coffee grounds

This week's sign of the apocalypse

Athletics NZ has a quote from Newt Gingrich on their homepage. Newt Gingrich, well-known American athlete ... oh, wait!

Fun on the run

On an otherwise mundane 13km tempo run this morning, there were two things of note. The first was "meeting" one of those guys who wants to race you. They are always men, and always slightly socially awkward. I mean, in a sport like running which attracts introverts and characters, you can tell these people who want to race you on a training run are even more loopy, even more out of touch with social mores. What was impressive about this guy was that I was clipping along at 3:45/km, and as soon as I pass him he shoots off at 3:30 pace. His other oddity was that on a beautiful morning for running (13°C/55°F) he was wearing long underwear and a thermal top. Eventually he slowed down, and I caught him, passed him, and he takes off again. As he accelerates he smiles with an idiot grin to invite the race and seems puzzled I'm not taking him up on the offer. Eventually we got to a junction, and he headed off the other way but not before we'd gone through this 'race me' grin routine several times (each time his acceleration got shorter ... but still impressive speed for a guy who looked to be in his late 40s or 50s).

That bemusing 5km over I kept on heading round the bays, and managed to get on the radio in a manner of speaking. One of the local DJs, Nick Tansley, was broadcasting outside. He used to be somewhat "cool" when I was in primary school, but now suffers from a yawning gap between his chronological age and the age he plays on the radio. As I went past I heard him say "it's a beautiful morning here on Oriental Parade, and there goes a runner, he looks like's too busy to stop and talk to me ..."

Between these two 'events' I got from 20 to 45 minutes into my 50 minute tempo run with little thought for how far into the run I was. This was good, and made it a remarkably easy run. 50 minutes quicker than marathon pace should not be difficult, but normally requires more concentration than that.

Girls, girls, girls

This will get a lot of unintended hits ...

I went to the track for the first time in 5 months today. That isn't to say that I ran on the track. It's school sports season in Wellington. This means—one rubber track in the city—that occasionally the track is occupied by high school students doing track and field events. I had a premonition this was going to be the case as I jogged up there, seeing a lot of girls in colorful outfits heading up to the park.

So I did my workout on the soccer field above the track. This was less than ideal, with some tight turns; but first interval workout in 5 months it was probably OK not to know I was a couple of seconds off the pace. The long side of a soccer field is 100m, so you can check your pace. As I jogged around in between my 5 x 1000m and 4 x 400m repeats I got to watch the Wellington East Girls sports get started. Nowadays, befitting its location "East" is a very multi-cultural school with Maori, Pacific Island, Asian, Somali, and European students. But it also has "houses," which American readers may or may not be familiar with. Houses are vertical divisions of a school (as opposed to horizontal grade/age divisions), sometimes reflecting literally where the students slept, if it was a boarding school. But for most purposes "houses" in schools were to organize competitive sports and culture. Few modern schools in New Zealand have houses. The high school I attended, started well into the 1950s, didn't have them. But any school originating before World War II probably did, and maybe still does, like Wellington East. Well, the funny thing, after all that explanation, is that East is very multicultural, but the house names commemorate long-deceased, British-born governors of New Zealand. So, as I ambled around the soccer field I got to hear a diversity of accents screaming "Go Onslow," "Go Bledisloe," "Go Jellicoe! The girls were really getting into the spirit of things, and as they started the 60m sprint the gun fired, and then the gun fired again. False start, I knew, even from the top field. But not most of the girls in the race, who tore off down to the finish, while one girl stopped, and waited for the others to stop. The girls in the stands just kept on cheering for the dead Lords and Governors. This commotion caused the announcer to cry out "Girls, girls, girls, you have to be quiet when the races are starting!!!" And then they ran the race again ...

Department of too-easy targets

Quite apart from the humor of reading this with the British understanding of bonk (I think we will all agree, often its own reward), how many [in the American sense] bonk in a 5km? I've always thought that bonk was synonymous with hitting the wall, the [near] total exhaustion of your muscle glycogen. You can certainly struggle to the end of a 5km, but it's a different process entirely ...

What kind of tracksuit?

From a New York Times article on exercising in the cold

That means, Dr. Noakes said, that even in temperatures as low as 10 to minus-20 degrees, a runner probably needs to wear no more than a track suit, mittens or gloves and a hat.

That had better be a very good "tracksuit" at minus-20 farenheit ...

Ode to Minneapolis winter running

A picture representing thousands of miles in the last few years for me and many others ...

Marathons reduce mortality

This is an interesting looking article in the British Medical Journal:

Objective: To determine from a societal perspective the risk of sudden cardiac death associated with running in an organised marathon compared with the risk of dying from a motor vehicle crash that might otherwise have taken place if the roads had not been closed.

Design: Population based retrospective analysis with linked ecological comparisons of sudden death.

Setting: Marathons with at least 1000 participants that had two decades of history and were on public roads in the United States, 1975-2004.

Main outcome measures: Sudden death attributed to cardiac causes or to motor vehicle trauma.

Results: The marathons provided results for 3 292 268 runners on 750 separate days encompassing about 14 million hours of exercise. There were 26 sudden cardiac deaths observed, equivalent to a rate of 0.8 per 100 000 participants (95% confidence interval 0.5 to 1.1). Because of road closure, an estimated 46 motor vehicle fatalities were prevented, equivalent to a relative risk reduction of 35% (95% confidence interval 17% to 49%). The net reduction in sudden death during marathons amounted to a ratio of about 1.8 crash deaths saved for each case of sudden cardiac death observed (95% confidence interval: 0.7 to 3.8). The net reduction in total deaths could not be explained by re-routing traffic to other regions or days and was consistent across different parts of the country, decades of the century, seasons of the year, days of the week, degree of competition, and course difficulty.

Conclusion: Organised marathons are not associated with an increase in sudden deaths from a societal perspective, contrary to anecdotal impressions fostered by news media.

The standard loop

One of my standard easy run routes in Wellington

One thing that is not discussed as often as it might be amongst runners is the question of making up the run as you go along versus a standard route. It's a question of temperament, environment and running season. The choice between meandering new routes or taking the path previously trodden poses itself most often in this base building phase. Workouts and races are far from one's mind, and there's only so much you can say or think about another 10 steady miles. For me that means exploring, but perhaps not for others of a different temperament.

Slipping between "loop" in the title, and "route" in the sentence reveals temperament—the tolerance for boredom or the craving for variety. My craving for variety is such that I rarely run an out-and-back, much preferring loops. Of course, when you run up and down the banks of a river, even one as wide as the Mississippi, you are close to collapsing the distinction between loops and out-and-backs! I rarely run the same route twice in a row, though cold winter winds sometimes mean that several runs in a row will follow the same direction, often heading north to start. And I gently curse the wind for making me run the same direction as yesterday.

