Oh, for fuck’s sake

Posted on January 18, 2009 by threlkeld

It’s snowing again this morning. Serious snow, not just the dusting that was predicted. There’s 1.5 inches on the ground now and it’s coming down heavily.

I am suiting up for a 20 miler through the streets of Scarsdale and White Plains again. I’m not sure if I’ll drive up and run 3+ loops or just run up there along the path, do a couple of shorter loops, and head back. At least the cold snap has, uh, snapped (Oh! Snap!). But the jet stream has been noticeably lost for the past week.

I could always run inside on the treadmill instead. I could also drink Draino.

Filed under: basebuilding, westchester | 3 Comments »

Whooee, it’s cold!

Posted on January 17, 2009 by threlkeld

But I don’t care. I got to run outside for the first time in a week and I hope to do it again tomorrow. Seven degrees with the windchill? No problem! I’ve got thermal running pants and all manner of layering from Patagonia, Craft, Smartwool and UnderArmour, plus Little Hotties for my hands. I am a moving billboard of adverts for foul weather clothiers.

I did 11 miles on a slightly altered version of my six mile loop that winds through Scarsdale and White Plains. Tomorrow, weather permitting, I’ll do 20 there again. We’re slated to get some days above freezing next week. Let’s hope that between that and some sun the layer(s) of ice that cover my usual running path will go away.

I got my training schedule for the next 12 weeks and it’s impressive. To cope with it, I think of it in the abstract, as though someone else will be following it, although that’s going to have to stop starting on Monday. As I’d anticipated, I’ll be back up to 100 mile weeks, and doing longer intervals, plus lots more longer running at or near marathon pace. I registered for the series of races in Connecticut and Central Park that will, with little exception, serve as Mpace training runs. I’ll race a couple of them, though.

Overall, my trepidation is outweighed by my excitement and eagerness to get rolling. I just hope my body plays nice with my brain.

Filed under: basebuilding, clothes and gear, coaching, training, westchester | 6 Comments »

Reading: “A Cold Clear Day: The Athletic Biography of Buddy Edelen”

Posted on January 3, 2009 by threlkeld

Who was Buddy Edelen? Only one of the greatest American runners that most people have never heard of, but should have for a variety of reasons. That’s author Frank Murphy’s thesis.

Edelen’s story and personality are interesting and engaging enough that it’s tempting to say that this is a book that practically writes itself. But that would be shortchanging Murphy’s skill and creativity as a biographer. Edelen was emerging as a middle-to-long distance runner in the late fifties and early sixties, a time when American distance running was in the toilet in terms of development and competitive standing. So he set off for England, living like a monk in Essex, and training like a fiend under the long-distance direction of his coach, Fred Wilt. There, he charted a steady course toward American- and world-record-breaking times in the 10K and marathon, recognized and respected in Europe (and even loved in his temporarily adopted host country), yet totally unknown in The States.

In telling Edelen’s story, Murphy presents his subject as an immensely appealing man who combined intense focus with geniality and modesty. You can’t help but like — and root for — the guy. Expertly researched, the book doesn’t just present a coherent picture of how Edelen fit into the marathoning scene during this time period, but also presents some real gems, such as this passage. In it, we learn how one clever race promoter got around the AAU’s (Amateur Athletic Union) requirement that in order to retain “amateur” status (and thus eligibility to compete in the Olympics), an athlete must not accept remuneration of any kind (even for assistance with travel and accommodations for participating in races)  in an athletic competition:

“After the greeting, Billy [promoter Billy Morton] got to the point. “Buddy, me lad,” he said, “are ya a betting man?” Buddy said that he was, so Billy explained the way things were.

“Buddy,” he said, “I can’t pay you anything for this race because you’re an amateur. But seein’ as how you’re a betting man,” and he paused for effect before pointing to Buddy’s suitcase on the floor. “I bet you a hundred quid you can’t jump over that suitcase.”

As the meaning of Billy’s wager struck home, Buddy quickly hopped over the suitcase. Morton exclaimed loudly at such a thing, “My God, Tommy, look at that, Buddy just took me for 100 quid!” but being a man of his word, he paid and left. Buddy was 100 quid richer, but he was still an amateur.

