where I actually found decent shelter from the wind and rain. I vowed to stay there until 6:55am, five minutes before the starting gun.
In this photo gallery from the Sacramento Bee, the gas station in Photo #1 is just across from where I was hiding pre-race, and the shelter in Photo #2, is where I was huddled, trying to keep warm.
At 6:55 exactly, I sprinted out to the start line and got close to the 4:00 pace group. I tried to hide behind people, but the course started out directly, head-on, into the wind that was gusting up to 40mph. There was just nowhere to hide. See Photos # 13 and 14 in the gallery just above to see what I'm talking about.
They played the Star Spangled Banner, gave us a couple "good lucks" and we were off! The first two miles were IN. SANE. The wind and rain was hitting your face like hail, so you had to keep your head down, and hopefully had a hat on, so you could keep some rain off your face. Only that made it so you didn't see the garbage bags, gloves, t-shirts and sweatshirts that were coming back like missiles, blown by the wind. Cardboard garbage cans and plastic garbage bags were flying around. People were jumping and dodging trying to miss branches and palm fronds down in the street.
Crazy.
The wind was coming from the South, so as you can see on my Garmin map, it was either in our faces or blowing sideways across us the whole way. It was never behind us, on this point to point course, so it never helped us.
As befitting my horrid last two months of training, I went out fairly well, then faded oh so quickly right around the half marathon mark. I wanted to stay with the four hour pace group as long as possible and actually slowly moved up with the 3:55 group for quite a while. But after 13 miles, I faded back.
There were huge streams flying down the gutters during the entire race and every couple miles, there would be lakes that covered the entire street, like this.
There were also two sections where there were rivers - I'm not kidding here, these were 4-6 inch deep rivers flowing across the street. There was absolutely no way to get around them. You had to go right through them. If you were thinking right before you got to those rivers, "well, we can't get any wetter," you were wrong, weren't you?
Lots of good signs along the way, but my favorite was "Embrace the suck." I couldn't have put it any better.
I was having trouble meeting up with my support crew, Jen, but she finally found me at around mile 18. My quads were just trashed at that point - have I mentioned I didn't train for this race - and this series of photos is me telling her "no, I won't be finishing around 4:00, my quads are done." And her yelling, "But you're doing great, you've got a good time." And me yelling, "You don't understand, I'm done. Look for me at 4:30!"
And it turns out, that's exactly what happened. I totally seized up in the last six miles and was lucky to get across in 4:28:54.
And while Jen didn't get any shots of me in the first half of the race, when I actually looked like a normal runner, she did get me shambling across the finish line like a zombie.
The course itself was as advertised: up and down, but with gentle rollers and an overall downhill slant. I could see myself trying this one again...if I'm in shape...and the weather report is better.
So of course the sun came out at about noon and the rest of the day was positively beautiful. What are you going to do, right? Since we were flying back that night, and since our hotel wasn't allowing ANY late check-outs (and we couldn't get back there before noon), we found a local YMCA and I paid the day-use fee so I could take a shower!
Good race expo and great organization and volunteers there and at the race itself. Decent swag and a good looking black tech race tee. Also got some cotton gloves, a cinch backpack, a weird handband thing, and a big ass medal (B.A.M!), that you can apparently use as a coaster. It weighs about four pounds.
All in all, the race went as expected because I didn't have any expectations coming in. Being totally unprepared will do that to you.
But I'm not giving up. I'll roll my Boston goal to 2013 and I'll be back.
Yes, you're seeing it correctly...there is one race this week.
Sort of an odd quirk, with Christmas Eve on a Monday and Christmas on a Tuesday, when no one runs races. Then the days when there are races, that would be New Year's Eve and New Years, are also on a Monday and Tuesday, so all the races move off the weekend schedule and into the next week.
So...one race.
Hey, go run it already.
Let's race!
-Green Text for Trail Runs
-Red Text for Marathons and Half Marathons
-Blue Text for Triathlons and Duathlons
-Orange Text for everything else, the normal 5k, 10k, etc
Yikes, I'm really late this month! We almost had to do two Best Running Songs for December, but I just made it under the wire.
This month we've got the amazing Black Keys and Little Black Submarines. This is just a plain old-school rock song. Sometimes that's what you need, right? This one feels a little Led Zeppelin and a little Jack White. All good.
Live version:
I realize some people don't like to run to songs that start slow, then pick up tempo - that some prefer a more even beat and tempo to run to, and to that I say:
Rain, floods, 30 mph winds, more rain, more floods, more wind.
Sounds like a great time to run a marathon, right?
I'm not too happy about this. Not that I'm expecting great things here anyway, but I've already had to put up with torrential rains at my last marathon (Newport) and my last Half Marathon (Runaway Pumpkin). I'm sick of running in the rain.
Think good thoughts, runners. Maybe the wind will be blowing in our direction. Remember, it's a point to point course.
Just a few more Christmas Runs to finish up the Holiday...
Then we're on to the Resolution New Year's Runs!
See you then.
Let's Race!
-Green Text for Trail Runs
-Red Text for Marathons and Half Marathons
-Blue Text for Triathlons and Duathlons
-Orange Text for everything else, the normal 5k, 10k, etc
There are lots of fast runners out there. But there aren't nearly as many fast, tough, runners. You know the kind - they never have a really bad race. When they don't run particularly well, they end up taking 3rd or 4th. DNF's just don't happen for them. They excel at one type of race, but throw them in something new - trail, ultra, road, whatever - they exceed everyone's expectations.