Running the same basic route gives me the comparison to yesterday that I'd rather not have in this phase of training. Personally I care most about the pace for workouts in race season, and that's a couple of days a week a few months of the year. On other days of the week, and at other times of year my need to know the pace varies with my mood. Wind, climate, terrain, non-running stressors, and incremental changes in fitness can add so much "noise" to the "signal" that the relationship between effort and pace is not constant. I prefer to try and focus on how I feel, asking myself are my legs heavy? what kind of fatigue do I feel? if I had the time would I want to go further than scheduled? The start of a run is the noisiest. Warming up quickly is often the sign of a good run, but taking 20 to 40 minutes to warm to the exertion—especially in the Minnesota winter—is not a reliable sign of how well the run is going. Thus I tend to care about the pace-effort relationship later in the run, hitting the known checkpoints where the times means something in the last 10-30 minutes.

When the running seasons shift from base building to racing tempo runs and everything quicker begin to shift to measured courses. In the off season there is a lot of benefit to the mostly unmeasured tempo runs where you focus on the right effort rather than the right pace. Recovery days in the racing season are a different question! Sometimes I don't want to know how slowly I'm going, and I'll shuffle round the parks or trails where I know nothing of the distances. But on other days—I suspect the days I know I'm feeling better—I like to confirm that I'm recovering well and see an acceptable pace for an easy effort despite the hard workout a day or two earlier.

So right now I'm in the mood to mostly meander around. It's been a good year for exploring and running different routes. Living in two cities and traveling a lot gives you that freedom. Even my regular winter runs heading north along the Mississippi river banks are somewhat different with the detour imposed by the I-35W bridge collapse.

Notes on the U.S. Men's Olympic Marathon Trials

Nothing like watching a marathon for hearing some crazy sports commentary. 2 continuous hours with really not a lot of dramatic moments that require analysis. Just lots of time for commentators to say crazy stuff like the following ... It took a while before I finally got to watch the streaming coverage (thank you letsrun.com posters)

Among the first items of commentary I heard was an explanation of how Dathan Ritzenhein was taking an energy gel because he's had problems with his energy and ran out of energy in a 5000m race in Belgium this year. You can slow down in a 5000m, but it's very, very rarely because you run out of fuel.

Amazingly, they were pronouncing Jason Lehmkuhle's name correctly. The "Jason" didn't surprise me. The "Lehmkuhle" hhas tripped up many.

On Alan Culpepper: "He's not going to get over-caffeinated emotionally" (a few minutes before he dropped out)
They then referred to his wife Shayne being pregnant with her third child, which strangely implied he might not be the father.

Ryan Hall: "He's out of Stanford, so you know he's smart."

"Why on earth would Ryan Hall be looking at his watch?"

Browne and Meb seem to be cutting the kerbs very close ...

Ryan Hall: "He's an oxygen delivery machine."

Dathan: "He has a pug dog and a daughter."

"It amazes me the guys with the best resumes have dropped off the back."

They're referring to the Olympic Trials record as the Olympic record ...

Sell: " ...160 miles a week. Brazilian-like, a madman."

On Hall: "If Palo Alto's your big town, you're a small town guy"

on Sell: "In third place, you have someone who no-one thought could make it." (really?)

On Hall grabbing his water bottle at 24 miles: "The ease with which you grab your bottle is an indication of how supple you still are"

Road relay

One of the great things about New Zealand running (inherited from Britain) is the road relay. Varied and undulating road running through beautiful countryside. As you can see from the video it can be a lonely experience as a race, since your only competition might be going much faster or slower than you. All you have to run against is the reflective markers on the side of the roads. But there's plenty of support (from your own team) and abuse (from your competition) from the sidelines. Being spring, the headwind is constant even on a loop course.

This year I was in the Wellington Scottish C-team, and though we were a few minutes out of a medal in our grade we had fun. Good running. Sheep in the paddocks. Beer afterwards. What more do you need?

Track tourism

When I'm traveling I like to look for tracks and trails. (By the way, in New Zealand people say "tracks" for paths through the bush/forest/woods, so you have to rely on context to distinguish 400m of rubber from dirt and roots). I call this track tourism. I use tourism ironically, because tourism is mostly about promoting the uniqueness of a place. 400m tracks are all about being precisely the same in the most important way.

Thus, one of the appeals of track tourism is finding something so similar in familiar and unfamiliar places. I've become very familiar with the tracks at Bierman Field in Minneapolis, and the Newtown Park track in Wellington (left). Another appeal of track tourism is a sort of insight into local history and culture. It is the same basic 400m piece of rubber everywhere. You're keeping something constant in statistical terms. The setting and the ownership of a track give some insight into the place of track and field in a community. Norwegian tracks are very open, owned by the city, and there's always a diversity of people there running and walking at various paces. American tracks are often at schools, and even the public schools lock them up some of the time. On the other hand, some American school tracks are open to all comers. In that diversity are some of the diversity and contradictions of American life. All in 400m of red rubber.

When I saw the photo to the right on Matthew Yglesias's site what intrigued me was not the discussion of public schools in Washington, D.C. but the odd shape of the track. I knew such things existed, and that not all tracks have the same dimensions, but take a look at that back straight. It's not parallel with the home straight! To say nothing of the cars parked on the high jump pad. The tracks are not the same everywhere. They do say something about the community.

NB: If you want to see some odd tracks, this webpage on California and Nevada tracks is a labor of obsessive love. I came across it years ago looking for a track before a trip to LA.

Heads up

Starting a new job is busy ... there are going to be a lot of cheater blog entries with pictures. Really, Wellington is a moderately sized city, but it's very attractive to be able to reach farmland in about 15 minutes easy running while still living 5km from the central city.

Running on the hills and trails around Wellington has made me reflect on the importance of training environment. As I discussed a few weeks ago Lydiard's hill repeats are not in vogue in a city like this. The other aspect of Lydiard's ideas that I think is more local than he makes it out to be is the preference for smooth road runs. Again, this makes sense if you lived in Auckland where there are a lot more smooth, flat road runs near where his athletes were living. If Lydiard had lived in Wellington I'm not sure he would have suggested the smooth, flat road run was the universal ideal. It would condemn you to doing the same run round the waterfront all the time.

I ran a smooth, flat road run on Sunday. It was meant to be a half-marathon at marathon pace. I have a sneaky suspicion it was about 400m too long. The only 5km in the race entirely with a tailwind was the slowest 5km ... and the last "kilometre" took 4:44 with a mild cross-wind. I'm glad I didn't race this sorry excuse for course measurement.