Edelen also charmed his host country and managed to get away with behavior that would have labeled others lacking in his personal qualities as “ugly American.” One example is his greeting of Queen Elizabeth before the start of the 1962 Polytechnic Harriers Marathon: “Hi, Queen!”

As in another of his running-related histories, The Silence of Great Distance, Murphy takes considerable creative license when writing about his subject. In this case, he creates pages of speculative internal dialog during Edelen’s bid for a spot on the US men’s Olympic marathon team during a dreadfully hot and humid marathon in Yonkers, NY. This device — peppering non-fiction biography with what is most certainly a fictional stream of consciousness passage — will either work for readers or it won’t. For me, it worked. Murphy either has tremendous insight into and empathy for long distance runners, or he’s run a few awful, long races himself, because the mental crazy quilt that he constructs of what Edelen might have been thinking during that run is spot on: the jokes we tell ourselves, the pep talks, the moments of despair, the internal siren song to stop, the pure intake and recording of all sensory input…it’s all there.

I have no idea if this book would appeal to a non-runner. Probably not. But for students of the sport, it’s a wonderful read.

More about Edelen on Wikipedia.

Filed under: elites, inspiration, olympics, reading, westchester | 6 Comments »

1

Posted on January 1, 2009 by threlkeld

Degrees (windchill). Not Celsius. Fahrenheit.

Fortunately, I’ve spent the last couple of years acquiring running clothing appropriate for Siberian conditions. I’m actually looking forward to bundling up for my nine mile, pre-lunch recovery run, on a rare New Year’s Day on which I am not hung over.

The shopping’s done. The bills are paid. I have four days ahead of me with no responsibilities other than running, and feeding and bathing myself. Maybe I’ll do some housecleaning. Maybe not.

The work mill starts up again on Monday. But I’m doing my best not to think about it right now.

I spent a generous $50 Amazon gift certificate from my Mom on a bunch of used books. They are dribbling in from all over the country. Most of them are running-related, of the historical or biographical bent. I’ve realized that my running library is now significant enough to warrant its own section. I’ve also got some fairly valuable out-of-print volumes, it turns out. At some point, I’ll summarize and review some of the better ones here.

Filed under: basebuilding, everyday life, reading, training, westchester | 3 Comments »

Crazy windy

Posted on December 30, 2008 by threlkeld

It’s crazy windy outside today. Steady winds of 25mph with gusts up to 50mph.

I am about to attempt an 11 mile easy run with 10 minutes at 5K race effort (6:30 or so — although today, maybe not so much).

I hope I don’t get blown into the next state.

Filed under: basebuilding, training, westchester | 5 Comments »

Winter Basebuilding: Week 6

Posted on December 28, 2008 by threlkeld

09spr-base-06This week’s watchword was “endurance.”

Five out of eight sessions were done by necessity on the treadmill, and that took a lot of mental endurance, given how long some of those runs were. Doing two runs on Christmas also took no small measure of endurance, especially since my outside world was a frozen hinterland populated by crazed Christmas morning drivers.

I even managed to take a spill and bash my hip and elbow, which had nothing to do with snow, ice or bad drivers. I tripped on an uneven sidewalk panel. That was pretty silly. At least it happened toward the end of the run. I took the second run of Christmas day inside, since I figured I’d already pushed my luck and was fortunate to have come out of that encounter with gravity unscathed.

One unfortunate aspect of running on the treadmill (aside from the boredom, the noise, and having to smell myself) is that I’m still too chicken to attempt very fast running on it. I skipped Wednesday’s planned 20 second strides, since the treadmill takes about 10 seconds to get up to speed anyway, by which time I’m already fiddling with the controls so I can stop the belt lest it propel me through the back wall of our guest room.

It was for this reason that I also went rogue on my training on Friday, when the plan called for 12 repeats of 45 seconds at 2M effort, with 90 second rests. 2M pace is about 6:15 for me now. Since 45 seconds isn’t that much longer than a stride, I decided to again forgo the dangers of fiddling with controls while trying not to get thrown off the back of a high speed conveyor belt. I compromised and instead did six 90 second repeats at 5K effort, with 90 second rests.

