Where it was once called The Dark Continent, I would now characterize Africa as The Slow Continent. And I’m in South Africa, the shining beacon of modernity here. Internet connectivity means plugging a cellular doohickey into the USB port and pouring a nice big cup of tea for every page you hope to load. No [...]
Filed under: everyday life, racing, travel | 6 Comments »
Like last week, this week had its ups and downs. The ups were two fabulous runs on Wednesday and Thursday. I was still quite tired from Sunday’s 10 mile race heading into the week, so I was grateful for the low mileage. Wednesday’s run (which I’m thinking of as a “recovereasy run”) is new for [...]
Filed under: training, travel | 2 Comments »
This weekend I watched two recorded iron man triathlon events, one in China and the other in Idaho. People, televised triathlons offer some of the best television comedy you’ll see all season. Here’s what you get: Announcers and competitors alike who can’t even properly pronounce the name of their own sport. They call it a [...]
Filed under: humor | Tagged: triathlon | 9 Comments »
I’m usually annoyed when I arrrive at the track and it’s full of people. But yesterday was an exception. Yesterday morning I headed over to the Bronxville High School track to do some tempo running. I got a late start and needed to run about five miles as a warmup before doing the tempo miles. [...]
Filed under: everyday life, training, westchester | 6 Comments »
I’ve got a training plan for the next few months. Now all I need is music to make the longer runs a little less tedious. Here’s the first new playlist, which I’ll probably use for my midlength (12-15 miles) runs. It’s fairly uptempo but not the crazy, aggressive crap I listen to for the faster [...]
Filed under: music, tracks | 2 Comments »
Back in the saddle again. Given the events of the spring and summer, the most important word during this training cycle is “recovery.” I whaled away last week and came into this one feeling fatigued. Still tired Wednesday, I decided to cut back the mileage from a planned 89 to 70. As it turns out, [...]
Filed under: training | 9 Comments »
I guess this is the last of the summer basebuilding. In 10 weeks I’ve gone from anemic shuffler to something resembling the runner I was in April. Where I truly am fitnesswise is still something of a mystery, since so much of my running over the past few weeks was on the treadmill. But the [...]
Filed under: basebuilding | Tagged: progression run | 8 Comments »
Last last month in Switzerland, Dathan Ritzenhein became only the second third fourth non-African-born man to run under 13:00 for the 5000m, clocking a new American record of 12:56. It took 13 years for someone to break the previous 12:58 American record held by Bob Kennedy. Then, just a few days later, Matt Tegenkamp went [...]
Filed under: elites, inspiration, reading | Tagged: bob kennedy, dathan ritzenhein, how records are broken, matt fitzgerald, matt tegenkamp, running times | 5 Comments »
A few years ago I was working with a couple of women about my age and I was surprised to find that they’d never heard of The Roches, a three-sister folk group to whom I’ve been listening since someone played their debut album to me, to my delight and wonder, sometime in the early 80s. [...]
Filed under: music, tracks | Tagged: maggie roche, robert fripp, suzzy roche, terre roche, the roches | 2 Comments »