A short history of hill repeats

Arthur Lydiard is indelibly associated with the history of long distance running in New Zealand. It's a history of great achievements in the 1960s, lack of official recognition in the 1970s, and growing appreciation for Lydiard's achievements in the last two decades. It has been interesting for me to watch a talented guy in Arizona work through Lydiard's schedules, including hill repeats, faithful to the schedules Lydiard drew up in Auckland and beyond.

Although Lydiard is associated with New Zealand, within the country he is associated with Auckland running. Hill repeats are a good example of the association with Auckland. Around the country, the influence of Lydiard on New Zealand running is clear, though "the schedules" have been modified by succeeding generations of coaches who have been dissatisfied with the periodization or other aspects. I could not claim that no one in Wellington does hill repeats, or that no one ever has, but I will claim that there's a strong tradition in Wellington running that disregards hill repeats for the long or hard run "over the hills".

Lydiard's hill repeats are not a general theory of the best way to train, but a specific adaptation to the local environment. Compared to Wellington, Auckland has lower, fewer, and flatter hills. You really have to work hard to avoid the hills in Wellington, and you can design a relatively long run with regular steep climbs and steps that gives you all the benefits of the hill repeats with none of the structure. You come to a hill, you run up it hard. You come to a set of 200-500 steps. You run up them. As my high school coach used to say, "you can shuffle uphill, but if you shuffle up steps you'll break your legs." If you think hills are good for your leg strength, steps are even better. Taking them one at a time teaches quick movement, while bounding up two or more at a time builds power in your push off. If you have a flat stretch you might stride out a bit, but save something for the hills to come. You could plausibly do 20 miles or more in this fashion in Wellington. This is much less possible in Auckland. The hill repeats were the way to get in lots of hills in that environment.

The Wellingtonian attitude to hills is in no way a disdain for the idea that hills are really good for you. The disdain is for the idea that you need a formal structure to running on hills. When you live in a place where 300m of vertical gain in an hour's recovery run is normal you really don't to run hill repeats.

Be happy with what you have ...

Which is worse? Running in July in Wellington, or Minneapolis

Running in July in Minneapolis was for the most part not great. The heat, the humidity, the ozone days, the bugs. You make do, enjoy the chance to take it slowly 6 days out of 7, and run on a schedule dictated by the weather. Running in July in Wellington can have few charms too. I'm of the opinion that there's no good clothing for rain and 40°F/5°C. I just put on polypropelene on my top and hands, and go for it. If the southerly makes it too cold for the legs to warm up you don't run quickly and risk pulling a muscle, you just get out there and run, and wait for the weather to change, which it will do in a day. That's the good thing about a maritime climate. The cold and rain rarely stick around for more than a couple of days in a row. In short, my question when I left Minneapolis for Wellington, was which would be worse, cold and rain or hot and muggy.

In general and in respect of running I try—if not always successfully—to be happy with what I have. No point in raging against the weather. Those caveats aside, I think I'm now in a position to judge this slightly ridiculous question.

After 20 miles over Makara Peak and the Skyline Track in intermittent rain and hail below 40°F/5°C, the trails more than make up for the 30mph wind with 50mph gusts, and the rain. You have to pick your trails more carefully in the winter but 80% of the hundreds of miles of trails in the city are runnable even in the winter. You come round the corner and get glorious view of the Pacific Ocean or the city or the regenerating bush. I almost forgot that my legs were red with cold ...

Reading recommendation: Matthew Engel discusses month-by-month moves for the best weather in the world.

You can't have a placebo effect of icebaths

Some new research questions the benefits of icebaths:

Ice-water immersion offers no benefit for pain, swelling, isometric strength and function, and in fact may make more athletes sore the next day

Then they find someone to question the new study, who says:

because it's subjective, there may even be a placebo effect on those who take the cold bath. Its part of their ritual, it finishes off the endurance test, and many clearly report that it makes them feel better

Now its true that you may get some benefits just from believing that the icebath works for you. But they aren't placebo effects. A placebo effect requires that you don't know what "treatment" you're getting.

If you're testing the effect of, say, drugs this is relatively straightforward. You give the placebo group a plain pill that looks like medicine. But even then, some patients will work out they're in the placebo group because they don't have any side effects of a drug.

It's impossible to have a placebo group in a trial of tepid vs. ice water because [nearly everybody] will be able to tell the difference between tepid and ice water ...

Icebaths are great. Right now I'm living in a climate where I get the icebath throughout some of my runs ... That is one good thing about a cold southerly in Wellington! It probably keeps the riff raff out, as they say.

Running requires both lungs and legs

From the department of not-so-surprising-discoveries, it turns out you need both strong legs and strong lungs to run well. I reprise this obvious truth to mostly conclude my science experiment on what extended aqua-running does for your land running. Since this site (blog.lib.umn.edu) draws a lot of google hits my poor racing after extended aqua-running is presented as a public service and warning. It keeps you fit but you don't necessarily run your best afterwards.

All in all I was off dry land and aqua-running for nearly 7 weeks. That's a long time, and longer than most of the research that concludes that aqua-running maintains your racing fitness. This time coincided with the last few weeks of my dissertation writing, so I did unusually little walking. My daily routine was ride or drive to pool, ride or drive to work, write a lot, ride or drive home. I got a premonition that returning to running would be rough a week before I started back when a 3/4 of a mile walk left my legs quite tired.

Once I started back I had 5 weeks before the Bjorklund 1/2 marathon which was my goal race for the first half of the year. Having paid $65 to enter, and it's a great race, it was not one to abandon. The first 10 days of "terrestrial running" were not pretty (well, I'm never pretty running, but this is all relative), or at least felt not pretty. The first few days I was actually quite sore while running, mostly in the quads which do the shock absorbing, and more so on asphalt than on softer surfaces. Once I had some semblance of co-ordination back I hit the track for a mini-workout on the 12th day of my return to land running. A few laps of strides and then 2 x 1000m at marathon pace felt aerobically easy, but even on the forgiving surface of the track the legs tired quickly. My easy-paced runs, even the ones that felt sore and un-coordinated had not actually been too much slower than my normal training paces pre-injury. But it was pretty clear that my specific fitness for running at race pace without my legs tiring had diminished substantially. And I had just over two weeks to get it back, since the last week before the race would be mostly tapering.