I was so sick of the treadmill that I moved the run outside on Saturday, where I was met with a still-frozen over running path. So I did about three miles on the roads, then moved to the path and ran through the slush and ice alongside the iced over path. That was like running in sand, and I felt the effort’s effects on today’s 18 miler: the stabilizing muscles in my inner thighs, hips and ankles all asserted themselves this morning. I won’t run in snow again.

As for the long run today, that was also a tough one, owing to the now-familiar winter winds. In shorts and a tee shirt (62 degrees, in December!) I did two repeats of a six mile loop through Scarsdale and White Plains, during which I was pummeled by a steady 7-10mph headwind (with gusts up to 15mph) for all the north-to-south sections. I’d forgotten how hilly that loop is, so I then decided to move the run onto the running path (since the very warm temps overnight melted most of the snow and ice away). I thought that perhaps being on a tree-lined trail for part of the way would shield me somewhat from the wind, but I must have been delusional.

I met up with Jonathan, who was struggling through a longish run with the last few at half marathon effort (straight into the headwind, of course). We traded complaints for a few minutes and then he ran on. He waited for me after his torture session and we jogged the last mile together back to the car. I made our traditional Long Run Sunday Pancakes, then passed out for an hour and a half on the couch. Thank goodness tomorrow is a rest day.

Coming up in Week 7, a recovery week consisting of a mere 60 miles. I’ll do some tempo running at 5k and 10K effort, capping the week with a 16 miler with the last 75 minutes at marathon effort.

Filed under: basebuilding, training, westchester | 4 Comments »

How the XBox 360 changed my run on Tuesday

Posted on December 12, 2008 by threlkeld

Or, rather, how it changed the way my brain works when I’m out running.

My relationship with my significant other was forged over many games of SuperMario Bros. on the Nintendo. This was circa 1990, when people still used cassettes and the Internet was still developing its eyelids. Since then, we’ve upgraded to a new gaming system every five years or so. This year marked the move from our beloved Playstation 2 to the XBox 360.

Although the purchase coincided with Christmas, what’s the point of waiting until some arbitrary date (December 25) to start enjoying it? We could well be dead by then. No time like the present to start frittering away time and working up to a good case of carpal tunnel syndrome.

We ordered a number of games (sword and sorcery for him, post-apocalyptic mayhem and alien destruction for me). But they look pretty complicated. So for the test drive we inserted the Indiana Jones Lego game that came with the system (suitable for 10 year olds and brain damage victims). Let me tell you, this game is like video crack. We’ve killed entire evenings this week in front of this brain-bender.

Brain bending is the point of this post, which I’ll get to. The game forces you to look at your environment in a new way and engage in creative problem solving. This translated into the real world for me on a rainy day run. Our running path follows the Bronx River and, in one section, it’s forced to go underneath the parkway of the same name. Unfortunately, the environmental engineer didn’t consider the effect of heavy rain on the river. As a consequence, when it rains heavily, the path under the roadway is flooded.

In the past, upon arriving at this spot and seeing six inches of water where a path should be, I opt to risk my life crossing a busy parkway, around a blind corner. On Tuesday, however, I had a completely different reaction. For the first time, I noticed a steel handrail with three horizontal rails running alongside the entire flooded area. “Hey,” I thought, “I can put my feet on the first rail, brace my knees against the second, and grip the third with my hands. Then I just need to scoot along the rail past the flooded part.”

And so I did, feeling very clever at having found an alternative to sprinting across two lanes of 50mph traffic.

Now I’m wondering how many other people have figured that out. And what percentage of them are 10-year-old video gamers.

Filed under: everyday life, westchester | 5 Comments »

In praise of rain gear

Posted on November 30, 2008 by threlkeld

I’ll post my week’s basebuilding report shortly. But for now I wanted to extol the virtues of having proper rain gear. Today I did a 17 miler in foul weather. Freezing rain was coating the ground when I started. That quickly shifted to plain old rain, hitting me at a 45 degree angle due to high winds.