You know these runners, right? People like Meb Keflezighi. People like Oregon's own Max King. These guys just never disappoint. Like Canada's Ellie Greenwood.
Well, there's one more name you need to add to the list of Toughest Fastest Runners: Uli Steidl.
Hey, Seattle's Steidl has been around for a long time - he's now 40 years old. But damn, he's almost as fast as ever. Yesterday, he won the Seattle Marathon for the ninth time. Ninth! I know some people think that there isn't a lot of competition at the Seattle Marathon, but there's a reason for that. It's a tough, tough course! Most elite runners are too damn scared to run it. They don't want to work their asses off on a tough course and just have an average-looking time to show for it.
But that's what I'm talking about with Steidl - he's not afraid to go out and earn it. Congrats to Uli.
Oregon's Max King does it again. The guy is practically invincible when you get him off-road. King set a new course record in the 50th running of the oldest and largest ultra in the US.
BC's Greenwood continued her torrid winning streak as well, slashing nearly 20 minutes off of the women's course record.
And here's an article about what happens to normal people that try to run a 50 mile race.
A few more Holiday runs. Get them in while you can because we're about to head into the dead part of the year very soon.
Let's Race!
-Green Text for Trail Runs
-Red Text for Marathons and Half Marathons
-Blue Text for Triathlons and Duathlons
-Orange Text for everything else, the normal 5k, 10k, etc
OK, I had to take some time off to finish up an article for RaceCenter (look for it in February 2013!), and now I'm behind on my novel for Nanowrimo.
Not all is lost though. Now I just have to average 1900 words a day instead of 1667. I think I can handle it. I'll also try to get some new excepts up soon.
-Green Text for Trail Runs
-Red Text for Marathons and Half Marathons
-Blue Text for Triathlons and Duathlons
-Orange Text for everything else, the normal 5k, 10k, etc
Kaytlynn and Heather Welsch, 12 and 10 years old respectively, are good little runners. Emphasis on the "little." They're running marathons, half marathons, trail races - combined, the two girls have run over 160 races in the last two year. That's a LOT of racing, for anyone, of any age. They seem to enjoy it and they both do well at school, so where's the harm?
Well, I don't like the sheer number of races. I don't mind running for children, even longer distances, but racing is different. You're going harder in a race, you're stressing your body more, you're setting yourself up for injury, short-term or long-term. These girls should not be racing 160 races in two years. That's insane.
Also, not crazy about some of the comments made by the father. He can say he's not forcing them to run all he wants, but at times, it sure sounds like he's forcing them to run.
Well, without "running" training anyway. So if you glance over to the right of the page here, you'll notice that for the second time in the last three weeks, I had a week with absolutely no running. Why? The ankle just won't heal up. I took almost two full weeks off before the Runaway Pumpkin Half, and the ankle didn't bother me terribly during the run, but after?
Yeah, it hasn't come back yet since that 13.1 mile jaunt.
So now, I'm biking and swimming every day. And I'll continue to bike and swim every day. Running? No. Maybe a 5k on Thanksgiving morning just to test it. And maybe not, depending on how it's feeling at that point.
Let's face it, I'm not going to be in any kind of running shape anyway - I mean that's just not possible at this point, so I might as well make sure the ankle is healed up by the CIM on December 2nd. I'd rather run out of shape on a healthy ankle than limp along, sort of in better shape, on a still-hurt ankle.
And yes, I am still running the CIM. There's no question there. I'm registered, I've got a hotel room, a plane ticket, a rental car...I'm running. Or walking...or crawling, if I have to.
Of course, the expected finishing time has been dropping daily as I see my last long run drifting off in the rear view mirror. I've gone from wanting to run my BQ 3:25 to wondering about 3:40, then thinking 3:50, and finally thinking it would be nice to break 4:00. In the next few weeks, we'll see if I drop my expectations even more. I hope not, but hey, there's no sense kidding myself.
So, can you run a marathon without training for a marathon? People say they have:
-A BBC report on running a marathon without training.
-Here's Sean Ogle, who apparently ran the Eugene Marathon with basically no training.
And before you say, "the R's has gone off the deep end - he's completely delusional," believe me, I already know I'm delusional. I would never try to run a race without putting in the miles...by choice.
Yeah, it's time. Christmas doesn't lump all of its races together nicely on one day like Thanksgiving does. So since we just finished our Turkey Day runs, it's time to start running Jingle Bell Runs!
Time waits for no man! Or woman, I imagine.
Let's race!
-Green Text for Trail Runs
-Red Text for Marathons and Half Marathons
-Blue Text for Triathlons and Duathlons
-Orange Text for everything else, the normal 5k, 10k, etc
The biggest single racing day of the year, absolutely bar none.
Count them up - 38 races on Thanksgiving Day! Thirty-eight!
It's never been so easy to pre-burn that turkey and pie.
Let's race!
-Green Text for Trail Runs
-Red Text for Marathons and Half Marathons
-Blue Text for Triathlons and Duathlons
-Orange Text for everything else, the normal 5k, 10k, etc
Definitely a short list this week, as it's only four days before the true Turkey Day and the unbelievable number of races that will come with Thanksgiving.
Still, there are a good number of T-Day races to choose from here - plus another Jingle Bell Run in November! - so get on it.
Let's Race!
-Green Text for Trail Runs
-Red Text for Marathons and Half Marathons
-Blue Text for Triathlons and Duathlons
-Orange Text for everything else, the normal 5k, 10k, etc
Yes, we are officially less than a week away from the start of Nanowrimo. Interested in writing a 50,000 word novel in the month of November? Well, head over here and get signed up.