Another predictable--and thus easily accepted--consequence of the pool running was that I was very aerobically fit but had no leg strength and thus everything was out of balance. If your legs and lungs are out of balance I think it is the worst combination when your lungs are stronger. It leads to even more leg problems since you unconsciously try to outrun your leg fitness. Suffice it to say that I had a host of minor niggles in the two weeks of crash-training where I had to get used to (a) running 6:low/miles again, (b) running for 80-90 minutes, and (c) combining a and b on a relatively unforgiving road surface. Again, I cannot speak too highly of active release therapy, and specifically put in a little free local advertising for Jenna Boren at Bridging Health in St. Paul.

If my goal had been a smooth transition to effective training, the adjustment back to land might have been a little smoother. I would have run more frequently, for shorter distances and at slower paces. But my goal was to try and do a somewhat decent race. So I focussed on two kinds of runs, longer runs to get my legs used to being on the road for a while, and tempo runs with some strides before and after. Since I'd done VO2 max type intervals in the pool I'd taken care of that side of my aerobic fitness, and they seemed to have the most potential for injury. On the days in between the land runs I was in the pool, jogging around for recovery. Again, my thanks to H2O Man and MPR for keeping me sane for up to 2.5 hours in the pool. Really, anything over 20 minutes of aqua jogging seems interminable without the mental focus of a workout or the distraction of the radio.

A week out from the race it was quite clear I was not going to have one of those miraculous injury followed by PR experiences. I had a host of niggling issues with the legs that I was working out with the foam roller, and I was worried that in my haste to get road-fit again I'd done just enough to tire myself out. Thus I set myself the modest goal of merely running marathon pace (1:24:30) for the half marathon. If I could do that I'd be happy.

Not achieving even a modest goal would normally be disappointing. But given the slow transition back to the roads I was more inclined to take the positive feedback from the race, and not worry about the shuffle to the finish. On the morning of the race I made the decision to check my time at the first mile and then run by feel, trying to hit the split button on the watch without looking at it. 6:27 at mile 1 was right on target. Although I got to see my time at mile 5 and 10km the feedback was good, I was knocking off the miles between 6:24 and 6:28 (goal being 6:26). Around 8.5 miles the quads began to protest that they were not used to this. It was not quite like hitting the wall in a marathon, since I gradually slowed from 6:26s to the shuffling 7:30 I ran for the last mile, but it was similar. If your legs aren't used to the road you aren't going to make it. The end result was a 1:28:47 that I figure to be 8-11 minutes slower than what I might have run without the 7 weeks off the road. But in the long view I'll take the positives -- my pace judgment was good and I ran 1/3 of a marathon at marathon pace. It could have been a lot worse.

The generalizable lesson is this: aqua jogging does keep you fit, but you've got to keep up some weight bearing exercise once you can walk on the injury, and the longer you're off the land the harder it will be to come back. While it's frustrating to have to wait for my legs to catch up with my lungs, being unfit in both is even harder to come back from.

I've always found recovering from injuries to be somewhat mentally refreshing. They force me to break from the plan, and to enjoy each day's running for what it is. My goal for the year is still to try and run a decent marathon in October in Auckland. As luck would have it this marathon does not fill months in advance, and I can decide as late as early October whether I'm really going to do it. To let the legs catch up with the lungs the next couple of months are mostly going to be easy runs to build up the mileage with one tempo run or race at Harriers each week. There are few better cities in the world for doing winter base building than Wellington. You have hills and trails, and if you need to hit the flats or the track they're available too. It should be fun.

In other non-surprising news, moving across the Pacific and starting a new job is kinda time consuming ...

A short jaunt past history

This entry represents the confluence of two of my favorite things: running on trails and history. Meeker Island lock and dam was the first set of locks constructed on the upper Mississippi river in 1907. If you are strolling or running along the east bank of the river just where Minneapolis meets Saint Paul it has always been possible to go down some steps (in Minneapolis) or down a rutted little trail (in Saint Paul) to the riverbank and see the remnants of the dam. When the river level is low you can see a lot of what was there, if not the island itself which is submerged by the now much deeper channel of the river.

The lock and dam lasted just five years, and was then submerged by the raising of the river achieved with the construction of the much larger dam at the Ford Parkway.

Now with the centenary of the Meeker Island dam upon us, the Saint Paul city council has spruced up the area a little, added some tables and benches, and made the path alongside the river more runnable (or walkable). The best way to see this on a run is to run down the wagon road on the Saint Paul side, along the river, and then up some iron steps (beside a storm water outlet) into Minneapolis to emerge about 100 meters from where you went down the wagon road.

Lake St bridge

Minneapolis' beach on the Mississippi

Links
Wikipedia
National Parks Service book on the history of the Mississippi in the Twin Cities

A-muse(ing) someone

Hopefully this will make someone, somewhere laugh. After 31 days of pool running, 24 of them hard days, it's time to take a recovery week ... from my aqua-jogging routine. That's the part you're supposed to laugh at.

The cutback will coincide with the last week of dissertation writing before I hand it off to my committee, and wait for their permission to defend it, so the extra time will be valuable too. Even with the joys of Zotero and EndNote the final footnotes take longer to format than you think (even when you adjust for them taking longer than you think ... )

What with it being apparently spring weather outside (I wouldn't know, I go to the pool, I go to my desk, and when I look at the weather forecast page in my browser I often discover I haven't reloaded it for two days) the muse (Clio, maybe) from running outside would be a good thing. After a month in the pool, I've found my muse in there more than I thought I would. When you're running by yourself if you have a thought you can verbalize it (=talk to yourself). In the pool with the lifeguard sitting relatively close I can't do that ...

Now, back to that little essay I have to write.

Seeing double

from letsrun's London marathon photos on Monday, 23 April, about 5pm CDT

Dispatches from the pool

Everyone, I am sure, is anxiously awaiting news of just how exciting pool running really is. The good news is that I've done 10 days in the pool. The [expected] "bad" news is that I can still feel the toe so I'll be in the pool a while longer. No miraculous cure, even at Easter time.

Given the length of my sentence I decided to invest in this classy product. It doesn't look stylish, but remember I am wearing a blue aqua-running belt and a becoming black heart rate monitor. I already look like a doofus. And besides, I don't ever see anyone I know at the pool. Not that I care, really ... The marginal cost in style of adding the yellow, red and blue H2o Man waterproof MP3 player is much outweighed by the marginal benefit of being able to do 90 minutes of aqua running without getting bored. There's been some slightly reduced concentration on keeping the heart rate up with podcasts, but the bottom line is I'd be more likely to be on the couch eating caramel eggs and getting fat if I didn't have the stylin' H2o Man. One anticipated side-effect of the H2o Man was that it interferes with the heart rate monitor. My heart rate recovered to 37 at one point in today's "run." I'd be glad to have that as a resting heart rate, meaningless as it is to performance. I'm doing well in the pool if I get the heart rate above 140 with the H2o Man attached to the belt.