I’ve got full body armor, but I didn’t wear all of it today. I needed to run the last two miles fast and my Goretex shoes are real clodhoppers. I also couldn’t deal with the Goretex pants. Not only do they flap around, but I sweat like crazy in them (they are not really as breathable as the marketing would have you believe).

But I did wear two key pieces of clothing for wet weather: my waterproof Asics baseball cap and a bicycling jacket that I picked up last year from, of all places, L.L. Bean. The cap is great. The jacket is okay, but not great for very long runs. That’s because it doesn’t breathe that well. I end up drenched in sweat, which soaks through the base- and mid-layers, which then leads to feeling like I’m on the verge of hypothermia. That’s actually not a bad thing, since it forces me to run faster in order to keep from freezing to death!

The whole run was an ongoing experiment in flexibility and improvisation. I knew that a few of the roads I normally run on would be too dangerous, so I drove to the halfway point and ran north (fewer cars) to the Valhalla Dam. But the footing was really treacherous. So I just did a 10 mile out and back, then took to the streets of Scarsdale, where the layer of sleet and slush had melted somewhat. I also figured that if I did have any sort of problem (slipping and breaking something, getting too cold), I always had the option of knocking on someone’s door for help, whereas I’d be in the middle of nowhere had I headed north again.

I guess it’s time to set up the treadmill again.

I didn’t realize how soaked I was until I got back to the car: waterlogged shoes and socks, soaking tights and nearly-saturated gloves. I wish someone would invent tights and shoes that can cope with wet weather without weighing down the wearer. On the other hand, when I think about what people had to train in just a few decades ago — cotton and leather — I’m grateful that technical fabrics have come as far as they have.

Filed under: clothes and gear, training, westchester | 3 Comments »

Pinch me. Is sanity restored?

Posted on November 6, 2008 by threlkeld

I’ll let my political beads drop. I am ecstatic — ecstatic, I tell you — with Tuesday’s election results. A blue sweep across New England, a blue sweep of both houses of Congress, and…a black family on the White House Christmas card!

I went out for a run on Tuesday morning to try to get my mind off the fact that it was pointless to watch television until at least 8PM. There was definitely something in the air. People were walking around with smiles on their faces. We all knew. We all just knew. And we were all in really good moods.

If this keeps up, we’ll have a woman and an atheist president (perhaps in the same person?) in my lifetime. The only dark cloud was the passage of gay marriage bans in states that should know better. So I’ll add “gay, lesbian or bisexual person” (heck, let’s throw in transgendered as long as we’re dreaming) to my list of people who need to be president before I die.

Filed under: everyday life, inspiration, westchester | 4 Comments »

2008 NY Marathon: the view from the curb*

Posted on November 3, 2008 by threlkeld

What’s more exciting: running a marathon or watching one? You can’t do both at the same time. But you should do at least one or the other once in your life. I’ve done the former four times, and now, the latter once. Here, I provide my awestruck impressions of watching the fastest people in the world running within 10 feet of me yesterday morning.

First of all, it was a total pain in the ass to get to the Bronx yesterday. I did it the wrong way, taking a train to Fordham and then walking about a half mile along Fordham Rd to the 4 line. That took forever to arrive and then I discovered that it doesn’t stop at 138th St, where I wanted to be. So I had to get off at 149th, walk into the bowels of the subway system to catch the local 5 train and endure another 15 minute wait in a rat- and cockroach-infested dungeon. I found myself wondering if it was all worth it.

Here’s the right way to get there from Westchester: Take the train to 125th St, walk two blocks, then hop on the 6 line north for one stop to 138th St and 3rd Ave in the Bronx.

I arrived at about 10:30 and milled around for 20 minutes, carefully setting up my camera to take poor quality pictures. I planted myself on 138th, just east of 3rd Ave (and just after the 20 mile mark), before a water table, thinking perhaps they’d slow a bit at that spot.

This little area was not the “dead zone” in terms of spectators I’d expected. There was a crowd on 3rd Ave and a band, and a few pockets of people to the west. But it wasn’t like the scene on 125th St in Harlem, where I went and hung out after I’d seen all the elites go by.

Here I will admit that I suck as a photographer. I may have learned never to experiment with new shoes or fueling strategies for the marathon, but I threw caution to the wind yesterday and experimented with the camera that I don’t know how to use properly. I tried the “burst” mode, which I thought would take a series of full sized shots of each runner in motion. Instead, I got a series of postage stamp sized shots. All of my runners are tiny.

So, I’m not going to embarrass myself further by uploading tiny photos. Especially when there’s a perfectly good series right here. Since I have no intention of running this race in the near future, I’ll go watch again next year and I’ll learn to use my camera properly by then.

The elite women

The excitement builds in the minutes before the first runners arrive. Someone barked “Ten minutes!” into a bullhorn at 10:50. Then, at 10:55, a new update: “Radcliffe first, Petrova second, Goucher third.” A few minutes later, we saw and heard the helicopter, followed by the roar of police motorcycles. They came around the corner and there was so much noise and activity that the two runners (Radcliffe and Petrova) were lost in the mayhem around them. The motorcycles and camera truck passed and suddenly it seemed very quiet.

The two women passed by me and I was struck by the fact that I could actually hear them breathing. Radcliffe, although only 5’8″, seems much larger in person. And she runs like a fucking machine. Petrova was hanging off her shoulder, looking like a little bobbing tugboat, but a tenacious one. One look at Paula and you knew she was going to win. Goucher came through about 15 seconds later, also looking larger than life, and wearing a facial expression that was, paradoxically, both relaxed and determined.

Incidentally, Petrova, 40, broke Priscilla Welch’s 1987 masters world record for the marathon yesterday by over a minute, with a finishing time of 2:25:43. I don’t think this was mentioned once in the televised coverage, which was too bad.

Tune came through shortly thereafter, followed by Wami (who is one of the most light-on-her-feet runners I’ve ever seen, and tiny). I was expecting Catherine “The Great” Ndereba next, but instead saw Jeptoo. Then a few others: Simon, McGregor and Morgunova. Then a big pause and the last few women who I would recognize came through: Lewy-Boulet, Scotswoman Hayley Haining (who is built like a tank; I wonder if that’s what I look like under my 24% body fat) and 19-year-old newcomer Ilsa Paulson, who is a tiny little wisp of a woman. I was disappointed to not see Kim Smith of New Zealand; it appears she dropped out just after the 30K mark.

The elite men

With the second-tier elite women straggling in one by one, the excitement began to build anew: In a few minutes, the elite men would start coming through. Once again, you could tell when the moment was near, with the arrival of a helicopter and phalanx of cops on bikes.

I was rooting for the Brazilian, Gomes Dos Santos, to win — and here he was in the lead! Goumri was right on his heels and looking very strong. Next up: Bouramdane, Tergat, Rono, Kirui, Macharia. And, finally, some Americas: Abdi, Rohatinsky, Lemkuhle. After that, I stopped recognizing people, with one exception: I saw James Carney, who looked awful. He was jogging along, looking slightly bewildered. He turned and asked another runner, who was passing, a question, and I thought, “He’s about to drop out.” When I got home and watched the coverage, I could see what happened: He went nuts and led the pack from the start, running like a rocket straight into a head wind for the first half mile or so.

Some familiar faces

Just a few: Takashi Ogawa, a friendly age group rival of Jonathan’s, was powering his way through to a 2:50 finish. He looked good when I saw him. A few minutes behind him, I spotted Zola Budd. She is no longer the barefooted rail that she was during her cross-country and track days. Perhaps 20 pounds heavier, she still managed to break three hours in her first marathon yesterday. Finally, after I switched positions to go watch the throngs in Harlem, I saw fellow running blogger Pigtails Flying (who I have not met, but who sent me a picture so I could look for her). She also ran a huge PR yesterday (42 minutes!), breaking 3:55. Go Pigtails!

*In honor of Paula Radcliffe, maybe I should say “kerb.”

Filed under: central park, elites, everyday life, inspiration, racing, westchester | 12 Comments »

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