Running in the pool is quite the scenic letdown after the great outdoors, but I'm lucky enough at the U of M rec center to be able to choose between two pools depending on my time of day. For the first week, sans H2o Man, this gave me some limited variety in scenery. Unfortunately I'd sometimes pick a time of day to get this variety when there were—can you believe it—swimmers with the temerity to want to use the same lane as me (I jest). I'm sure they're all great people, but most of the recreational swimmers I've been sharing lanes with, splash a lot. I've never swallowed so much chlorinated water in my life! There are signs up at the pool about how you're not meant to spit into the water, or slurp in water and slurp it out again, but when someone swims past and washes a pint of chlorinated water down your gullet ... you break the rules.

Running links o' the day

Great article from the IAAF about Norwegian runner Susanne Wigene. Miles make the champion.

Should you run in a graveyard? I say yes.

Oh dear ...

I fed the cat in the dark about a month ago, and now I'm banished to aqua-jogging in the pool for at least a month. Feeding the cat does not normally lead to the words runners dread: "You should avoid running for at least four weeks," but I stubbed my little toe when I fed the cat. And now I have a stress fracture in my little toe. Things could be a lot worse. I got in a month of decent training before I was banished to my fate of bobbing round in the water avoiding the swimmers.

For most of the month I just thought I'd bruised the toe. If I put on spikes or racing shoes, which generally fit a little snugger I'd feel the toe a little more. "Oh sure, it's just a little bruised, maybe I should ice that," I thought occasionally. But then I'd amble through my cool down not feeling the toe, and the bag o' ice never made it to the foot. I suppose it was a warning sign that the "bruise" persisted, but really it was so intermittent it didn't bother me enough to worry about it.

But midway through Tuesday's 90 minute 20km run I noticed I was altering my stride to avoid landing on the toe. And then it was painful walking on it. Bad sign. Off to the doctor ... but also onto the internet where I have to say that once you sort through the crap, the collective experience of other runners injuries on LetsRun is actually quite useful. The crap is the 17 year old kids who say "you can keep racing on a stress fracture if your state track meet is in 2 weeks time." I wouldn't have thought that merely stubbing your toe (while feeding the cat, the ignominy of it!) could lead to a stress fracture. But apparently so. You don't get a lot of blood flow in your little toe. Add on the stress of running on it, and there's your fracture. The internet also provided me with worst case scenarios that made the doctor's recommendation of four weeks off seem like a gift! Apparently with your little toe—compared to other toes—there's much more of a risk that the new bone will form out of alignment and surgery would be required to straighten it up. Other bad scenarios you can find related to a fifth metatarsal fracture are "wooden shoes," "crutches," and "no weight-bearing activity."

The X-rays confirmed my self-diagnosis: stress fracture! But far enough along that they could see new bone forming, and not out of alignment either. I don't need wooden shoes, crutches, and I can keep walking, but should try to minimize "weight-bearing activity," like ballet dancing.

Ballet dancing does not describe what aqua jogging looks like. While I imagine myself to be gliding along quite nicely on dry land (my low injury:mileage ratio over the years gives me some confidence in this delusion) there's no hope of that in the pool. You just look silly. Once you've put on the vest, and the heart rate monitor there's little dignity left in your appearance. The first day in the pool 75 minutes passed incredibly slowly. The next day 90 minutes passed a little quicker with the help of a poolside radio, and semi-crazy people being interviewed on MPR. "They said what!" would prompt a bout of higher heart rate activity. Today 90 minutes passed even quicker with the heart rate monitor as do "sets" of running starting at 110, building slowly up to at least 140bpm and then hold it for as long as I could.

We'll see how the pool running goes ... it's April so I'd just be getting wet in the rain anyway if I was running outdoors, right? The pool can't be worse. But lots of people start off with great ambitions of running in the pool, and the boredom gets to them ... Without the distraction of the radio, or the challenge of trying to get the heartrate up I couldn't do it. Somehow the musings and thoughts that make even the most dull run outside enjoyable just aren't provided in the pool. But all the research shows that the pool is the only thing that keeps you fit for running. So the pool it is!

The race you have when you're not having a race

There was a great advertising campaign in New Zealand in the 1980s for an alcoholic drink substitute called Clayton's. Their slogan, which has done better than the product itself (no longer available) was "the drink you have when you're not having a drink." Sounds good, huh? Almost as good as O'Doull's and with the same lack of effect on your mood.

"Clayton's" has lived on in Australasian English as a synonym for "fake," or "poor substitute." So I had a Clayton's race at the Human Race on Sunday.

In retrospect it wasn't a good idea to do 3 workouts on the indoor track in 7 days. That thought made itself known very quickly in my IT band on the last lap of some 1400m (6 laps, outside lane) tempos 5 days before the "race." By Sunday I was mostly OK but the left leg still felt different doing strides, so no race. What was most painful by the weekend was the inner turmoil of "you're a wimp," versus "you're making the right decision." Once bitten, twice shy motivated some of the decision not to race the race. Last time (6 years ago) I faced a similar dilemma, minor ailment improving pretty rapidly but not yet 100%, I raced and was off for a month.

Having paid the entry fee, and collected my race number and champion chip it didn't make a lot of sense to not run the race. So I did. To remove any temptation to turn up and race I wore clunky shoes, non-racing shorts, and long underwear for temperatures that didn't require it. It's all about dressing for the occasion. Having tapered the training down for this "race," I did have the enjoyable experience of running the easiest 7 minute miles I've run in a long time, but it was still a Clayton's race. It just doesn't taste the same.

New York Times weird quote of the day

First in a series I probably won't continue, but which I easily could. Reading back issues of the New York Times as I write the dissertation serves only to remind me that the idiosyncrasies of the paper have existed for nearly a century. Anyway, what do you make of this:

At 5 feet 10 inches and 145 pounds, he races at whatever distance is available.

If he was a different height and weight he'd race more selectively? Is that the implication?

It's an otherwise interesting profile of how someone combines excellent running with a day job. But I just hope he doesn't lose weight or shrink, and have to choose his races more carefully.

Cedar Avenue bridge

Nice article in the StarTribune about efforts to get the Cedar Avenue Bridge refurbished and re-opened. If you run the Minnesota river trails it's something to wish for.

Misprint of the day

Wow. You can be on an Ekiden team that runs a marathon in 2:16:04, and your 4:06 1500m runner throws in a 19:30 5km. Inspiring how well the others run. Inspiring to know that Olympians have really, really bad days and run about 50 seconds a kilometer slower than expected.

Except that she ran 6km. Minor detail, minor detail ...

Competing marathons

As happens every few years, the Chicago and Twin Cities marathons will be on the same weekend this year. And again, some people make comments like this:

Twin Cities and Chicago marathons
are both scheduled for Oct 7 .... What's up with that? Is this a one time deal, or are
they planning on going head-to-head every year?

I just don't get why this is an issue. For sure, they're in the same region of the country, they're always around the same time of year, they certainly compete for the affections of runners from Wisconsin, and you have to enter insanely early for both. But even when they're three weeks apart (like in 2006) I can guarantee you the number of people who ran both (or even thought of running both) is trivially small.

Just by being held in the same month Twin Cities and Chicago are competing. After that it scarcely matters whether they're on the same weekend or not.

On the topic of Twin Cities I'll make a prediction. There will be few Americans up the front of the marathon. If you're on the verge of qualifying for the Olympic Trials (2:47 or 2:22) you don't choose the course with the 150 foot climb at mile 20, you go to Chicago and hope for a calm day. On the other side of the ledger, men who have already qualified for the Olympic trials won't be running a marathon one month out. My brave prediction is that a Kenyan or Russian will win.

A week for every mile raced?

(From Dean Karnazes' Ultramarathon Man, p.209)

Not sure how this radical inflation of running lore slipped past the masses in their ongoing condemnation of Dean Karnazes! I've heard the adage, as have others, that an easy intensity day (1/7 of a week ...) for every mile raced is a decent place to start thinking about how to schedule your recovery. But never a week! I'm not sure if this was a copy-editing mistake or Dean Karnazes is just that far removed from competitive running's oral lore about how to do things.

A lengthy concluding by the way: One could discuss the worth of the original adage for a long time. Some people think it's too conservative. Everyone's experience varies. My view is why do a hard workout when you're still tired from the race? It also depends, I think, how hard you're racing. If you're really just rolling the race as a workout, then you don't have to recover as if it was a race (the race as workout, there's another long discussion). First of all, there's a distinction between easy days and recovery days. If I race less than 10 miles I'll almost always do an easy paced long (2+ hours) run the next day. That's not a recovery day. I very rarely do any anaerobic workouts within x days of an x mile race. Strides and moderate aerobic workouts (tempo and slower) are OK. Your mileage may vary. But don't take Dean's advice, or you'll hardly ever race.

No bad weather, just ...

There's two different versions of this quote in running circles. One attributed to Bill Bowerman is

No bad weather, just soft people

The other version that has less specific attribution is

No bad weather, just bad clothes/gear

How to reconcile these aphorisms? Bowerman was probably talking about Eugene, which most of the time has near ideal weather for distance running, and when it precipitates, it rains.

There is no good clothing for rain. Get out there for long enough, and you're just wet. If you want to keep going you keep going. Bowerman was speaking some truth there. But in a colder or snowier climate that's not true. There is good clothing for really, really cold weather. You don't have to be particularly tough to put it on and get out there. You just have to know what to wear. Knowledge rather than character, depending on whether it snows or rains.

Marathon recovery

Marathons leave you fit but f***ed up. How do you take advantage of that?

All the usual caveats apply. Your mileage will [literally] vary. Not only from mine, but over time from your own previous efforts, and not necessarily predictably. You might be fitter going into (and coming out of) one marathon than another, but you still might need more recovery from the one you approached with more fitness.

So, marathons leave you fit but f***ed up. How do you take advantage of that? There's no question that if you prepare right, you come off a marathon tremendously aerobically fit. Now, I think it's very much the case that the specific fitness required to run your best marathon will not put you in the shape to run the best 5000m you're ever capable of. If you prepare for a marathon right you'll be tremendously economical, great at sparing glycogen, but perhaps not as sharp as you need to run a great 5000m (this relates to the Greg McMillan article in Running Times Mike discussed a while back. One day I may discuss this. That day could be many days away).

Nevertheless many people do run shorter distance PRs pretty soon after a marathon. I happen to think that this is because their overall aerobic fitness has been raised so much that it compensates for non-specific preparation. (Lets put it this way. If you successfully bump up your mileage to 80 mpw and train for a marathon, you'll probably beat the 5km times you ran on 50mpw but doing 5km focused workouts. The aerobic benefits from the increased mileage and threshold work would more than compensate for the dimunition, even absence, of VO2 max workouts.)

Now, if you live in the upper Midwest and do a late fall marathon you're not going to get much opportunity to do a PR at anything several weeks after your marathon. So I happen to have lost touch with the idea of seguing from a marathon into shorter distance racing. But what I know from earlier marathons and other people's experience is this: it is possible to do a good race a week or two or three after a marathon, but you need to let your muscles recover somehow (aqua jogging, running on grass very easily) before the next race, and you're just going to set your recovery back again. But hey, if you're fit, there's a good race on, and you feel mentally up to the challenge, why not? My best racing soon after a marathon has always been 5-8 weeks afterwards. That time frame gives me time to recover, time to get in a week or two of easy distance, strides and then at least one workout before the race. After my first marathon I didn't race for 8 weeks, but that gave me 4 weeks without workouts, 4 weeks with workouts, and then a very good day at the races (albeit in a relay at the totally non-standard distances of 4.78km and 3.89km. My absence from racing meant I got stuck in a relay team below my ability that was one person short. Beating both the people from the team I would normally have been in was the most valuable index of how good I felt). To sum up, my limited experience with transitioning from the marathon back into shorter races suggests that the best races come a few weeks after the marathon when you're both recovered and fit.

Transitioning back into another build-up, however, is something I have experimented with over the last 18 months, and my conclusion is this: an extra week of recovery makes for an even better build-up.

Here's a graph of my mileage after my last three competitive marathons

After Grandma's and Philadelphia I followed Pfitzinger's recommendations: "[Shuffle for a week] Then run 50% of your usual weekly mileage the 2nd week, and 75% the 3rd week." I interpreted "usual weekly mileage" to be what I'd averaged over the marathon buildup which came out to about 85 miles per week (mpw). In both cases I felt pretty good by week 3. After Grandma's the jump from 62 mpw to 75 mpw with a tempo run left me feeling a little tired (though perhaps it was just the July doldrums) so after Philadelphia once I'd got to 63 mpw in week 3 I then added 7-8 mpw until I hit 100. This worked out pretty well and while my mileage was a little lower than after Grandma's it was slightly higher quality. If the footing wasn't always great, the effort was higher after Philadelphia than after Grandma's. The 5 week sequence of 88, 90, 100, 100, 100 mpw post-Grandma's was done mostly at an easy effort because it was July and August, and I couldn't be bothered making my head spin by running harder in heat and humidity. But it wasn't until the last two weeks of that five week stretch that I felt really fresh most days.

If you have the time to freshen up, why go into your next training cycle mentally and physically fatigued? With this in mind I decided that after Chicago I would have a week completely off running, and then take a very easy month. Now, I won't pretend that the obsessive-compulsive mileage addict that lurks in me didn't have some doubts about this, and didn't say "Why don't you jog a couple more miles each day?" But I mostly banished these thoughts from my mind. The 30 and 40 mile week were quite enjoyable, mostly ambling around at an easy pace. There was a mild sensation of the legs and lungs not quite feeling in sync -- the legs felt fresh after the week off to recover, so I'd pick it up gradually and wonder why 7:15/mile effort yielded 7:55/mile. But mostly I just jogged around.

The 50 mile week was a challenge. 3 weeks post-marathon there shouldn't be much fatigue left. I struggled through the easy 13 mile run I'd normally do 2 weeks after a marathon, and wondered how I'd ever get back to the point where 13 miles was a pretty typical day out on the roads. But a couple of days later I felt slightly better on an 11 mile run, and realized that perhaps I was not fatigued, I was just a little unfit (relatively speaking). If you're used to running at least 300 miles a month, a month where you run a marathon and mostly jog another 100 miles will not maintain your fitness. Another couple of days later, and I felt slightly better again on another 11 mile run. But on the days in between I felt much more tired than 11 miles usually leaves me. So, the week was a struggle between the days I felt fatigued from runs that normally wouldn't tire me too much, and the gradual realization that each of the longer runs was better than the one before, and perhaps I was regaining fitness.

So I started the 60 mile week mostly expecting to continue feeling better. And I did. When I checked my pace on various runs I was hitting the times I expected for the effort I was putting out. Things were on the upswing. Yet the pay-off for the longer recovery was not the 60 mile week, it was the month from Thanksgiving to Christmas where I ran 80, 90, 100 and then 113 miles in each week. Aided by a dry, warm start to winter I was able to make those good quality weeks with at least one long tempo run in each week, a leg speed workout, one day of reps on hills, and good long runs. I felt the best I've ever felt starting a winter buildup, both physically and mentally. The price of a good month's training was an extra week's recovery, and really it was a bargain. It wasn't much fun feeling unfit and slow for 2-3 weeks, but it all came back together much quicker than I'd expected.

Better to struggle through the 50 mile recovery week and then feel fresh when you are running 100 miles, than to keep the miles up and feel fit but tired when you're doing 100 miles.

Tokyo Olympiad

Anyone with any interest in running history should rent and watch Tokyo Olympiad. Directed and produced by Kon Ichikawa this is the best moving footage of the Olympics I've seen from before the era of mass-televised coverage. The movie is in color, which instantly sets it apart from all the other Tokyo coverage I've seen (e.g; these YouTube links) If you are expecting, say, full coverage of the 10,000m you'll be disappointed. But they do have 3 minutes in full, clear color including the whole last lap and it is amazing to see how many lapped runners Mills, Gammoudi and Clarke had to pass as they swapped the lead in the last 400m. Other, shorter, races are covered in full.

The coverage is artistic, rather than functional, There could be coverage of more events in its 170 minutes. You might get frustrated at the women's 80m hurdles being replayed from multiple angles—from the front, focusing on their leg muscles etc—while the men's 1500m gets only the briefest finish shot. But that would be to miss Ichikawa's intentions of recording the human drama and artistry of the Olympics.

It is not entirely track and field, with gymnastics and swimming also being covered. But the "other sports" get surprisingly little coverage. Track and field, and especially Abebe Bikila's marathon, receive the most footage.

There is no plot to the coverage, so it's quite possible to watch it in snippets when you have the chance. I've been watching it while doing my daily stretches. It might make for good relief from boredom on the treadmill. However you watch it, if you instantly recognize some of these names—Hayes, Clarke, Gammoudi, Packer, Roelants, Odlozil, Tyus—you'll get more than a little enjoyment out of this film.

Links: New York Times review. Wikipedia

Hand off

Now that winter is sort of upon us (I was doing strides on the soccer field wearing shorts this morning. This is not a normal thing, mid-December, in Minneapolis) it's the appropriate time to ask a question that has long puzzled me: Who, other than RoadRunner Sports models, wears long pants and a thermal top when running, but no gloves??

This kind of dressing decision is absolutely and totally mystifying to me. Gloves are always the first thermal element I put on. There are times I'm happy to be out running in a t-shirt, shorts, and gloves. Typically this is when it's between 40 and 50, sunny and relatively calm. If it gets a little colder the next thermal item I will add is the long-sleeved thermal top. Colder still (below 35°F) or planning to do something a little quicker and not wanting to needlessly strain a muscle I'll add something warm on the legs.

Most serious-looking runners I see round here appear to follow similar dressing conventions. Gloves are one of the first things they put on when the temperature drops. The folks I see without gloves on below freezing days tend to be the same people wearing cotton sweatpants and tops, in other words, people not making the most comfortable running clothing decisions to begin with.

But perhaps other people have better circulation in their hands than I do, and like their legs toasty warm relative to their hands. Comment away!

Google maps fun

What would make Google Maps great for runners? How about if Google mapped trails? Well, now they do. For New Zealand. As best as I can tell they've digitized the 1:50,000 scale topographic maps and included the four wheel drive trails and "single track" trails you can run, walk, and sometimes mountainbike.

The picture below (follow the link to see for yourself) is of my old stamping grounds of Wilton's Bush and the Skyline trail.

Not all of the trails that exist on the ground are there. 1:50,000 is still quite large scale, and no doubt some of the trails on the ground are non-official. Nevertheless, what an amazing thing to have added to Google maps. If you happened to find yourself in Wellington or Auckland and wanted to go trail running you could start planning before you hit the ground.

The other semi-useful thing about Google Maps for New Zealand which you can see if you click on "Map" on the linked image are property boundaries. Those boundaries in between the roads when you get in close enough appears to correspond to people's houses and yards. Something you can't yet see in Google Maps for America.

King of the hills

Good article about Wellington-area native, Jonathan Wyatt who has dominated world mountain running the last decade.

Obsessive compulsive runner existential dilemma of the day

Like many runners I'm kind of obsessive compulsive (in a good way, right?) about logging how many days I've run and my mileage ("kilometrage" doesn't roll off the tongue), and most years getting out the door 350 plus days a year.

In the past I've taken this to the ridiculous-in-retrospect extent of hobble-shuffling through the few days after a marathon, in one case motivated by the perverse desire to run a year straight without a day off (having now achieved that once I have no desire to better it ever). This year I decided to take a week off for the mental and physical recuperation I needed. It was surprisingly mentally easy.

On 4 of the days "off" running I went to the pool and ran in the water with the funky belt on. The aqua running made my legs feel much better, and in fact scientific research shows that recovery from muscle trauma is better when you aqua run, than when you land run. Apparently it's also true from multiple studies that the aqua running can maintain your fitness for six weeks. This isn't one of those crazy "How many running miles does my long bike ride count for?" questions you see on letsruminate. I was really running. If it wasn't for the beautiful crisp fall weather waiting outside and the inconvenience of getting to the pool and the boredom and the chlorine in my hair I'd keep doing the pool running ... Really, it's that fun bobbing up and down in the pool and going nowhere while the lap swimmers wonder what you're doing.

So if the pool running is physiologically as good as running, here's my existential dilemma: Do I count the days I ran in the pool as days I ran? Do I divide by 5(8) and tally up the kilometres(miles) and add them to the year's total? What if those pool miles were the difference between getting to 4000 miles for the year and not?

2:59:03

Chicago marathon, 2:59:03. 1:25:11 through the half, which makes a shade under 1:34 coming home. A little disappointed, but reasonably satisfied. Calves really tightened up from 31km, which has never happened to me, and which I'm attributing to wearing flats. Better to learn that lesson in this race than when I'm in better shape. Longer self-indulgent report follows.

As it happened, some of the things I predicted could happen did happen. Specifically, these things happened:

Put it on the line for sub 3:10, 3:00, 2:48:47, 2:37:20, 2:30:00, 2:22:00 or whatever you're going for, and you'll come a cropper one of these days. Just the way it is. Just the law of averages ....
if you get to this point of searching for a reasonable goal to keep going you'll probably be changing them mile by mile ... That's been my experience.

So, I put it on the line for low 2:50s. This implied trying to ease through the first half in 1:25 and then bring it home. 1:25:11 through the half was pretty much where I hoped to be, and it felt good. Not much to say really about the first half, other than that I missed the first mile marker, saw mile 2 was 10 seconds too quick and successfully eased off just the right amount. And that when there are huge bunches of people the wind is not really an issue. If you're Brian Sell, however, and you're marooned between people doing 1:03 and people doing 1:06 for the first half, the wind was probably more of an issue.

Things continued feeling pretty good through about 29km. I can't see intermediate place information on the results site, but my impression is that 24-29 was a good stretch where I passed quite a few people (it was nice to have the kilometre markers, and the chip mats every 5km provide useful information, so useful I didn't bother taking my mile splits). I took a Gu at 13.5 miles/22km, and that probably kicked in a little later. Some of the people I passed were the women who took a tilt at 2:46:59 and were now fated to shuffling home in well over 2:50. "Nothing venture, nothing win," I thought as I noticed them.

Aside on Gu: A couple of years ago I got in the habit of taking Gu on nearly every long run, even the easy ones. What I noticed was that once I was used to the Gu, the effect of it was more immediate but less sustained. Now that I'm back in the habit of only taking Gu on some long runs where I'm doing marathon pace or faster (enough to practice taking it, and to know that I won't have "GI" issues with it) I notice that the effect doesn't noticably kick in for at least 5, and sometimes 10 minutes, but that it is then sustained for longer. This, to me, is consistent with the idea that by training with less calories than you'll race with you do teach the body to be sparing with glycogen. Conversely, when you get used to taking calories in training your body becomes greedy and inefficient with the available glycogen. Just my slow-poke 2c worth.

Although most things felt good from 24 to 29, including the important things like breathing, perceived exertion, mental attitude etc ... I did begin to wonder if I'd made the wrong shoe choice. By 31km it was quite clear that I had. My calves were tightening up a lot, and it wasn't getting better. Since I was slowing for reasons unrelated to fuel I felt quite alert, alive and energetic—it was just getting more and more painful on the calves to run. What had been 5km splits just a touch over 20 minutes became 22 minutes from 30 to 35, and then 24 from 35 to 40.

Now, if you define "hitting the wall" as a quite sudden thing in which you finally exhaust your muscle glycogen, your quads get really heavy, and your brain (which runs on carbohydrates) gets really discouraged, then I didn't hit the wall. If you define hitting the wall more broadly as anything [unrelated to elevation and wind factors] that causes your second half to be more than a minute or so slower than your first half, then I hit the wall. This was a very gradual wall, however, in which my alertness and enthusiasm held up quite well even as my pace slowed and the effort to shuffle 7:40s with rapid turnover got higher than it "should have."

So, it was the shoes, or more responsibly, my decision to wear the shoes. I've never had a problem with sore calves in a marathon, and tight calves are totally consistent with wearing flats that are too thin. Two days later my calves are still sore, and my quads feel like I ran a downhill race. It's a subtly different feeling than when you race all the way to the end. Lesson learned. Was it foolish to wear flats (even relatively heavy ones: Adidas Response Comps) in the marathon? Yes, in hindsight. However, I'd done two 22 milers with 15 miles at [goal] marathon pace in my second pair of the shoes (which I picked up cheaply precisely for marathon training) and a bunch of 16-18 milers. In none of those workouts did I feel more beat up than doing the same workout in more cushioned shoes, and I didn't have any issues with my calves. That is, I'd done about as much, if not more, research on the shoe choice than is conventionally recommended and it still didn't work out. Obviously (obviously!) 30km, let alone 42.2km at marathon pace was too much.

So, in sum, I think I prepared as well as I could given my "pre-cuses" of the iron depletion and glute strain in spring and summer, excecuted pretty well on the day through to about 30km, and through my own mistaken choice of footwear never gave myself the chance to put it on the line in the last 10km where you really find out what you've got.

From here, it's a week completely off running, though I'll probably hit the pool for some aqua-jogging, then a slow climb back up to 100km/week by Thanksgiving. It's been two years since I took some sustained downtime after a marathon, and now is the time to refresh and regroup. I then hope to put in a good month through to Christmas, after which I'll think about a winter marathon, a spring one, or concentrating on shorter distances for the spring, and a marathon again next fall. Who knows? Without overstating the difficulties there are some complications of trying to do a winter or early spring marathon coming out of the long Minnesota winter. There's also the issue that spring marathons in North America have much more variable weather (it's not for nothing that all the major competitive spring marathons, except Boston, are in Europe and Japan). But variation is variation, you could get the freak 80° day, or you could get the ideal 45° day. If I'm serious about chasing the PR substantially down from where it is I may have to take some chances with the variable North American spring ...

Twin Cities Marathon 2006 photos

Photos from the Twin Cities Marathon 2006.